Todd Myers: Spokane’s new climate plan fails seriousness test

Spokane City Council members adopted a plan to reduce the city’s CO2 emissions, but they have left many important questions unanswered. How much will it cost? What policies will they impose? How will they measure the benefits, if any?

We do know one thing: The city’s plan will add nothing to Washington’s CO2 reduction. That basic truth is the best indication that the city’s climate strategy is about political image, not helping the environment.

From the beginning, the sustainability plan was developed on unsubstantiated claims.

For example, the draft plan released earlier this year ranked potential strategies on a scale of 1 to 3 in greenhouse gas impact, social benefit, investment cost and economic benefit. Under the “Buildings and Energy” strategy, it claimed that partnering with climate activist organizations “for public education and outreach” would score 2 of 3 points on the “social benefit” scale, 1 of 3 in “investment cost,” and 2 of 3 in “economic benefit.”

How were these scores determined? Answer: They were entirely invented.

In March, I asked Spokane’s Sustainability Manager how those scores were determined. How does one even calculate “social benefit”? She responded that, “There are no formulas underlying the representations,” adding, “the symbols in the plan are simply a visual representation of a purely qualitative assessment to-date.”

Despite the claim that they were “purely qualitative,” the plan gave each strategy a numerical score – the very definition of quantitative.

Those baseless assessments were eventually dropped in the final draft. That mentality, however, still permeates the strategy. City staffers are now developing the plan to “prioritize investments and actions based off of a number of criteria, including costs and benefits (social, economic and environmental),” without explaining how social benefits are quantified and how they will be balanced with other costs.

No matter what that analysis shows, the city’s plan will add nothing to total CO2 emissions reduction. How can this be?

Earlier this year, the Legislature imposed a cap on the state’s CO2 emissions, adding a tax on those emissions. As the cap gets tighter, prices go up, and people look for CO2-free alternatives. The system has problems, but it eliminates the need for an ad hoc patchwork of local regulations by creating one consistent system.

What would happen to statewide CO2 emissions if the city didn’t adopt the sustainability plan? Nothing. Total CO2 emissions would be reduced elsewhere to meet state targets. Spokane’s plan simply micromanages how emissions are reduced, and the record of politicians in this area is awful.

In Spokane, Seattle, Olympia and elsewhere, elected officials routinely support policies that waste 95% of climate funding. For example, Washington subsidizes the purchase of electric vehicles which are overwhelmingly owned by the wealthy who would have purchased them anyway. Paying rich people to buy EVs does nearly nothing to cut emissions.

If council members are serious about reducing emissions, they can do two things.

First, as the state’s aggressive CO2 strategy is implemented, it increases the cost of CO2-intensive energy to account for climate impact. If an energy strategy is justified, it will pencil out economically without having to add phony claims about “social benefit.”

Second, use the state’s carbon tax to judge the effectiveness of climate policies. California has already adopted the system Washington will use beginning in 2023. It costs about $20 to reduce each metric ton of CO2. Strategies that spend more than that are wasting money that could be used to cut emissions. Many of the city’s strategies are likely to cost about $100 to reduce one metric ton of CO2. That is environmentally irresponsible.

If climate change is a crisis, council members should demand the maximum amount of CO2 reduction per dollar.

The coming months will tell us whether councilmembers are serious about climate change or playing politics. But the current trend isn’t promising.

Todd Myers is the director of the Center for the Environment at Washington Policy Center. WPC is an independent research organization with offices in Spokane, Tri-Cities, Seattle and Olympia. Online at washingtonpolicy.org