Puget Sound Energy's latest climate plan a dud

Puget Sound Energy, Washington State's largest utility, today committed to reducing it's climate pollution by 50 percent by 2040, an unambitious target that leaves the state well short of its climate goals.

This is a flimsy commitment that assumes a lot of changes to PSE's energy mix that were going to happen anyways. It still doesn’t put the Washington’s largest utility on a path to meet the state’s obligations under the Paris Climate Accords and Gov. Jay Inslee’s goal of 80 to 95 percent greenhouse gas reductions across every sector of the state’s economy (transportation, industrial processes, energy grid) by 2050. And it still provides cover for PSE to build new fracked gas-fired plants that may be just as bad as coal when upstream methane leaks are taken into account.

That, of course, is the overriding goal of PSE’s private shareholders and CEO Kimberly Harris, who is due to become the Chair of the Board of Directors of the American Gas Association, a national fossil fuel advocacy group, on Jan. 1, 2018. New gas plants equals new infrastructure investments which equals guaranteed profit. Australia-based MacQuarie Group, which owns 42 percent of PSE, is one of the top gas traders in North America and stands to profit from new gas investments by one of its subsidiaries.

Here is an graph showing PSE’s CO2 emissions, from their 2015 Greenhouse Gas Inventory (page 88). Roughly two-thirds of their coal is legally required to be retired soon - Colstrip Units 1 and 2 by 2022 and the Transalta plant in Centralia by 2025, meaning that PSE can likely meet their 50 percent emissions reduction under the status quo.

“This is more smoke and mirrors than an actual commitment to get off dirty fossil fuels, reduce climate pollution and meet our state’s climate goals. Puget Sound Energy is likely to exceed this commitment under the status quo, as previous commitments to retire some of its dirty coal plants go ahead in the coming years. This commitment still gives them enough breathing space to build new fracked gas plants, doesn’t commit to ending their use of the dirtiest coal plant in the American West. It’s still impossible to meet our state’s responsibilities under the Paris Climate Accords under this plan. We need better than this greenwashing from our state’s largest utility.” -- said Doug Howell, Senior Campaign Representative for the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign.

“Any climate plan that allows the construction of new fracked gas plants isn’t much of a climate plan. Methane, a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, leaks at every step of the fracking process - from extraction, to transport to burning at the power plant. As states like Oregon and California put the brakes on new gas investments and look at replacing existing gas plants with clean energy, this plan is a half-solution at a time when we need bold leadership.”-- said Jess Koski, Puget Sound Organizer for the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign.