Correcting the Record on Initiative 2066 - Sightline Institute

Gas meter. Photo by Emily Moore.

Gas meter. Photo by Emily Moore.

On October 4, 2024, the Seattle Times editorial board encouraged its readers to vote yes on Washington Ballot Initiative 2066. That endorsement is riddled with misleading statements and omits critical facts about the issues at hand.

The endorsement focuses almost exclusively on critiquing House Bill 1589, a law passed by the state legislature in 2024. In doing so, the editorial board implies (incorrectly) that Initiative 2066 would repeal HB 1589 in its entirety. In fact, Initiative 2066 selectively takes aim at some of the most climate-friendly provisions of HB 1589, leaving much of the law intact.

More important, the editorial board glosses over other potentially further-reaching consequences of Initiative 2066, such as those on the state energy code. The editorial board also misleads readers on the facts of the energy transition. (For instance, it erroneously implies that converting gas pipes to pump green hydrogen into homes is a worthy and viable climate solution.)

Sightline is not endorsing or opposing any ballot initiatives in 2024. But as an independent nonpartisan research organization, we have extensively studied the policies that Initiative 2066 would repeal and others it could affect. The Seattle Times editorial board is entitled to an opinion, but for the paper of record in Washington state to take a stand, the opinion should be based on fact, not fiction. Below we correct the errors and fill in the gaps in the Seattle Times’ endorsement of Initiative 2066.

“Tacked on was a concurrent repeal of new state building codes that make installation of gas furnaces nearly impossible.” —Seattle Times editorial board

The editorial board devotes just a single sentence to one of the biggest potential effects of Initiative 2066: a new restriction on the state energy code.

The energy code sets the standards for all new construction of buildings in Washington. Since 2009, Washington state law has required that the energy code be designed to construct “increasingly energy efficient homes and buildings” and help achieve a statewide goal of emissions-free new construction by 2031.

Initiative 2066 would add new language to state statute that prevents the state energy code from “prohibiting, penalizing, or discouraging” the use of gas in any building. The initiative would also eliminate Washington’s longstanding requirement that the energy code help achieve emissions-free new construction. In practice, this new restriction could be used to challenge Washington’s 2021 state energy code.

To be clear, the 2021 energy code (which is currently in effect) does not prevent gas in new construction. But because the energy code must be designed to construct “increasingly energy efficient homes,” it does incentivize the most efficient heating system on the market: electric heat pumps. Air-source heat pumps can earn an efficiency rating of 300 to 400 percent compared to the highest-efficiency gas furnace, which tops out at 95 percent efficiency.

If a builder wants to construct a new dwelling with a gas furnace, they can. But to meet Washington’s overall efficiency standards, they’ll need to devote resources to other (likely more expensive) efficiency measures, such as reducing air leakage.

Plus, the editorial board fails to remind readers that not constructing new homes that burn fossil fuels is one of the easiest, cheapest climate actions Washington can take. The state will add nearly one million new residential units between 2024 and 2050, according to forecast data from the Northwest Power and Conservation Council. (Never mind that building new all-electric homes is cheaper than building new homes with gas hookups—another point the editorial board misses.)

The editorial board completely fails to mention that Initiative 2066 would write new language into state statute that bars cities, towns, and counties in Washington from actions that “prohibit, penalize, or discourage” gas for heating or other uses in buildings.

In practice, this could affect Seattle’s new Building Emissions Performance Standard (BEPS), a law the city passed in December 2023. It is one of Seattle’s most significant climate policies; buildings make up more than a third of the city’s carbon emissions.

BEPS requires Seattle’s existing buildings larger than 20,000 square feet (think high-rises, shopping centers, and grocery stores) to meet progressively declining greenhouse gas emissions targets until they achieve net-zero emissions in 2050. The city expects BEPS to reduce Seattle’s building emissions by 27 percent by 2050.

Like Washington’s 2021 energy code, Seattle’s BEPS does not ban gas. However, BEP’s standards will be difficult to achieve unless Seattle’s big buildings transition from burning gas to using clean electricity. Almost 90 percent of the city’s buildings sector emissions come from burning gas. Initiative 2066 could thus potentially be used to challenge BEPS on the grounds that it discourages the use of gas. Readers of the Seattle Times’ endorsement of Initiative 2066 remain oblivious to this possibility.

