In Brief:
- Washington is one of two states to implement a tax on carbon emissions.
- A measure on the 2024 ballot would have canceled this provision in its climate law.
- By a large margin, voters affirmed their support for the tax. Gov. Jay Inslee sees this as a “bugle call to action” for other states.
By an overwhelming margin, Washington voters said “no” to Initiative 2117, which would have ended a carbon tax trading program by repealing sections of the 2021 Washington Climate Commitment Act. The victory allows Gov. Jay Inslee to leave office with one of his signature accomplishments fully intact.
“I’m very proud of what our state did last night,” Inslee tells Governing. More than 60 percent of voters rejected the measure, which he described as “a paddle wave on top of a tsunami magnified by an avalanche.”
The “cap and invest program” that was targeted by 2117 sets an overall limit on carbon emissions in the state and puts a per-ton price on them. It requires covered businesses such as fuel suppliers, gas and electric utilities, and railroads to purchase allowances equal to their emissions. The money raised is invested in climate mitigation.
Washington is the second state, after California, to cap emissions and require businesses that release large amounts of carbon to pay for the right to do so. Since its program was implemented in January 2023, it has brought more than $2 billion to the state — money used to fund clean energy, transportation, conservation and tribal-led projects.
Republican Brian Heywood, a hedge fund manager, led the repeal campaign. Heywood has said the only impact of the program is raising consumer costs, particularly gas prices, without doing much to reduce emissions. “It doesn’t do anything to take carbon out of the atmosphere,” he said of the cap-and-invest program.
The biggest backers for the “no” campaign were Microsoft billionaires Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer. The oil and gas company BP, which operates a refinery near Bellingham, Wash., that processes a quarter-million barrels of crude oil per day, also supported it. In 2020, BP announced a goal of becoming a net-zero company by 2050, but has since retreated from that goal. Even so, a company spokesman said repeal of Washington's carbon tax would move the state backward on climate action and funding.
“We had one of the broadest coalitions I’ve ever seen in my state, in any state,” Inslee says. “We had 500 organizations — labor, the environmental community, businesses, the faith community, communities of color.”
Initiative 2117 attracted attention nationally and internationally. A defeat would have put a damper on climate ambitions across the country, Inslee says. “This is, instead, a bugle call to action and we ought to be charging on this.”
Quebec has looked to link its carbon tax program with Washington, as it has with California. Inslee is optimistic that this can now move forward, give stability to the carbon market and help cement these policies. Public recognition of the consequences of warming is growing, Inslee says: “You can’t hide from climate change because it will get you anyway, from floods to fire to smoke to reduction of fishing and collapse of coral.”
The incoming federal administration isn’t expected to make climate action a priority, but Inslee’s successor, Bob Ferguson, has done so in the past. Ferguson defended the state’s climate policies while attorney general and prevailed in a case pushing back against attempts by the previous administration to roll back emission reduction targets.
The cap-and-invest program is the culmination of more than two decades of work by Inslee, he says. “To see it so manifestly approved and embraced by my state is just really gratifying,” he says. “I think it was an extremely important message to the rest of the country.”
