Fracking now banned in Washington; Jay Inslee drops support for dirty gas projects

Wash­ing­ton State has said no to the envi­ron­men­tal­ly destruc­tive prac­tice of hydraulic frac­tur­ing, or frack­ing, as it has become more pop­u­lar­ly known.

Leg­is­la­tion signed yes­ter­day by Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee pro­hibits frack­ing in Wash­ing­ton State indef­i­nite­ly. Although the harm­ful tech­nique has not yet been used for gas explo­ration and extrac­tion in Wash­ing­ton, it has else­where — as doc­u­ment­ed by Josh Fox in his Gasland doc­u­men­taries. Thanks to Sen­ate Bill 5145, fos­sil fuel com­pa­nies won’t be able to do any frack­ing here.

“We are charged with pre­serv­ing our envi­ron­ment for future gen­er­a­tions; it is a cor­ner­stone of our state’s iden­ti­ty,” said prime spon­sor Jesse Salomon (D‑32nd Dis­trict: Shore­line, Edmonds, Lyn­nwood, Mount­lake Terrace).

“While frack­ing is not cur­rent­ly done in Wash­ing­ton, it is impor­tant that we act­ed pre­ven­ta­tive­ly here,” Salomon explained. “If the use of frack­ing were to be estab­lished, oil com­pa­nies and lob­by­ists would make it very hard to curtail.”

In addi­tion to sign­ing Sen­ate Bill 5145, Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee announced that he is with­draw­ing his sup­port for two nat­ur­al gas projects. The first is a pro­posed methanol plant in Kala­ma and the sec­ond is an LNG plant in Tacoma.

NPI oppos­es both projects and is pleased that Gov­er­nor Inslee has rec­og­nized that build­ing more fos­sil fuel infra­struc­ture is the wrong choice for Washington.

The gov­er­nor issued a lengthy state­ment explain­ing his change of heart.

We’ve always leaned on sci­ence to guide our efforts on cli­mate change and the sci­ence is increas­ing­ly clear.

The accel­er­at­ing threat of cli­mate change and the emerg­ing sci­ence on the dam­ag­ing impacts of nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion mean we must focus our full efforts on devel­op­ing clean, renew­able and fos­sil-fuel free ener­gy sources.

Being com­mit­ted now to one hun­dred per­cent clean elec­tric­i­ty and sign­ing a bill pro­hibit­ing frack­ing in Wash­ing­ton state, we want to be con­sis­tent to that spir­it of progress.

I can­not in good con­science sup­port con­tin­ued con­struc­tion of a liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas plant in Taco­ma or a methanol pro­duc­tion facil­i­ty in Kalama. 

In the ear­ly days of both projects, I said they could help reduce emis­sions as we tran­si­tion to clean­er ener­gy sources, but I am no longer con­vinced that lock­ing in these mul­ti­decadal infra­struc­ture projects are suf­fi­cient to accom­plish­ing what’s nec­es­sary. Sci­ence is con­tin­u­ing to emerge regard­ing the dwin­dling win­dow for action and the sig­nif­i­cant methane leak­age asso­ci­at­ed with gas pro­duc­tion, and we don’t have the lux­u­ry of a fifty-year tran­si­tion phase.

The impacts of cli­mate change are already com­ing to bear and sci­en­tists are say­ing that unless we reduce emis­sions by half over the next decade, we will reach an irre­versible tip­ping point. There are emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies that could make renew­able gas a viable source of energy.

I want to be clear that my stance on these projects does not change our state’s reg­u­la­to­ry process. As is the case with any project, our state agen­cies will com­ply with state and fed­er­al laws to ensure a rig­or­ous and objec­tive review of projects.

Deci­sions on per­mit appli­ca­tions must also be made in accor­dance with state and fed­er­al law. But it’s time for us to mod­ern­ize and update the ways we weigh the costs and ben­e­fits of all fos­sil fuels, includ­ing nat­ur­al gas. I’ll be work­ing with agency direc­tors in the com­ing weeks to dis­cuss the way forward.

The age of con­se­quences is upon us. We have to act based on clear sci­ence. Wash­ing­ton is embrac­ing a clean ener­gy future and the clean, healthy, sus­tain­able jobs and ben­e­fits that come with it. We should be con­fi­dent in our abil­i­ty to build our clean ener­gy econ­o­my while sus­tain­ing record eco­nom­ic growth and record num­bers of good-pay­ing con­struc­tion and build­ing jobs.

Kudos to Gov­er­nor Inslee for rethink­ing his posi­tion on these projects. A true cli­mate leader needs to walk their talk. Inslee’s back­ing of these projects has long  puz­zled us and caused oth­ers to ques­tion his abil­i­ty to lead on fight­ing pollution.

Inslee’s crit­ics will no doubt say that he changed his posi­tion because he is seek­ing the Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion as a can­di­date zeal­ous­ly focused on fight­ing pol­lu­tion. And that prob­a­bly fac­tored into his thinking.

But, as his state­ment says, the lat­est sci­ence tells us that we do not have the lux­u­ry of a long, drawn out incre­men­tal tran­si­tion away from fos­sil fuels any­more. That oppor­tu­ni­ty has already been squan­dered. To pro­tect the Earth, our com­mon home, we need a bold­er and more imag­i­na­tive ener­gy strategy.

All con­ti­nents, all oceans, and all nations are affect­ed by cli­mate dam­age. Export­ing fos­sil fuels to be burned else­where does­n’t make pol­lu­tion some­body else’s prob­lem, because we all share the same plan­et. It’s a huge mis­take for us to be build­ing more fos­sil fuel infra­struc­ture when we know that our whole world needs clean ener­gy. That’s why these projects should be canceled.