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City staff warns municipal gas utility faces rising Climate Commitment Act costs, asks council for policy guidance
Summary
City Administrator Chris Searcy told the council the Climate Commitment Act (CCA) already pulls the municipal gas utility into regulated compliance and that annual allowance costs could rise into six figures; staff asked council to consider policy positions, program staffing and potential legislative alternatives.
City Administrator Chris Searcy told the Uniontown City Council on March 9 that the state's Climate Commitment Act (CCA) already applies to the city's municipal natural gas utility and that the program's costs and market uncertainty are likely to grow.
Searcy said the CCA requires covered entities to obtain annual carbon allowances equal to their greenhouse-gas emissions and that the city's average emissions for 2023 —125 slightly exceeded the 25,000-metric-ton threshold that pulled the utility into the program. "We are just marginally over the threshold of being pulled into the program," he said, adding the city could only reliably exit by staying below 25,000 metric tons for every year of a four-year compliance period.
The city receives some no-cost allowances from the Department of Ecology, Searcy said, but the share of free allowances declines each year while the…
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