City administrators brief council on Climate Commitment Act obligations for municipal gas utility

City Administrator Chris Searcy told the Enumclaw City Council on March 9 that the city’s municipal natural‑gas utility has been drawn into Washington’s Climate Commitment Act (CCA) compliance because the utility’s average emissions for 2023–25 were “a little over 25,000 metric tons,” placing it just above the program threshold.

Searcy, who led an informational workshop, said the CCA is a state cap‑and‑invest program that requires covered entities to hold allowances equal to their greenhouse‑gas emissions and that Ecology stages auctions and issues a shrinking allocation of no‑cost allowances over time. “We are just marginally over the threshold of being pulled into the program,” Searcy said, and he advised the council that the city’s practical goal would be to get below a 10 percent buffer under the threshold — roughly 22,500 metric tons — to…