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City administrator urges caution on immediate Climate Commitment Act steps for natural gas utility
Summary
City Administrator Chris Searcy briefed council on potential cost paths under Washington’s Climate Commitment Act and recommended monitoring market linkage and state reporting before pursuing aggressive local measures; he outlined several cost scenarios and said staff is not seeking policy direction yet.
Enumclaw — City Administrator Chris Searcy presented a data-driven briefing on the Climate Commitment Act’s (CCA) possible impacts on the city’s natural gas utility during the May 11 council meeting, urging a cautious, observational approach rather than immediate policy action.
Searcy showed comparative data from California — which began a related program earlier — and explained that California utilities had several years to absorb program changes, producing different price and emissions dynamics than Washington. He said auction settlement prices for allowances are higher in Washington (the most recent around $65 per metric ton) than recent California auctions (under $30), creating uncertainty about short- and mid-term compliance costs.
Using illustrative curves, Searcy projected possible customer-charge impacts expressed per CCF (roughly per therm) and noted that more recently connected accounts face higher CCA surcharges. His charts suggested that in the near-term (2026) the incremental CCA charge for many customers might be modest (on the order of a few tenths of a dollar per CCF), but that the charge could rise substantially under scenarios where allowance prices follow the state’s original inflation-plus-5% escalation path.
Searcy flagged three areas of uncertainty that counsel should watch: whether Washington links to other markets (California/Quebec), the state’s use and depletion of the allowance price containment reserve (which has been drawn down considerably), and multi-year lags in statewide greenhouse-gas reporting that make it difficult to assess sector-specific demand effects. He concluded that staff is not requesting policy direction now but offered that possible future measures could include customer incentives for reduced gas use (for example, heat-pump incentives) if council later chooses to pursue them.
Council response: Searcy said the city will hold an executive session to discuss auction-bid strategy under the CCA; no formal policy was adopted at this meeting.
Key quote: "There's nothing that we see is real scary that would suggest any action that we need to do now ... we just need to kinda sit back and and observe and see how these things play out." — City Administrator Chris Searcy
Provenance: Presentation and Q&A on CCA compliance and projected customer charge scenarios (SEG 863–1160).