“[Legislators] rushed a flawed but wide-ranging bill giving Puget Sound Energy, the state’s largest utility, new abilities to assess and request rate hikes to advance electrification. Initiative 2066 on this fall’s ballot is a course correction, requiring them to slow their roll and rethink their haphazard approach to this momentous transition.” —Seattle Times editorial board

The core purpose of HB 1589 is to improve, coordinate, and streamline utility planning processes as Washington decarbonizes. That’s hardly “haphazard,” as the editorial board has branded the law.

Specifically, the law asks Puget Sound Energy (PSE), Washington’s largest gas and electric utility, to plan for decarbonization jointly across its gas and electric business lines. That’s a change from the status quo, in which PSE (like all Washington utilities) develops and submits to regulators separate gas and electric plans.

HB 1589 requires PSE to propose an “integrated system plan” to regulators by 2027 that outlines scenarios for how the company’s gas and electric operations will contribute to Washington’s greenhouse gas reduction requirements, which have been on the books since 2008 and were updated in 2020. Joint planning will allow PSE’s electric business to better anticipate growing demand for power as more households convert from gas to electricity—a far more thoughtful and organized approach to decarbonization than the siloed planning happening to date.

Further, nothing in HB 1589 guarantees that regulators will approve PSE’s integrated system plan or any requests for rate hikes. The law lays out several criteria that regulators at the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission (UTC) must use to assess PSE’s plan, including whether it “would maintain system reliability and reduces long-term costs and risks to customers.” If this and other conditions are not met, the UTC can reject the plan.

Initiative 2066 selectively strikes out the most climate-friendly provisions in HB 1589—the ones that move PSE from a haphazard approach to electrification to an intentional forward-looking one. Namely, the initiative would do away with requirements that PSE 1) develop a plan for cost-effective electrification of end uses served by natural gas, such as home heating, 2) assess alternatives, such as energy efficiency, to spending PSE customer money on new gas pipes, and 3) consider geographically targeted (or neighborhood-scale) electrification as an alternative to expanding the gas system.

Without these provisions, Washington will fall further behind states such as Colorado and Massachusetts, which are leading the way with even more ambitious improved climate planning requirements for gas utilities.

“Puget Sound Energy and other utilities face long timelines to plan, permit and construct a bigger, greener electricity grid. If the state’s power demand grows too quickly in the interim, utilities will have no choice but to ramp up or import greenhouse gas-emitting sources for electricity. Strain on the grid—exacerbated by power-hungry data center development—is growing. Meanwhile, a PSE consultant found that, if gas customers all switched to cold climate heat pumps, an additional 8 gigawatts of peak electricity will be needed on the grid in 2045.”—Seattle Times editorial board

As the editorial board points out, demand for electricity in the Northwest is rising. But what it gets wrong is why; converting buildings from natural gas to electricity is not it. Less than 10 percent of the Northwest’s growth in electricity demand between 2025 and 2050 will come from converting residential buildings from burning fossil fuels such as gas to using electricity. Far more of the rising power demand over the next 25 years (more than half) will come from electrifying transportation. Plus, as the editorial board notes, energy-hungry data centers are behind much of the uptick in power demand in the region.

Make no mistake, grid upgrades are necessary for meeting Washington’s climate goals, as Sightline has studied extensively. But the editorial board’s evocation of the overloaded grid in the context of HB 1589 and Initiative 2066 is a red herring. Planning for residential electrification will not break the grid.

In fact, HB 1589 improves grid planning. If PSE proposes a project to electrify part of its gas service territory (something, to be clear, the law does not require), it must proactively coordinate with the relevant local electric utility to preserve system reliability and ensure sufficient grid capacity. Initiative 2066 would repeal this grid-planning provision.

More broadly, HB 1589 requires PSE to propose a workable plan for meeting the state’s climate goals, rather than winging it. The law asks the utility to map out what it would entail in practice to follow the recommendations in study after study (including Washington’s own 2021 state energy strategy), which show that electrification is the cheapest and most efficient way to meet state goals to curb emissions from buildings.

