Spokane officials look for grace from Washington lawmakers on energy-generating trash incinerator

OLYMPIA – Spokane officials traveled to the state Capitol Tuesday in search of grace and to ask lawmakers to allow the city’s Waste-to-Energy Plant to operate without spending millions on carbon credits from a state auction.

Without the move, they said, the cost of energy produced by the facility could increase by as much as 20%.

“We’re asking for time to work on solutions to ensure that our ratepayers are not burdened with increased costs,” state rep. Natasha Hill, D-Spokane, told The Spokesman-Review Tuesday. “At the same time, we want to work with our environmental groups to make more commitments in terms of having a little bit more certainty in terms of where we’re going by 2050.”

The facility is the only of its kind in the state, burning the city’s garbage and using the heat produced to generate enough electricity to power 11,000 homes.

The greenhouse gas cap-and-trade program of the Climate Commitment Act exempts landfills, which produce emissions as waste decomposes, but the Waste-to-Energy facility received no such grace from lawmakers.

After years of failing to get the state to waive major fees from the Climate Commitment Act, the city is now instead trying to buy time. Spokane is asking the state for a multiyear phase-in while the city figures out how to capture the carbon coming off the incinerator’s flue – itself a project that by one projection could cost as much as $210 million.

Hill, who sponsored legislation to create no-cost allowances for the facility, said Tuesday that as the only such facility on the west coast, it “doesn’t fit squarely into anything.”

“And so I think today, even hearing from testifiers, there’s more than one solution. But what I think what everybody knows is that that solution isn’t readily available today, and not tomorrow,” Hill said. “And so that’s why we’re starting with this four-year delay.”

The facility produced more than 234,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents in 2019, though the state would only penalize roughly 100,000 tons of carbon emissions.

If the city has to enter the state’s auction for credits for those 100,000 tons, it could come with a cost of $2.5 million to $8 million each year. Costs vary widely due in part to wide swings in the cost for carbon credits through the state market in a given quarter.

“We don’t know what the price is, so that’s why there’s an element of uncertainty,” Spokane Mayor Lisa Brown told The Spokesman-Review Tuesday.

Those extra costs would have to be borne by ratepayers and the city’s other customers, if it would even still pencil out, Marlene Feist, director of the city’s Public Works division, said in a December interview.

“If it’s too costly to run the facility, at some point, we have to run the numbers,” she said. “It would be difficult to keep operating with the burden of the (Climate Commitment Act) costs.”

Spokane City Councilman Paul Dillon testified Tuesday the legislation is the city’s “top priority.”

“As vice chair of the finance and administration committee here at the city, these costs are real, and this will cost taxpayers up to $8 million beginning in 2027,” Dillon said. “In an affordability crisis, this is a significant burden.”

The city successfully lobbied the Legislature in 2023 to fund an analysis comparing the facility’s emissions to comparable landfills, which showed burning the garbage releases more carbon dioxide than burying it – but not when factoring in the electricity generated, recyclable metals pulled from the ash and other factors.

In the past two legislative sessions, Spokane’s lawmakers attempted to use this data to argue the facility should be treated no differently than landfills throughout the state. Their colleagues in Olympia showed no appetite for the proposal.

Now, they are using a different approach.

“Previous proposals were looking for an exemption. We’re not looking for an exemption,” Brown told The Spokesman-Review. “We’re looking for more time to comply.”

Brown said the city has “conversations underway” that she believes give the city “a good path” for compliance.

“There are facilities operating right now in Europe and Japan that are Waste-to-Energy plants that capture carbon; therefore, you can achieve reduction in greenhouse gas admissions,” Brown said. “So we want to have time to explore that.”

Brown said Tuesday that she thinks lawmakers, and environmental groups, have been receptive to the idea.

“We’ve had a number of great conversations today with House and Senate members, as well as environmental community representatives, and I think that we have a good chance of finding a path forward,” Brown said.

The legislation, however, received pushback from environmental groups that testified Tuesday.

Darcy Nonemacher, government affairs director for Washington Conservation Action, said the proposal gives the facility “preferential treatment under the Climate Commitment Act and sets a dangerous precedent.”

“Specifically, the language in the bill would require the state to supply no-cost allowances based on the facility’s greenhouse gas admissions with no guarantee the facility will actually reduce its pollution levels in the future,” Nonemacher said.

Nonemacher said the bill must include a requirement that pollution decline over time and a commitment to use zero-waste methods in the future.