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Washington State voted against gas bans. But was it misled?
The United States is rapidly dividing into two camps: those that are trying to move away from using natural gas in buildings to fight climate change, and those passing “fuel choice” laws that protect consumers’ rights to keep burning it. On election day, Washington State flipped from the former to the latter as voters narrowly approved a ballot measure that overturned some of the most ambitious decarbonization policies in the country.
Now, a coalition of local governments, environmental groups, and public health advocates are challenging that ballot measure in court, arguing that voters didn’t understand what they were signing up for, and thus that the measure violates parts of the Washington State constitution designed to prevent abuse at the ballot box.
“Among its far-reaching impacts,” the opening of the claim filed at the King County Superior Court on Wednesday reads, “the Initiative jeopardizes the ability of local governments and other entities to establish energy-efficiency standards and reduce greenhouse gas emissions; it threatens programs that require the construction of energy efficient buildings; and it would make the clean energy transition chaotic and more expensive for Washingtonians.”
Initiative 2066 was pitched by its sponsor, the Building Industry Association of Washington, as simply a measure to protect consumer access to natural gas, according to Kai Smith, a lawyer from Pacifica Law Group who is representing the plaintiffs. But the text of the measure goes much further, he said, affecting several state laws and codes designed to reduce carbon emissions and regulate air pollution.
“I don’t think voters would have been aware of that broad of an impact when they looked at the ballot title and they heard the campaign messaging,” Smith told me.
Though Washington has long been a leading state for climate policy, it began taking bigger swings at decarbonizing buildings, in particular, in 2022. That year, the state’s building code council enacted energy codes that required newly constructed buildings to be outfitted with all-electric space heating and hot water systems. The council later amended the rules so that they strongly encouraged — but did not necessarily require — electric appliances after a similar policy in Berkeley, California was overturned by a federal court.
Initiative 2066 invalidates those codes. It also repeals key parts of a law the state legislature passed earlier this year that requires Washington’s biggest utility, Puget Sound Energy, to consider alternatives before replacing aging gas infrastructure or building new gas pipelines. The utility would have had to analyze whether electrifying the homes served by that infrastructure instead would ultimately save ratepayers money.
That’s not all: In a more forward-looking section, the initiative bans counties and local governments from passing any local ordinances that “prohibit, penalize, or discourage” the use of gas in buildings. It also adds a new clause to the Clean Air Act barring state officials from doing the same.
The lawsuit was brought by Climate Solutions, a local climate advocacy group, as well as Washington Conservation Action, Front and Centered, the Washington Solar Energy Industries Association, King County, and the City Of Seattle. It alleges that the measure violates the state’s “single subject” and “subject-in-title” rules, which say that an act can only concern one topic and that the ballot title has to fairly and accurately apprise voters of the content of the initiative.
Although all the pieces of Initiative 2066 are related to protecting consumers’ access to natural gas as an energy source, Smith argued that some of the changes it makes are more broad — for example, sticking a clause in the Clean Air Act to protect natural gas use. The Clean Air Act is about pollution regulations, he said. “While those are tied to natural gas, conceptually and legally, I think they are distinct.” The Initiative also struck a provision in Washington law that required the state’s building code council, as it updates energy codes periodically, to work toward a goal of all new construction being “zero fossil-fuel greenhouse gas emission” by 2031. That strike-out would impact the full range of fossil fuels, not just natural gas, Smith said.
Climate policy in Washington is popular. The majority of voters rejected another measure on the ballot which would have repealed the state’s big umbrella climate law that puts a declining cap on emissions. But perhaps some of those voters haven’t yet made the connection that cutting carbon includes the emissions that come from their homes. The natural gas burned in homes and buildings are responsible for 25% of the state’s carbon footprint. Clearly, the “yes on I-2066” campaign’s messaging — summed up as “stop the gas ban” — resonated.
Smith argued that the message was misleading. “That’s not what these laws are,” he said. “It’s to help facilitate movement towards clean energy in a way that’s thoughtful and methodical, and that doesn’t lead to increased costs for customers.”
