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City administrator urges council to monitor Climate Commitment Act linkage and allowances before policy action
Summary
City Administrator Chris Searcy briefed council on uncertainty in CCA auction dynamics and recommended the city wait to see whether Washington links with California/Quebec markets before pursuing local policy changes or customer incentives for gas reduction.
City Administrator Chris Searcy told the Uniontown City Council on May 11 that uncertainty around market linkage and allowance supply in Washington’s Climate Commitment Act counsels caution before adopting local policy or rate changes for the city’s natural‑gas utility.
Searcy reviewed comparative data from California and Washington and warned that Washington auction prices have been much higher so far: "The last one was about $65 a metric ton," he said, compared with California's recent auctions, which he described as under $30 a metric ton. He said California’s program had a decade longer to phase in changes and that Washington’s higher allowance prices and uncertain linkage mean the city should "sit back and watch" before proposing new policy actions.
Searcy walked council through projected customer‑level impacts. He noted that current gas service rates are about $1.30 per therm (per CCF in his slides) and that the CCA surcharge cited in his materials is roughly $0.33 per CCF for newer connections and about $0.06–$0.07 per CCF for older connections; he said that under some price trajectories the per‑customer charge could rise significantly over several years. Searcy also described the state’s allowance price containment reserve and recent Ecology rulemaking affecting how allowances are allocated into compliance periods.
His recommendation to council was procedural rather than prescriptive: monitor state auction outcomes, Ecology rule changes and potential market linkage to better understand where allowance demand and prices will go, and prepare options for customer incentives (e.g., heat‑pump incentives) but not to pursue aggressive local mandates until uncertainty is reduced. Searcy said the city has no current plan to push customers off gas immediately but will explore voluntary incentive options.
Council recessed to an executive session to discuss bid/auction strategy under RCW 42.30.11(1)(q) and returned briefly before adjourning for the night.
The city administrator's full slide deck and the council packet provide the underlying charts and numerical scenarios referenced in the presentation.
