Seattle/King County Climate News
Robin Briggs
Seattle
City Council is holding a meeting for public comment on the interim Comprehensive Plan legislation to come into compliance with the State's Middle Housing rules. The hearing on Monday, May 19 will be in two parts: remote comments at 9:30 am (Register here starting at 8:30am), in person comments start at 4pm at City Hall. Info here from the Connected Communities Coalition. They are recommending coming as early as you can and planning on a one minute comment. Click the link above for more info, but in short they are urging these points:
Seattle’s Housing Crisis Demands Bold Action
Pass the Interim Ordinance Without Delay
Finish the Job: Adopt the Full One Seattle Plan Before Summer Recess
Tree Action Seattle is saying: "We need developers to build up, not out, and leave space for trees."
Seattle Neighborhood Greenways is holding a free volunteer organizing symposium on Saturday May 17, 10am-1pm at Seattle Central College. It is "a half-day gathering designed to build skills, share knowledge, and spark collective action to make Seattle’s streets safer and more welcoming for everyone." Register here.
Seattle ranked as ninth worst city in the US for short term particle pollution by the American Lung Association, and approximately 10% of our population has asthma. Short term particle pollution is caused mostly by wildfires and transportation.
State
Washington and Oregon trail nearly all other states in adding new sources of renewable energy. In fact, Washington is 50th out of all 50 states. The culprit, according to ProPublica and Oregon Public Radio, is the Bonneville Power Administration, which owns most of the long-distance transmission lines that could take power from the sunny and windy east side to the more populated west side. "No major grid operator [in the country] is as stingy as Bonneville in its approach to financing new transmission lines and substations needed to grow the power supply." Oregon and Washington both proposed creating state-owned bonding authorities that can upgrade the grid, but neither bill passed this year.
Elsewhere
At an energy conference in Texas, the CEO of NextEra predicted a 55% increase in demand for electricity, and said that "costs for gas-fired power generation have more than tripled as demand has surged, making renewable energy cheaper and more available at the moment. The cost of building a gas-fired power facility has jumped from just $785 per kilowatt for some facilities in 2022 to up to $2,400 per kilowatt currently, he said." NextEra has the largest fleet of natural gas generators in the country, so if they are calling for more renewables, that is significant. Not noted here, but from what I have heard, it now takes significantly longer to get a gas turbine than to put in an equivalent amount of solar energy, which can be a critical factor as well as price.
The Domino Effect: States Prioritize Affordable Transportation Choices over Traffic (Rocky Mountain Institute). This article describes how some states (Colorado, Minnesota, California) are reducing or keeping steady emission levels from transportation compared to pre-pandemic levels, even as populations have increased. Washington, however, is seeing increasing levels of GHG from transportation. The article doesn't say it, but our policy seems a little confused. On the one hand, we have the Climate Commitment Act which means more investment in alternatives to automobiles, but on the other hand the state transportation budget is heavily slanted to highway expansion.