Bill requiring a clean electric grid clears Washington State House, returns to Senate

Land­mark leg­is­la­tion that would com­mit Wash­ing­ton State to a renew­able ener­gy future is one step clos­er to reach­ing Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee’s desk.

The Wash­ing­ton State House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives vot­ed most­ly along par­ty lines today to advance E2SSB 5116, prime spon­sored by Sen­a­tor Reuven Car­lyle and request­ed by Inslee. E2SSB 5116 pre­vi­ous­ly passed the Sen­ate on March 1st, but it now heads back there because it was changed by the House.

This ground­break­ing leg­is­la­tion, cham­pi­oned by NPI’s Gael Tar­leton, requires util­i­ties to obtain one hun­dred per­cent of their elec­tric­i­ty from non-pol­lut­ing ener­gy sources by 2045 and phase out the use of coal from the elec­tric grid by 2025. Util­i­ties would also need to eighty per­cent pol­lu­tion-free by 2030.

The roll call was as follows:

Roll Call
SB 5116
Clean energy
Final Pas­sage as Amend­ed by the House
4/11/2019

Yeas: 56; Nays: 42

Vot­ing Yea: Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Apple­ton, Bergquist, Callan, Chap­man, Cody, Davis, Doglio, Dolan, Enten­man, Fey, Fitzgib­bon, Frame, Good­man, Gregerson, Hansen, Hud­gins, Jink­ins, Kil­duff, Kir­by, Klo­ba, Leav­itt, Lekanoff, Lovick, Macri, Mead, Mor­gan, Mor­ris, Orms­by, Ortiz-Self, Orwall, Paul, Pel­lic­ciot­ti, Peter­son, Pet­ti­grew, Pol­let, Ramos, Reeves, Ric­cel­li, Robin­son, Ryu, San­tos, Sells, Senn, Shew­make, Slat­ter, Springer, Stan­ford, Stonier, Sul­li­van, Tar­leton, Thai, Tharinger, Valdez, Walen, Wylie, Chopp

Vot­ing Nay: Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Barkis, Blake, Boehnke, Caldier, Cham­bers, Chan­dler, Cor­ry, DeBolt, Dent, Dufault, Dye, Eslick, Gildon, Goehn­er, Gra­ham, Grif­fey, Har­ris, Hoff, Irwin, Jenkin, Klip­pert, Kraft, Kretz, MacEwen, May­cum­ber, McCaslin, Mos­bruck­er, Orcutt, Rude, Schmick, Shea, Smith, Steele, Stokes­bary, Suther­land, Van Wer­ven, Vick, Volz, Walsh, Wilcox, Ybar­ra, Young

Demo­c­ra­t­ic Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Bri­an Blake vot­ed with all forty-one Repub­li­cans to oppose the bill, break­ing with his fel­low fifty-six Democrats.

“It’s time to move past the era of car­bon into the next gen­er­a­tion with mod­ern, twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry ener­gy sys­tems using inte­grat­ed wind, hydro and solar pow­er,” said Car­lyle, Chair of the Sen­ate Envi­ron­ment, Ener­gy & Tech­nol­o­gy Com­mit­tee. “At a time when the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment has func­tion­al­ly implod­ed on address­ing cli­mate change, the states are now tak­ing the lead and mov­ing forward.”

“Mov­ing away from fos­sil fuels has to start some­where, so why not here?” asked NPI’s Gael Tar­leton, Chair of the House Finance Com­mit­tee. “Wash­ing­ton has the courage to build a twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry econ­o­my beyond coal, beyond fos­sil fuels, to main­tain and build a qual­i­ty of life for gen­er­a­tions to come. Thank you to Sen­a­tor Car­lyle and my col­leagues for hav­ing the courage to make this choice.”

“Wash­ing­ton’s future will be a lot brighter with the pas­sage of the one hun­dred per­cent clean elec­tric­i­ty bill,” said Bruce Speight of Envi­ron­ment Wash­ing­ton. “Every day, we see more evi­dence that a soci­ety pow­ered by renew­able ener­gy is with­in our reach. The pas­sage of this bill puts us one step clos­er to that real­i­ty while mak­ing the Ever­green State a clean­er and health­i­er place to live.”

“Unlike the Sen­ate ver­sion, the House requires util­i­ties to tran­si­tion to one hun­dred per­cent clean elec­tric­i­ty rather than just set­ting a goal,” Speight not­ed. “We are also grate­ful it removes an exemp­tion for a fos­sil nat­ur­al gas plant in Clark County.”

NPI con­grat­u­lates our found­ing board­mem­ber Gael Tar­leton, Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Joe Fitzgib­bon, and House Democ­rats on today’s pas­sage of E2SSB 5116. It’s delight­ful to see a good bill like this get stronger as it moves through the leg­isla­tive process instead of weak­er. This is tru­ly a bill that rec­og­nizes that we do not inher­it the Earth from our ances­tors, but rather bor­row it from our children.

We can’t con­tin­ue to ignore cli­mate sci­ence and allow our air and water to become more pol­lut­ed. We’ve got to act to safe­guard our future. Every­one ben­e­fits from clean ener­gy… every­one. We’ll con­tin­ue to sup­port E2SSB 5116 as it returns to the Sen­ate on the final stage of its jour­ney to Gov­er­nor Inslee’s desk.