Seattle/King County Climate News
Robin Briggs
Seattle
The Council will be hearing public comment on the Comprehensive Plan on Monday, June 23. There will be two sessions, one at 9:30am for remote comments (signup here starting at 8:30am), one at 3pm for in-person comments (sign up at City Hall starting at 2pm). At the last of these general meetings, the Council was hearing comments just on the interim legislation for middle housing. At this hearing, the entire Plan is the subject. This may be the last big public meeting before the Council votes on it, which could be in August or early Sept. Here's some more info from the Complete Communities Coalition, including talking points to consider. They expect comments will be limited to 1 minute each.
King County
The Executive sent a draft Strategic Climate Action Plan (SCAP) to the Council for approval. The new plan is an update on the 2020 plan and includes nine new "flagship outcomes". The Council's Committee of Transportation, Economy, and Environment heard an initial briefing on it on June 17 (video here, see link to agenda item 8). They will do a series of briefings to cover the whole plan over the next few months, similar to the process they went through in 2020 for the previous SCAP. The Committee expects to vote on it in September, in time for the full Council to vote on it before taking up the budget in the fall.
State
The State will release a draft version of the Comprehensive Climate Action Plan (CCAP) and will hold a public comment period for it. There will be a webinar on June 30 to give an overview of the draft CCAP and explain the options for providing feedback (register here). The Plan "serves as a roadmap for reducing emissions and building a sustainable future. It evaluates current policies, incorporates community input, and recommends new strategies developed through broad collaboration with tribes, communities, businesses and experts." This will be the first update for CCAP in more than 10 years.
The Dept of Ecology is taking public comment on rulemaking for the Advanced Clean Trucks program. The Advanced Clean Trucks (ACT) rule and the Heavy-Duty Low-NOx Omnibus (HDO) rule were adopted in Washington in 2021 and 2022 to tackle diesel pollution and climate emissions from trucks. These rules require truck and engine manufacturers to sell cleaner trucks. They were strengthened this year by the Legislature, and follow the lead of California. Meanwhile, the Trump Administration is attempting to end the right of California and other states to have stricter standards. Ecology will be holding a public meeting where they will take remote testimony on June 24 at 9am (register here), or June 25 at 5pm (register here). Written comments can be submitted through July 03, 2025 here.
Revenues from the latest auction of carbon allowances under the Climate Commitment Act (CCA) are back up to previous levels, from before I-2117 to reject the CCA was filed. Carbon allowances sold for an average of $51.22 each, and raised over $321 million, which puts the total for this year so far at $550 million. The State can spend the money on projects to reduce emissions and improve resilience and environmental justice. Prices now seem to have stabilized, which should make it a more predictable market going forward; although, if we go through with the merger with the California & Quebec allowance market, that could change things up again.
The Clean Energy Transition Institute and 2050 Institute released a paper on what it will take to decarbonize Washington's buildings: Clean Buildings Transition Framework for Washington.
Elsewhere
A recent study found that the best way to motivate people to take action on climate is to engage them to think about how climate change might affect them and the people they love in the future. Researchers randomly assigned participants to one of 17 different groups, and tried a different intervention in each group at the same time using the same methodology and results against a control group. “We found that guiding people to imagine the future of climate change, especially scenarios that involved oneself and close others, was the most effective way to motivate action.” The study was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Another interesting study examines what happens if you decarbonize buildings a block at a time. Researchers from UC Berkeley got a grant which paid for all the people living on a block in East Oakland to upgrade their buildings to all-electric, including heating, hot water, stoves, and solar panels. The block is mix of single-family homes and small apartment buildings, and the residents were similarly diverse in backgrounds, professions, and incomes. 15 out of 25 property owners signed on, and they estimate that transforming the whole block at once, rather than one property at a time, saved about 10-20% of the total cost. EcoBlock: an Urban Block-Scale Decarbonization Retrofit describes it further in a webinar June 26 at 11am.
KUOW recently ran a week of climate stories, including this one: How Trump's fight with CA over climate policy impacts WA. It goes over issues like California's waiver that allows stricter standards on automobile emissions, which the Federal Government under Trump is trying to abolish.
An evaluation of New York City's congestion pricing is out, and shows that the benefits of congestion pricing spread out well beyond the tolled area in lower Manhattan, and extend to all the adjoining areas. Traffic delays in Manhattan are down by 25%; traffic delays for buses are down by 17% at the Lincoln tunnel and 48% at the Holland tunnel. "In Manhattan, the time lost to traffic jams decreased by 28.4% in 2025, earning 17 minutes back for every hour spent in traffic in 2024." In Manhattan north of the zone, as well as the adjoining areas in New Jersey, Westchester and Long Island "time lost to traffic jams decreased by 11.8%, earning back 7 minutes for every hour spent in traffic in 2024." This is in spite of earlier predictions that adjoining areas would see an increase in traffic.
US spending on climate change is close to $1 trillion, or 3% of our GDP (original article here from Bloomberg but paywalled). Most of this is from increases to home insurance premiums, but Hurricane Helene ($135B) and the LA fires ($65B) were substantial as well. The cost of climate change is clearly not increasing at a linear rate, but something much more than economists expected even just 7 years ago. At this rate, spending money to decarbonize might make sense?
If you made it this far through the newsletter, I salute you! Enjoy the start of summer.
- robin