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The Loan Programs Office is good for more than just nuclear funding.
That China has a whip hand over the rare earths mining and refining industry is one of the few things Washington can agree on.
That’s why Alex Jacquez, who worked on industrial policy for Joe Biden’s National Economic Council, found it “astounding”when he read in the Washington Post this week that the White House was trying to figure out on the fly what to do about China restricting exports of rare earth metals in response to President Trump’s massive tariffs on the country’s imports.
Rare earth metals have a wide variety of applications, including for magnets in medical technology, defense, and energy productssuch as wind turbines and electric motors.
Jacquez told me there has been “years of work, including by the first Trump administration, that has pointed to this exact case as the worst-case scenario that could happen in an escalation with China.” It stands to reason, then, that experienced policymakers in the Trump administration might have been mindful of forestalling this when developing their tariff plan. But apparently not.
“The lines of attack here are numerous,” Jacquez said. “The fact that the National Economic Council and others are apparently just thinking about this for the first time is pretty shocking.”
And that’s not the only thing the Trump administration is doing that could hamper American access to rare earths and critical minerals.
Though China still effectively controls the global pipeline for most critical minerals (a broader category that includes rare earths as well as more commonly known metals and minerals such as lithium and cobalt), the U.S. has been at work for at least the past five years developing its own domestic supply chain. Much of that work has fallen to the Department of Energy, whose Loan Programs Office has funded mining and processing facilities, and whose Office of Manufacturing and Energy Supply Chains hasfunded and overseen demonstration projects for rare earths and critical minerals mining and refining.
The LPO is in line for dramatic cuts, as Heatmap has reported. So, too, are other departments working on rare earths, including the Office of Manufacturing and Energy Supply Chains. In its zeal to slash the federal government, the Trump administration may have to start from scratch in its efforts to build up a rare earths supply chain.
The Department of Energy did not reply to a request for comment.
This vulnerability to China has been well known in Washington for years, including by the first Trump administration.
“Our dependence on one country, the People's Republic of China (China), for multiple critical minerals is particularly concerning,” then-President Trump said in a 2020 executive order declaring a “national emergency” to deal with “our Nation's undue reliance on critical minerals.” At around the same time, the Loan Programs Office issued guidance “stating a preference for projects related to critical mineral” for applicants for the office’s funding, noting that “80 percent of its rare earth elements directly from China.” Using the Defense Production Act, the Trump administration also issued a grant to the company operating America's sole rare earth mine, MP Materials, to help fund a processing facility at the site of its California mine.
The Biden administration’s work on rare earths and critical minerals was almost entirely consistent with its predecessor’s, just at a greater scale and more focused on energy. About a month after taking office, President Bidenissued an executive order calling for, among other things, a Defense Department report “identifying risks in the supply chain for critical minerals and other identified strategic materials, including rare earth elements.”
Then as part of the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022, the Biden administration increased funding for LPO, which supported a number of critical minerals projects. It also funneled more money into MP Materials — including a $35 million contract from the Department of Defense in 2022 for the California project. In 2024, it awarded the company a competitive tax credit worth $58.5 million to help finance construction of its neodymium-iron-boron magnet factory in Texas. That facilitybegan commercial operation earlier this year.
The finished magnets will be bought by General Motors for its electric vehicles. But even operating at full capacity, it won’t be able to do much to replace China’s production. The MP Metals facility is projected to produce 1,000 tons of the magnets per year.China produced 138,000 tons of NdFeB magnets in 2018.
The Trump administration is not averse to direct financial support for mining and minerals projects, but they seem to want to do it a different way. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum has proposed using a sovereign wealth fund to invest in critical mineral mines. There is one big problem with that plan, however: the U.S. doesn’t have one (for the moment, at least).
“LPO can invest in mining projects now,” Jacquez told me. “Cutting 60% of their staff and the experts who work on this is not going to give certainty to the business community if they’re looking to invest in a mine that needs some government backstop.”
And while the fate of the Inflation Reduction Act remains very much in doubt, the subsidies it provided for electric vehicles, solar, and wind, along with domestic content requirements have been a major source of demand for critical minerals mining and refining projects in the United States.
