Zero carbon in 30 years: Inslee sets more aggressive goal for state

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee is proposing to make the state carbon-neutral in 30 years, a much more aggressive pace of pollution reduction than his administration has pursued before.

His proposals include requiring one out of four vehicles sold in the state to be fully electric within the next five years, a requirement for rideshare companies to reduce their fleets’ climate-harming pollution, and a mandate for cleaner fuels for non-electric vehicles.

Washington state has long aimed to reduce its carbon emissions, though at a slower pace than Inslee is now calling for.

Gov. Chris Gregoire issued an executive order in 2007 requiring Washington’s emissions be cut to 1990 levels by 2020, 25 percent below 1990 levels by 2035 and halved by 2050.

The state has been unable to meet even that gradual decarbonization pace and is expected to miss its first reduction mandate next year by “a few percent,” according to a Washington Department of Ecology spokesperson.

Since Inslee became governor seven years ago, the state’s emissions have gone up, not down, by 6 percent.

“Despite our significant efforts, we are well, well short [of doing] what is necessary to protect Washingtonians from the scourge of climate change,” Inslee said Thursday.

Now, Inslee is proposing a much steeper pace of change:

• 45 percent below 1990 levels by 2030

• 70 percent below 1990 levels by 2040

• 95 percent below 1990 levels by 2050, achieving "net zero" emissions with carbon-sequestration efforts sucking up the remaining 5 percent.

The proposed goals are closer to the pace climate scientists say the world as a whole must achieve to have a chance of avoiding dangerous amounts of global warming.

Inslee said the more aggressive targets would “ensure Washington state does its part to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.”

It is the second time Inslee has proposed a “clean fuel standard,” similar to systems in place in California, Oregon and British Columbia, to make transportation fuels less climate-damaging.

The Western States Petroleum Association, which represents Washington’s big oil refineries, opposed a similar measure proposed by Inslee a year ago as too costly.

The clean fuel standard passed the state House earlier this year but died in the Senate.

The Puget Sound Clean Air Agency is proposing a similar standard for King, Kitsap, Pierce and Snohomish counties. The regional agency held a public meeting on its proposal in Seattle on Thursday.

While electric vehicles have been available for years, they have gained little market share.

The 35,500 electric vehicles and 16,600 plug-in hybrid vehicles on the road in Washington currently make up less than 1 percent of the 8 million motor vehicles registered in the state, according to the Electric Power Research Institute and the Washington Department of Licensing.

“This is a very achievable goal,” Inslee said of his proposed electric-vehicle mandate of 25 percent of new car sales in just five years. “Today, there are dozens of models available, and they’re coming on like gangbusters.”

For most of 2019, electric vehicles hovered at about 4 percent of new-vehicle registrations in the state, according to the Electric Power Research Institute, with the upscale Tesla 3 making up most of the electric-car sales.

As a presidential candidate this year, Inslee called for a more aggressive emissions target: eliminating carbon emissions in the next 25 years.

The Green New Deal passed by the city of Seattle this year is even more ambitious. It aims to fully decarbonize the Seattle economy in just a decade.

A loud delivery truck briefly interrupted Inslee’s outdoor press conference overlooking Capitol Lake in Olympia.

“I used to drive one of those,” Inslee said while waiting for the noisy diesel engine to fade away. “They’ll be electric soon.”