In the first days back in his old office, President Donald Trump began weakening the country’s policies to cut greenhouse gas emissions and lessen its dependence on fossil fuels.
Washington state has been a leader in state-level climate policy. So what does new leadership in D.C. mean for Washington the state?
Trump’s administration might be able to slow some of Washington’s momentum, but it can’t sway the state’s landmark climate policies, according to state legislators and policy experts.
With so much federal backtracking already underway, all eyes now turn toward states like Washington to lead the effort against climate change.
“We’ve been here before,” said state Rep. Joe Fitzgibbon, thinking back to Trump’s first term in office.
His second term could be similar, Fitzgibbon said, catalyzing state officials to ensure existing policies work well, so as to encourage other states to follow suit, compounding their efforts despite opposing action on the federal front.
What did Trump do, exactly?
The battle began as soon as Trump returned to office Monday. Still on stage and in front of a crowd, he signed an order to start the process of withdrawing the United States from the Paris Agreement.
Nearly every country has signed onto the international agreement, pledging to try to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, a rate at which scientists still expect far-reaching and disastrous environmental consequences. Global temperatures surpassed that 1.5-degree mark for the first time last year.
The Paris Agreement, originally signed in late 2016, has become something of a partisan pingpong ball, bouncing between administrations. President Barack Obama signed the country into the accord during his last days in office, only to be undone during Trump’s first term. President Joe Biden reversed course once more after ousting Trump in 2020. But now that he’s reclaimed power, Trump will remove the country from the terms of the agreement once more.
Biden in December also set the goal for the country to cut greenhouse gas emissions 60% from their peak levels by 2035, a priority sure to be backtracked by Trump, who has repeatedly expressed his desire to double down on fossil fuels.
Already the mention of Biden’s climate goal has been scrubbed from the White House website. Additionally, one of Trump’s early executive orders looks to end the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions like carbon dioxide and methane entirely.
How Washington’s climate laws factor in?
Trump can indeed dictate national policy but not state mandates to cut greenhouse gas emissions and shift away from fossil fuels, Fitzgibbon said.
Take Washington’s Climate Commitment Act, for example. The policy, passed in 2021, launched the state’s carbon market, requiring top polluters to buy allowances for the emissions they pump into the atmosphere and, over time, ratcheting down the quantity they’re allowed to churn out each year.
Or the Clean Energy Transformation Act of 2019, which requires Washington utilities to replace coal generation by the end of this year and to only use electricity free of greenhouse gas emissions by 2045.
“These requirements aren’t going anywhere,” Fitzgibbon said.
Casey Sixkiller, the former administrator of EPA region 10 who was just appointed as director of the state’s Department of Ecology, reiterated that sentiment.
The state’s work to reduce carbon pollution and buttress communities and infrastructure against the effects of climate change will continue, Sixkiller said in a statement.
Washington will continue to operate its carbon market as state officials look to link up with the joint market operating between California and Quebec. Other states, like New York and Maryland, might soon follow suit, building strength in the effort to cut emissions, Fitzgibbon said.
Shortly after Trump announced the country would withdraw from the Paris Agreement, the co-chairs of the U.S. Climate Alliance — New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham — sent a letter to United Nations Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell, underscoring the group’s commitment to the agreement.
The Climate Alliance consists of two dozen governors, a bipartisan group, pushing for greater climate action. Former Gov. Jay Inslee was a founding member of the group, though it’s not yet clear whether Ferguson will continue to participate.
“We will not turn our backs on America’s commitments,” Hochul and Lujan Grisham wrote. “For our health and our future, we will press forward.”
What about federal funding?
Still, Trump can slow progress in a number of ways, Fitzgibbon said. He could try and stop the cash flowing from Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, billions of which has gone toward electrical upgrades (for homes and businesses), electric vehicle rebates and discounts and charging infrastructure, renewable energy projects and more.
During Biden’s single term in office that cash supercharged electrification efforts and without it people and businesses looking to transition wouldn’t have that extra wind in their sails, Fitzgibbon said.
But Trump can’t stop the cash flow unilaterally, said John Armstrong, a professor of environmental studies at Seattle University. For that he’d need an act of Congress.
With a razor thin Republican majority in the House, some representatives might not be so eager to turn off the spigot that has funneled money and jobs into their districts, Armstrong said.
Trump’s administration can also influence how federal lands are used, Armstrong said. One of his earliest executive orders seeks to quash offshore wind projects, which is already underway in the Atlantic Ocean but has yet to take hold off the Pacific Coast.
This type of action could further muddy the already complicated and expensive process for companies seeking large swathes of land on which to build major wind and solar projects.
But the energy sector is moving toward renewables whether Trump likes it or not, Armstrong said. New wind and solar energy projects are more affordable than fossil fuel plants and the president can’t change these market forces.
Trump’s increasing hostility toward the renewable energy sector and climate action flies directly in the face of the broad scientific consensus that greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels are warming the atmosphere and exacerbating disasters like wildfires, droughts, floods and extreme storms across the world.
Removing these fossil fuels, whenever possible, is the quickest way to stop the warming, scientists repeatedly say.
Despite such a significant federal retreat on climate action, Armstrong said states — even individual cities — can move forward in cutting emissions on their own. The country’s continued reliance on fossil fuels and a warming atmosphere is not a foregone conclusion. Not all hope is lost, he said.
