The District would adopt one of the nation’s most aggressive
plans to cut carbon emissions, aiming to use entirely renewable sources of
energy for the city’s power grid just 14 years from now, under new legislation
proposed by five D.C. Council members.
The bill — which would also enhance the city’s green
building standards and authorize the mayor to enter regional agreements with
Virginia and Maryland to cut greenhouse gas emissions — comes at a moment of
international reckoning with the problem of climate change.
A report released this week by the world’s top scientific
panel studying global warming warned that time has almost run out for
governments to prevent catastrophic changes to the environment. The report by
the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated that “there is no
documented historic precedent” for government action of the kind needed to
avert those changes.
Those findings arrive at a time when enthusiasm in the
federal government for aggressive policies to combat climate change is at a low
ebb. President Trump said last year that he would withdraw the United States
from the landmark Paris climate accord, and he has consistently allied himself
with the coal industry, whose activities are a major source of carbon
emissions.
But if the outlook for an effective international response
to climate change is dim, D.C. officials should still do what they can to
reduce emissions at the local level, said council member Mary M. Cheh (D-Ward
3), who drafted the bill and heads the council’s committee on transportation
and the environment.
“What’s the alternative — to do nothing?” Cheh said in an
interview. “We either do our best and encourage others to do their best and the
national government to change their position on this, or we give in and accept
catastrophe.”
More than 80 witnesses were scheduled to testify on the bill
Tuesday at an initial public hearing by the transportation and environment
committee. The bill must also pass through the committee on business and
economic development before going before the full council, which supporters
hope could happen this year.
Along with Cheh, the bill’s introducers were Council
Chairman Phil Mendelson (D) and members Brianne K. Nadeau (D-Ward 1), Charles
Allen (D-Ward 6) and Trayon White Sr. (D-Ward 8).
Many of the witnesses expressed support for the bill’s core
tenets at the hearing, the result of what Cheh said was a long process of
discussion and debate with activists and businesses. Some supporters noted that
the District could be directly harmed by climate change, experiencing
dangerously hot summers and floods from the Potomac and Anacostia, both tidal
rivers that would be affected by sea-level rise.
Others sounded a cautious note about the cost to ratepayers
for an aggressive push toward entirely renewable power sources by 2032. (Under
its existing policy, the city is on track to get 50 percent of its energy
from renewable sources by that year.)
Sandra Mattavous-Frye, who heads the D.C. Office of the
People’s Counsel — which represents the interests of utility customers in the
District — said that while her office “supports the bill’s clean-energy goals,”
those targets should be balanced with the “equally important public policy goal
of affordability” for consumers.
The bill includes an increase in across-the-board fees on
electricity and natural gas consumption that Cheh’s office estimates would add
$2.10 to D.C. residents’ average monthly gas bills and less than $1 to their
average monthly electricity bills. About 20 percent of the money generated from
those fees would be used to provide financial assistance to low-income
ratepayers, while the rest would fund other local sustainability initiatives.
Other states and cities have adopted ambitious goals for
using cleaner power, though many are not as aggressive as those in Cheh’s bill.
California is working to supply 50 percent of residents’
electricity from renewable sources by 2030. Beginning in 2019, San Francisco
will offer consumers the option of receiving electricity from renewable sources
but does not require it.
Virginia’s renewable energy goal, adopted in 2007, aims for
15 percent renewable sources by 2025. It’s a voluntary goal, intended to
encourage utilities to switch to renewables.
In 2016, the Maryland General Assembly passed legislation
requiring the state to obtain 25 percent of its energy from wind, solar
and other renewable sources by 2020.
Gov. Larry Hogan (R) vetoed the bill, saying it would lead
to rate increases, but the Democratic-controlled legislature overrode his veto
last year.
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