2025 legislative review
Rep. Liz Berry, D-Seattle, chairs the House Labor & Workplace Standards Committee.
sponsor: Sen. Sharon Shewmake, D-Bellington
This bill had a number of elements, one of which created a transmission development authority within the Department of Commerce to site and permit transmission corridors in the state. Developers and utilities would then take over the capital cost of construction. One element of the bill which AWB members were concerned about was that if there were no operator found, the state would then own and operate these transmission lines and sell them to utilities at the soonest possible convenience. This raised some concerns that the state would be a competitor in the energy transmission space. Ultimately, AWB did support this bill because it also included another categorical exemption from SEPA for transmission improvements, which, again, like the previous bill, helps address some of those bottlenecks. Ultimately, this bill passed the Senate and advanced through the House, but got tied up in some concerns about tribal consultation within the SEPA process and did not move further.
HB 1975 amending the climate commitment act
Passed / AWB Supported sponsor: Rep. Joe Fitzgibbon, D-West Seattle
One bill AWB has been long advocating for did move forward and pass in law. HB 1975 was a bipartisan bill to make a number of specific changes to the Climate
Commitment Act to improve market price stability for the credit market, while waiting for linkage with California. The bill takes some modest steps to introduce some changes to help stabilize markets and lower the upper pressure on credit prices. While the bill stopped short of steps AWB believes are necessary, the changes it makes are solid improvements. Reporting deadlines were shifted back to increase compliance windows and allow for additional auctions which increases the number of credits per compliance period. There’ s also a requirement for additional economic modeling of the program and that they must also pull forward some future ACPR credits to the current period. AWB supported the bill.
22 association of washington business