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City administrator briefs council on Climate Commitment Act, flags rising compliance costs for municipal gas utility
Summary
City Administrator Chris Searcy presented a workshop on Washington’s Climate Commitment Act, telling council the municipal gas utility is marginally above the 25,000 metric-ton threshold that triggers program obligations and describing how allowance reductions and auction mechanics could increase city compliance costs from about $250,000 in 2023 toward potentially seven-figure levels in future years.
City Administrator Chris Searcy briefed the council on March 9 about Washington’s Climate Commitment Act (CCA), explaining how the cap‑and‑invest program works, how the city’s municipal natural-gas utility is treated as a covered entity, and what policy choices the council might consider going forward.
Searcy said the CCA, enacted by the Legislature in 2021, functions as a cap-and-invest program that requires covered entities to obtain annual carbon allowances equal to their greenhouse-gas emissions; the Department of Ecology runs quarterly auctions and also provides no-cost allowances to certain covered entities. “We are just marginally over the…
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