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City hears Climate Commitment Act briefing as municipal gas utility faces rising costs
Summary
City Administrator Chris Searcy briefed the Uniontown City Council on Washington's Climate Commitment Act (CCA), explaining the cap-and-invest framework, that the city's gas utility is marginally over the 25,000 metric-ton threshold and that compliance costs could rise into the mid- to high six figures without new policy or grant support.
City Administrator Chris Searcy told the Uniontown City Council on March 9 that the state's Climate Commitment Act is law and that the city's municipal gas utility has been pulled into the program because its average greenhouse-gas emissions for 2023'025 were "a little over 25,000 metric tons." He said the program requires covered entities to obtain annual carbon allowances and that the city is currently purchasing allowances and using auction proceeds to offset customer impacts.
Searcy framed the CCA as a cap-and-invest program patterned after California's system and emphasized the uncertainty in projecting future costs. "We are just marginally over the threshold of being pulled into the program," Searcy said, noting that Ecology establishes no-cost allowances that decline each year and that the city's share of auction proceeds available to offset customer bills will shrink over time.
Why it matters: being a covered entity means ongoing compliance costs and administrative work. Searcy said the city's first-year net cost in 2023 was about $250,000 and that later years had increased into the mid-hundreds of thousands; he warned that, depending on carbon prices and whether Washington links with California, annual compliance costs could rise substantially in coming years.
Searcy described program mechanics and equity protections: low-income customers are carved out from CCA charges, and customers who connected to the system after July 25, 2021 ("non-legacy customers") do not benefit from auction-proceeds offsets and therefore face larger per-customer charges. He said the city's baseline emissions were calculated from 2015'019 data and that subsequent growth pushed the average above the 25,000-ton threshold.
Council questions focused on projections and policy options. Council members asked for clearer multi-year estimates and whether the city could pursue full cost recovery from new development or collaborate with other municipal utilities. Searcy said Ellensburg and Enumclaw are the remaining municipal gas utilities in Washington and described discussion about an "alternative compliance" approach being pursued through legislative channels and by municipal coalitions.
Next steps: staff will provide more detailed cost projections and return to council in May for further policy direction, including whether to pursue legislative relief, seek grant funds for decarbonization planning or develop local programs to reduce system load.
"We will have to think about policy guidance down the road," Searcy said, adding that operational and staffing needs would grow if the city chooses to run customer decarbonization programs.
