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City administrator urges council to monitor carbon-market linkage before acting on natural-gas Climate Commitment Act compliance
Summary
City Administrator Chris Searcy presented data on the Climate Commitment Act’s potential costs to the city’s natural-gas utility, citing recent Washington auction prices near $65/metric ton and staff scenarios that could raise the CCA surcharge on customers; staff recommended pausing aggressive local policy changes and watching state linkage and rulemaking.
City Administrator Chris Searcy told the Uniontown City Council that staff are not recommending immediate, aggressive local measures to force natural-gas decarbonization under the Climate Commitment Act (CCA) and instead urged the council to monitor state auctions, program linkage and Ecology rulemaking before taking further action.
Searcy walked the council through comparative data from California and Washington. He said Washington’s most recent auction cleared at roughly $65 per metric ton compared with California levels that have been under $30. Using those market assumptions, staff modeled customer-level impacts and showed the CCA-related charge could be modest now (examples given: roughly 6–7¢ for older connections and ~33¢ for newer connections), but under some projected paths that charge could rise and become a more significant portion of a customer’s bill over the coming years. Searcy told the council the charts suggest costs rise exponentially in some scenarios and that the timing and magnitude of impacts depend heavily on whether Washington links to other markets and on rulemaking decisions.
Searcy told the council he examined California utilities’ reported emissions across a roughly 10-year span and found no clear, sustained decarbonization trend among gas utilities after an initial period; based on that, he said the city lacks evidence of rapid customer-side emissions reductions from CCA implementation and recommended a measured approach. He also described the state’s allowance-reserve mechanics, noting the initial reserve used in early auctions was drawn down (staff reported roughly 18.6 million allowances were allocated to early compliance and that about 600,000 remained at the time of the presentation).
Searcy said staff will continue gathering data and modeling, that Ecology’s decisions later in the calendar year may materially change allowance supply assumptions, and that the city’s executive team needs to refine bid/auction strategy. The council recessed for an executive session to discuss bidding strategy under the statutory executive-session authority cited in the meeting.
What this means: No ordinance, rate change or formal policy was adopted at this meeting. City staff recommended monitoring linkage, auction prices and state rulemaking before proposing local compliance or customer-assistance programs.
Attribution: City Administrator Chris Searcy presented the analysis and explicitly asked the council for no immediate policy direction at this time.
