The City’s Community Power Works program, funded out of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA – the ‘economic stimulus’ legislation of 2009) received some critical reviews for starting up more slowly than the original plan.  It did turn out to be challenging to ramp up as quickly as had been hoped, but the good […]

In March 2010, the City Council approved legislation creating a Rate Stabilization Account (RSA) for Seattle City Light, and imposed a temporary surcharge on city Light rates as part of the funding package for the RSA.  In the year since then, the RSA has been fully funded to its projected level of $100 million, the […]

Well, sort of.  Actually, City Light has agreed to purchase what are called Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) from two Idaho projects to help meet our obligations under Initiative 937.  I-937, which was approved by the voters in 2006, requires all electric utilities in the state to serve 3% of their load with ‘eligible resources’ by […]

With several pieces of implementing legislation having been adopted, Seattle is poised to launch a dramatic new initiative this fall that will save energy and create up to 2000 green jobs. “Community Power Works” is a $140 million program to retrofit residential, commercial, hospital, and municipal buildings in Central and South Seattle.

We cannot create an authentic carbon neutrality policy without dealing with the esoteric sounding issue of “embedded carbon”. You can easily identify the carbon that results from driving a car or running a coal-fired power plant, but to really reduce your emissions, you have to dig deeper.

One of the most formidable challenges in climate policy is to design a transportation system  that minimizes the consumption of carbon.  That challenge is compounded when regional and state leaders are the final arbiters of major capital-intensive projects, and the City’s role is to influence and guide rather than make the final decision. It’s easy […]

On Monday, February 22, the Seattle City Council announced that a Carbon Neutral Seattle was one of our 2010 priorities. We knew this was about as ambitious a goal as you could imagine. But we also knew that reality demands no less.