The editorial board also fails to mention that electrifying buildings reduces the state’s demand for energy, compared to keeping them hooked up to gas. That’s again because of heat pumps’ superior efficiency ratings relative to their gas counterparts. Residential and commercial buildings in the Northwest will use 30 percent more energy in 2050 if they keep burning gas than if they electrify.

The editorial board also misleads readers into thinking that HB 1589 jeopardizes the region’s greenhouse gas targets. But since it passed the Clean Energy Transformation Act in 2019, Washington has required all utilities, including PSE, to achieve 100 percent clean electricity standards by 2050. Nothing in HB 1589 changes that requirement.

“[Gas] pipeline infrastructure could also be converted to carry another cleaner fuel like hydrogen.” —Seattle Times editorial board

Natural gas utilities are touting green hydrogen as core to their decarbonization strategies, and the Seattle Times editorial board seems to have accepted these promises without scrutiny.

Thanks to Stephen Antupit for supporting a sustainable Cascadia.

To be clear: renewable hydrogen, also known as green hydrogen, does have its place in a climate-friendly future, namely in cleaning up hard-to-decarbonize sectors like steelmaking, long-haul shipping, and aviation. But natural gas utilities are proposing pumping green hydrogen into their gas pipes to heat homes, an idea that is far more expensive, less effective, less efficient, and likely less safe than electrification. (Sightline has studied gas utilities’ claims about hydrogen extensively and has published a primer on decarbonizing with hydrogen).

In truth, only small volumes of hydrogen, perhaps up to a ratio of 20 percent green hydrogen to 80 percent natural gas, can safely be injected into existing gas pipelines. But a 20 percent blend of green hydrogen only shaves off around 7 percent of the combustion emissions of a system running on 100 percent natural gas.

What’s more, blending higher ratios of hydrogen into existing natural gas infrastructure to achieve greater emissions reductions could cost billions. Most gas distribution pipelines would need to be replaced or extensively retrofitted to safely accommodate the new fuel, since hydrogen at volumes higher than 20 percent can degrade pipelines. Further, higher ratios of hydrogen are incompatible with existing appliances such as stoves and water heaters, meaning that consumers would need to buy new hydrogen-compatible appliances.

To make matters worse, hydrogen is less efficient than electricity for heating homes. A 2022 study found that “it takes about five times more electricity to heat a home with hydrogen than it takes to heat the same home with an efficient heat pump.” For all its concern about the Northwest’s overextended grid, the editorial board seems to not have done its homework.

“HB 1589 contained a ban on PSE hooking up any new customers to its natural gas system, something 52 Democrats voted for. … Eventually, it slid through on a 27-22 vote in the Senate, but not before removal of the ban on PSE hooking up any new gas customers.” —Seattle Times editorial board

The editorial board contributes to ongoing confusion about whether HB 1589 contains a ban on gas. To be clear, it does not.

The endorsement first mentions how an original draft of HB 1589 included a prohibition on PSE selling gas to new customers. The editorial board fails to mention that the original bill had exceptions for manufacturing facilities, hospitals, military facilities, and residential customers using gas for backup generators in an emergency. (To be clear: no bill draft ever included a ban on gas for current gas customers).

The editorial board also may have been unaware that the prohibition on new PSE gas customers in the original 2024 bill was a technical holdover from a draft bill in 2023. As anyone who was involved in developing the 2024 bill will acknowledge, lawmakers reintroduced the 2023 bill as-is for procedural ease, but they had already committed to dropping that provision before the 2024 legislative session began.

In a later paragraph, the editorial board acknowledges that the bill that became law does not contain any provision banning new PSE gas hookups. But readers skimming the Seattle Times’ endorsement could easily miss this follow-up. When the proponents of Initiative 2066 have branded their effort as “stopping the gas ban,” the editorial board has a duty to its readers to be crystal clear on this point.

“It was only a few years ago ‘natural’ gas was itself hailed as a clean energy solution. Made up of mostly methane, it is now known as more detrimental in the atmosphere but shorter lived than carbon dioxide. The Legislature must acknowledge residents are experiencing a policy whiplash. Lawmakers will need to build trust on this path to decarbonization.” —Seattle Times editorial board

The editorial board correctly points out that some in climate circles once promoted gas as a “bridge fuel” that could help ease the transition from coal to renewables. But those days are long in the past.