“It’s not something we’re going to solve overnight,” Jacquez said. “But in the midst of a maximalist trade with China, it is something we will have to deal with on an overnight basis, unless and until there’s some kind of de-escalation or agreement.”
A conversation with VDE Americas CEO Brian Grenko.
This week’s Q&A is about hail. Last week, we explained how and why hail storm damage in Texas may have helped galvanize opposition to renewable energy there. So I decided to reach out to Brian Grenko, CEO of renewables engineering advisory firm VDE Americas, to talk about how developers can make sure their projects are not only resistant to hail but also prevent that sort of pushback.
The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.
Hiya Brian. So why’d you get into the hail issue?
Obviously solar panels are made with glass that can allow the sunlight to come through. People have to remember that when you install a project, you’re financing it for 35 to 40 years. While the odds of you getting significant hail in California or Arizona are low, it happens a lot throughout the country. And if you think about some of these large projects, they may be in the middle of nowhere, but they are taking hundreds if not thousands of acres of land in some cases. So the chances of them encountering large hail over that lifespan is pretty significant.
We partnered with one of the country’s foremost experts on hail and developed a really interesting technology that can digest radar data and tell folks if they’re developing a project what the [likelihood] will be if there’s significant hail.
Solar panels can withstand one-inch hail – a golfball size – but once you get over two inches, that’s when hail starts breaking solar panels. So it’s important to understand, first and foremost, if you’re developing a project, you need to know the frequency of those events. Once you know that, you need to start thinking about how to design a system to mitigate that risk.
The government agencies that look over land use, how do they handle this particular issue? Are there regulations in place to deal with hail risk?
The regulatory aspects still to consider are about land use. There are authorities with jurisdiction at the federal, state, and local level. Usually, it starts with the local level and with a use permit – a conditional use permit. The developer goes in front of the township or the city or the county, whoever has jurisdiction of wherever the property is going to go. That’s where it gets political.
To answer your question about hail, I don’t know if any of the [authority having jurisdictions] really care about hail. There are folks out there that don’t like solar because it’s an eyesore. I respect that – I don’t agree with that, per se, but I understand and appreciate it. There’s folks with an agenda that just don’t want solar.
So okay, how can developers approach hail risk in a way that makes communities more comfortable?
The bad news is that solar panels use a lot of glass. They take up a lot of land. If you have hail dropping from the sky, that’s a risk.
The good news is that you can design a system to be resilient to that. Even in places like Texas, where you get large hail, preparing can mean the difference between a project that is destroyed and a project that isn’t. We did a case study about a project in the East Texas area called Fighting Jays that had catastrophic damage. We’re very familiar with the area, we work with a lot of clients, and we found three other projects within a five-mile radius that all had minimal damage. That simple decision [to be ready for when storms hit] can make the complete difference.
And more of the week’s big fights around renewable energy.
1. Long Island, New York – We saw the face of the resistance to the war on renewable energy in the Big Apple this week, as protestors rallied in support of offshore wind for a change.
2. Elsewhere on Long Island – The city of Glen Cove is on the verge of being the next New York City-area community with a battery storage ban, discussing this week whether to ban BESS for at least one year amid fire fears.
3. Garrett County, Maryland – Fight readers tell me they’d like to hear a piece of good news for once, so here’s this: A 300-megawatt solar project proposed by REV Solar in rural Maryland appears to be moving forward without a hitch.
4. Stark County, Ohio – The Ohio Public Siting Board rejected Samsung C&T’s Stark Solar project, citing “consistent opposition to the project from each of the local government entities and their impacted constituents.”
5. Ingham County, Michigan – GOP lawmakers in the Michigan State Capitol are advancing legislation to undo the state’s permitting primacy law, which allows developers to evade municipalities that deny projects on unreasonable grounds. It’s unlikely the legislation will become law.
6. Churchill County, Nevada – Commissioners have upheld the special use permit for the Redwood Materials battery storage project we told you about last week.