How could a federal bill impact Whatcom and Bellingham’s climate action?
Climate action in Bellingham and Whatcom County would get a big financial boost if Congress passes the multitrillion-dollar spending package it is currently considering, say city and county staff and local environmental policy experts.
“If passed, this bill would be a win for Bellingham and the climate,” said Seth Vidaña, Bellingham’s climate and energy manager.
Democrats are working to pass what could be some of the boldest climate legislation in U.S. history. The 2,465-page bill allocates funding for other social programs as well, from accessible childcare to lowering prescription drug prices. Its climate provisions include investments in electric vehicle infrastructure, clean electricity generation, agriculture and forestry carbon capture programs and native resilience and climate programs.
But what do the negotiations going on in the halls of Congress thousands of miles away have to do with the work happening in Washington state, Whatcom County and Bellingham? Quite a bit, according to Simon Vickery, climate and energy policy manager for local environmental nonprofit RE Sources.
“There are the federal dollars themselves, and we are excited about those,” he said. “But there’s a trickle-down effect on local spending.”
In other words, the federal government’s willingness to invest in climate solutions gives local governments more freedom to pursue environment and energy projects that might remain aspirational otherwise, Vickery said.
He points to the expansion of electric vehicle infrastructure as an example — Washington state, Whatcom County and the city of Bellingham have all expressed interest in building more electric vehicle charging stations, but it can be difficult for them to determine how much funding to allocate to these initiatives until they know what they can get from the federal government.
“Everyone is waiting to see what the big check from Uncle Sam looks like,” Vickery said.
“It gives local officials the green light to move ahead on climate because they know that the money is going to be there,” he continued. “If the federal government doesn’t fund it, they will have to make a hard decision about how to spend some local tax dollars. That always creates animosity and tension.”
What’s in the bill?
The details of the budget package are still being wrestled over within the Democratic Party. (There is no Republican support for the bill, according to reporting from The New York Times.) Democrats are attempting to pass the legislation through a special process called budget reconciliation, which makes it easier to pass bills in the Senate, according to the House Committee on the Budget. The bill only needs a simple majority in the Senate, rather than the 60 votes needed to stop a filibuster.
But the legislation could potentially include direct spending for what Vickery describes as “things we already know and care about in the Pacific Northwest,” such as salmon habitat restoration and addressing shoreline impacts of climate change such as flooding and erosion.
The bill’s tax incentives would help Bellingham residents purchase electric vehicles (which don’t run on gas), increase the amount of renewable energy used by the community’s buildings and encourage the installation of heat pumps, said Bellingham Climate and Energy Manager Vidaña. Heat pumps can heat and cool buildings without using fossil fuels such as natural gas.
“Meeting the ambitious goals set out in Bellingham’s Climate Action Plan will take funding and legislative support from all levels of government,” Vidaña wrote in an email to The Bellingham Herald. “The reconciliation bill would assist some of our most critical initiatives: Decarbonizing the grid, increasing adoption of electric vehicle technology, and electrifying homes.”
Federal funds are also on Whatcom County’s radar, said Chris Elder, the county’s senior planner for natural resources and lead staff on climate work.
“We are aware that significant additional funds may become available and have had very preliminary discussions considering how the County could develop and prioritize a list of projects that address watershed health, salmon recovery, public safety and other county priorities and directives, all within a climate resilience lens,” he wrote in an email to The Herald.
The County’s Climate Action Plan, which will be presented to County Council in the coming weeks, is a “good initial roadmap” for actions that federal funds could potentially be used for, Elder said. The county does not currently have a dedicated funding source for climate action, and federal and state grants are crucial to completing environmental projects, he said.
“As we start to hit these federal funds, there is an opportunity for the County to make some significant progress on our Climate Action Plan or improving our climate resilience,” Elder said.
Lummi Nation Chairman Lawrence Solomon said that the budget reconciliation package needs to provide more funding for salmon habitat recovery and salmon hatcheries, in a September op-ed in The Herald.
“Across the Northwest and the Salish Sea, we’re headed for environmental devastation we’ve never seen before — and Congress must not hesitate to act,” Solomon wrote.
There’s also another bill working its way through Congress — the trillion-dollar bipartisan infrastructure bill — that would provide funds for climate action as well.
Increasing clean energy
One of the most exciting elements of the federal budget reconciliation is the Clean Electricity Performance Program, said State Rep. Alex Ramel, whose district includes part of Whatcom County. He also works as climate policy advisor at the environmental advocacy organization Stand.earth.
Otherwise known as CEPP, the Clean Electricity Performance Program would pay utilities to ramp up their clean electricity generation and penalize those who don’t.
In terms of national clean electricity generation, Ramel described the Clean Electricity Performance Program as “the most transformative climate policy that the U.S. has ever seriously contemplated passing.”
“It mirrors the successful clean energy portfolio standards that Washington and other states have used to steadily build out renewable energy,” Ramel said.
Washington passed the Clean Energy Transformation Act in 2019, which commits the state to electricity generated without greenhouse gas emissions by 2045.
Puget Sound Energy, which would be subject to the Clean Energy Performance Program, is working with lawmakers on the reconciliation bill, the utility said in an emailed statement to The Herald.
“PSE believes that the energy provisions in the budget reconciliation bill may have the potential to accelerate our company’s planned clean energy transition,” the statement said. “We support efforts to lower the cost of building or contracting renewable energy resources for our customers by expanding and modernizing clean energy tax incentives.”
The utility said it believed that the Clean Energy Performance Program could create opportunities to decarbonize faster if it can account for PSE’s current obligations under Washington’s Clean Energy Transformation Act and the state’s “unique resource mix, which is dominated by carbon-free hydropower and subject to year-to-year weather variability.”
Rep. Ramel also hopes the federal package will include funding for state low-income weatherization programs, which help low-income families make their homes more energy efficient, allowing them to save money on utility bills.
He stressed that federal action is crucial in helping Washingtonians avoid and cope with climate impacts such as this summer’s record-breaking heatwave and worsening wildfire smoke.
“All that will get worse every year until we start taking action at the scale it’s needed,” Ramel said. “Local and state action are critically important, but without the federal government, we can’t do enough to solve this problem.”