Scientists have made it clear that continuing to burn and extract gas—a fossil fuel—is incompatible with global climate goals. More than a decade ago, for example, the Union of Concerned Scientists published an article on the environmental impacts of natural gas. (Sightline refuted the idea of natural gas as a bridge fuel more than five years ago.)

Gas is mostly methane, as the editorial board points out. Methane is the second largest contributor to climate change after carbon dioxide (CO2). It is 80 times more potent in terms of warming the atmosphere than CO2 in the 20 years after it is released. When natural gas is burned, it releases CO2 (and other air pollutants, such as nitrogen dioxide, which is linked to childhood asthma).

Also missing from the editorial board’s discussion of gas: where it comes from. Much of Washington’s gas is fracked in northeast British Columbia and Alberta. Fracking has been linked to human health impacts such as low birth weights; extensive environmental degradation, including water pollution; and abrogation of First Nation treaty rights.

The editorial board suggests that the legislature is acting capriciously when taking up decarbonization of the state’s gas system. The opposite is true. When most Washingtonians think their local governments should do more to address climate change, the legislature would be wise to seize this mandate.

Sightline Online Q&A:Debriefing the WA Legislative SessionWednesday, March 27, 2024at 4pm PT-->Fall Fund Drive

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John Abbotts

Thank you Ms. Moore,I take sole responsibility for what follows, but I was appalled at the [intentional?] ignorance of the Seattle Times on 2066.Thank you for correcting the “newspaper for the Chamber of Commerce and Eastern Washington.”In the voters pamphlet that I just received in the mail supporters promise that 2066 will stop natural gas bans. Your information reinforces rebuttal material from No on 2066 that “State law already guarantees people can have natural gas if they want it.”Similarly, supporters of I-2117, sponsored by the same multimillionaire hedge fund manager as 2066 and two other initiatives, imply that 2117 will reduce gasoline prices. In fact, 2117 will do nothing to lower gasoline prices. In fact, by taking away funds for mass transit and electric vehicles, 2117 seems likely to increase the demand for gasoline, accompanied by an increase in prices at the whim of fossil fuel producers.[Hope this information might be useful, and passes scrutiny of SL Editors.]All stay safe, from all science denial mischief,

Ted Larson Freeman

Thank you for this detailed analysis. One small point–I believe you’ve been misled slightly by the MIT Technology Review article cited above. It would be a violation of the conservation of energy if “heat pumps produce more energy than they use.” Heat pumps don’t produce energy at all, they simply transfer it from one thermal reservoir to another. Wikipedia has a good entry on the Carnot cycle which underlies this technology.

Emily Moore

Thank you for this correction, Ted!

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The Seattle Times editorial board glosses over how Initiative 2066 could affect the Washington energy code. FACT: Initiative 2066 could prevent Washington from encouraging the most energy-efficient heating and cooling systems in new buildings. The Seattle Times editorial board omits Initiative 2066’s possible impact on Seattle’s new clean buildings law. FACT: Initiative 2066 could lead to challenges of one of Seattle’s major climate laws: the Building Emissions Performance Standard. The Seattle Times editorial board incorrectly implies that HB 1589 pushes a haphazard and hasty transition from gas to electrification. FACT: HB 1589 makes utility planning processes more orderly and streamlined and protects ratepayers from rising bill costs. The Seattle Times editorial board mistakenly argues that HB 1589 will stress the region’s electric grid, thereby increasing greenhouse gas emissions. FACT: HB 1589 will not drive electricity demand spikes, and it improves grid planning. Plus, shifting more buildings from gas to electricity will actually reduce Washington’s overall energy demand. The Seattle Times editorial board repeats gas utility falsehoods about pumping hydrogen into gas pipes to address climate change. FACT: Only a small amount of green hydrogen, with minimal environmental benefits, can safely be injected into existing gas pipes. Our work is made possible by the generosity of people like you!Stephen AntupitThe Seattle Times editorial board sows confusion about a nonexistent “gas ban.” FACT: HB 1589 contains no “gas ban,” nor does any other Washington law. The Seattle Times editorial board urges a slower gas transition—one incompatible with climate science. FACT: The climate-warming effects of extracting and burning gas are well-established, and the need to curb fossil fuel use is urgent. See our picks hereYou can power us forward on sustainable solutions. Make a donation to Sightline now.Sightline Newsletters