Two victims and a survivor at opposite-house cutoff

Plus electric school buses, school money, stealthing, and a state IRA

It’s the last week of the Legislature’s session. A major deadline on Friday claimed a headline-grabbing bill in both the Senate and the House last week. We’ll get to those in a bit. First, we’re going to look at the somewhat tortuous path of a notable survivor of the opposite-house cutoff. 

PSE gas bill survives procedural challenge, passes Senate

Senate Bill 1589, which aims to make it easier for Puget Sound Energy¹ to green up its power mix to comply with recently enacted climate legislation, barely squeaked out of the Senate ahead of Friday’s deadline after Democrats scrambled to rescue it from some procedural quicksand. 

Longtime readers will remember the earliest iteration of this bill last year when PSE — which is both the state’s largest electric utility and its largest provider of natural gas—proposed cutting off the growth of its gas network in exchange for provisions to help it comply with the Clean Energy Transformation Act and the Climate Commitment Act. Some of these provisions included potential rate hikes for consumers to pay off the existing gas network more quickly. 

Here’s why you should care about this: The aforementioned climate policy is expected to make gas far more expensive in the future and fuel a wave of conversions from gas furnaces, water heaters, and stoves² to electric alternatives. PSE sees money in that future, but it involves building a truckload of green energy generation and weaning customers off gas. If a bunch of stuff in your home or business runs on gas you should pay attention.