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The Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission (UTC) and Washington State Department of Commerce announced Tuesday that they adopted rules in late December to guide implementation of the state’s 2019 Clean Energy Transformation Act.
Under the law, electric utilities in Washington must eliminate coal-fired power by 2025, achieve carbon neutrality by 2030, and source 100% of their energy from renewable or non-carbon emitting sources by 2045.
While Washington utilities and environmental groups welcomed the overarching goals presented by the rules, disagreement about specifics remains. “We have an opportunity to finally account for climate impacts in electricity planning and acquisition of new resources,” Doug Howell, a senior campaign representative in Seattle for the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign, said in an email. “How we deal with this in electricity will hopefully end up applying to other sectors, [which] is why it is so important to get it right.”
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