State's top industries warm to Gregoire's climate change legislation

Jan. 24--OLYMPIA -- Many of the state's largest industries testified here Wednesday that they are willing to support -- with reservations -- landmark legislation requiring them to measure and report greenhouse gas emissions, join a national registry of polluters, and live with new statewide emission limits.

Gov. Chris Gregoire's climate change bill, heard Wednesday by committees in both the House and Senate, also would direct the Department of Ecology to design a cap-and-trade system for limiting carbon emissions that could become a model for a regional system covering several Western states and Canadian provinces. The design would be submitted to the 2009 Legislature for enactment into law.

The climate change measure, introduced as Senate Bill 6516 and House Bill 2815, incorporates recommendations of the governor's Climate Advisory Team for reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. State Sen. Craig Pridemore, D-Vancouver, is the prime sponsor of the Senate bill.

"This bill makes the state accountable for meeting its goals," Kathleen Drew, a policy analyst for the governor, told the House Ecology and Parks Committee. Noting that Forbes magazine has ranked Washington among the top five states in addressing climate change, she added, "We have innovators. The world is hungry for the solutions we develop."

Qualified support

Electric utilities, timber companies, Alcoa and the pulp and paper industry all said they support the goals of the climate change legislation, including creation of a market that would allow polluters to trade the ability to emit carbon dioxide within an overall limit, or cap. But they want that system to be fair.

"Our company is keenly aware of the impacts of climate change," said Ken Johnson of Puget Sound Energy. "How we address this in the region is a critically important issue. There are billions of dollars on the table."

Llewellyn Matthews of the Northwest Pulp and Paper Association said her industry expects to be included in any future cap-and-trade program. But she said the legislation should treat energy generated by burning wood waste, also known as biomass, as carbon-neutral.

She also urged lawmakers to wait a year before converting goals for emission reductions into hard-and-fast limits.

Steve Smith of Cardinal Glass Industries, a small company in Winlock, said he is concerned that a cap-and-trade system could put him out of business. "We have the strictest emission permit in the country," he said. "But to make glass, you need energy. We don't have an alternative energy source to melt glass. I hope this bill is designed to take our situation into account."

Kent Lopez, general manager of the Rural Electric Cooperative Association, said, "We want to make sure that the cap and trade system takes into account the utilities that have been clean for decades."

And Dave Arbaugh, representing the Snohomish and Chelan public utility districts, said utilities that have complied with voter-approved Initiative 937, which requires utilities to include renewable energy sources in their portfolios, should get credit for that effort in any cap-and-trade system.

Sandi Swarthout of Alcoa said her company was one of the original signers of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. "The goal we share is to slow, stop and reverse the growth of greenhouse gas emissions," she said. "But this is not a perfect bill and we are not perfectly happy with it."

Companies such as Alcoa, which she said has reduced its greenhouse gas emissions to a level 25 percent lower than 1990 levels, should not be penalized for taking early action, she said.

Green-collar jobs

One section of the bill calls for the Department of Community, Trade and Economic Development to survey the employment potential in clean-energy businesses and fund grants to train workers in so-called "green-collar" jobs. Labor unions praised that feature of the bill in a Wednesday news conference, saying it could make Washington a national leader.

"This bill is the first legislation in the nation to take positive steps toward green job development," said Patrick Neville of the Apollo Alliance, a national coalition of leaders from the labor, environmental, business and anti-poverty communities. "Its charge is nothing less than a clean energy revolution in the U.S."

"My dream for the state of Washington is that we develop a cluster of clean-energy jobs" and a skilled work force that will attract new companies to the state, Pridemore said.

He said the 2007 Legislature's climate change bill, which he also prime-sponsored, "made a statement that Washington was going to be a leader on this issue."

That bill adopted the governor's targets for emission reductions and set limits on carbon emissions from electrical utilities that virtually ruled out new coal-fired plants in the state.

Pridemore said he expects this year's bill to have similar ripple effects on other states.

David Johnson of the Washington State Building and Construction Trades Council said clean energy already has put plenty of people to work building wind farms and ethanol production plants, manufacturing solar panels and crushing mustard seed and canola for biodiesel.

"We're the only organization that has come out with a paper on where the building trades need to be," he said.

Dana Peck of Horizon Wind Energy, the nation's third-largest wind energy developer, noted that wind power already is bringing jobs to Clark County. The Port of Vancouver has hired more longshoremen to unload the giant wind turbines imported from Denmark that harness wind energy in the Columbia River Gorge and beyond.

Kathie Durbin covers the Legislature for The Columbian. Contact her at 360-586-2437 or kathie.durbin@columbian.com

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