Committee hears HB 2330 to prioritize campus district-energy funding and HB 2338 to scale community weatherization

The committee opened public hearings on two bills.

HB 2330 would establish a Campus Energy Upgrades Committee within Commerce to review, score and prioritize state campus district-energy decarbonization projects and deliver a preliminary framework to the governor and legislature by Dec. 30. Don Eichner (committee staff) said the committee would include appointed voting and non-voting members, could weight and adopt additional scoring criteria, and would be asked to analyze barriers to energy-as-a-service contracts. Eichner estimated Commerce operating costs to administer the committee would be several hundred thousand dollars in the current biennium.

Representative Rommel, the prime sponsor, described HB 2330 as a prioritization and predictability tool modeled on existing college capital processes and emphasized that the bill is not a funding authorization but a mechanism to create an ordered funding list and encourage public-private partnership solutions.

Witnesses including Chris Mueller (Washington State University) and Kevin Chang (University of Washington) testified in favor of HB 2330, urging the Legislature to provide predictable pathways for campus decarbonization and noting large conversion and deferred-maintenance price tags at public universities. Chris Mueller told the committee the Pullman conversion cost is "about 1,500,000,000" and said WSU would likely request state funding rather than passing costs to tuition. Contractors and unions (represented by Bonnie Frey Hemphill of UMC) supported the bill's intent while urging attention to financing tools to avoid pitting campuses against each other for small slices of capital.

HB 2338 would allow Commerce's Low Income Weatherization Program to support community-scaled projects that include multiple dwelling units in the same neighborhood, permit partial weatherization under specified conditions and require Commerce to prioritize low-income households when awarding funds. Don Eichner described fiscal estimates for administrative staffing in the bill's fiscal note.

Supporters including Washington State Community Action Partnership (Linda Garcia, Jeff DeLuca) and Spark Northwest (John Tsang) said community-scale weatherization would improve health, safety and energy affordability for seniors, families and low-income households, enable economies of scale and make projects more feasible in rural or remote communities.

Both hearings closed without recorded votes; sponsors and staff said they would work with stakeholders on implementation details and fiscal notes.