Endorse Initiative 2066 – Require utilities and local governments to provide natural gas to eligible customers

Lakewood Chamber of Commerce
Board of Directors
Policy Position
Endorse Initiative 2066 – Require utilities and local governments to provide natural gas to eligible customers
May 28, 2024

There is a new voter initiative in the works, and it’s a fight over natural gas. The Lakewood Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors endorses Initiative 2066.

Let’s Go Washington and the Building Industry Association of Washington are behind Initiative 2066. Despite the last-minute move, the group behind this initiative is ready and motivated to gather the necessary signatures by July to qualify for the November ballot.

I-2066 is hoping to push back on portions of HB 1589, a controversial decarbonization bill that narrowly passed the legislature this year.

This measure would require utilities and local governments to provide natural gas to eligible customers; prevent state approval of rate plans requiring or incentivizing gas service termination, restricting access to gas service, or making it cost-prohibitive; and prohibit the state energy code, localities, and air pollution control agencies from penalizing gas use. It would repeal sections of chapter 351, Laws of 2024, including planning requirements for cost-effective electrification and prohibitions on gas rebates and incentives.

Signing Initiative 2066 gives voters the power to:

• Protect natural gas for heating, cooking and more.
• Stop state and local governments, and their agencies, from banning, restricting, or discouraging gas and gas appliances in homes and businesses, like restaurants.
• Make sure gas utilities will continue to provide natural gas to customers who want it.
• Stop the state from limiting natural gas service to homes and businesses, like restaurants and breweries.
• Protect people from having to switch to only electric energy.
• Keep the power on when our energy grid is at capacity in super cold or hot weather.

Signing Initiative 2066 does not:

• Force anyone to use gas or gas appliances – I-2066 just lets you choose.
• Take away any energy incentives and rebates for those who choose them.
• Reduce the state’s commitment to addressing climate change.

Additional points:

• The legislation only impacts PSE, the state’s largest utility company.
• PSE tells FOX 13 that the measure does not ban natural gas for their customers.
• The measure is all about giving them time to plan for the future.
• PSE has a deadline of January 1, 2027 to file an integrated gas and electric system.
• But the question is what happens after 2027. Are any of their 800,000 residential customers on natural gas forced to go electric? That question to PSE and they answered it this way: “The enacted 1589 legislation does not require the utility or any of its customers to transition away from natural gas. It does require a multi-year planning process to ensure we are making the most cost effective investments to meet our customers’ growing needs for energy and their changing preferences – in 2023 natural gas use by residential consumers declined 7%, and it declined 3% for commercial customers.”
• It may not be a ban today or the near future but there is no question it’s a way to phase out current and future gas customers on a faster schedule after the planning process.
• The Clean Energy Transformation Act also mandates PSE get to zero carbon emissions by 2045 and it’s not possible for PSE to meet those goals without shutting off natural gas.
• BWIA also points to Section 3 in the language of HB 1589 itself.
  “Achieve all cost-effective electrification of end uses currently served by natural gas identified through an assessment of alternatives to known and planned gas infrastructure projects, including non pipeline alternatives, rebates and incentives, and geographically targeted electrification.”
• If I-2066 qualifies for the ballot and voters pass the measure, it would cement that no government or any other entity can shut off natural gas. It will broadly protect Washingtonians and allow energy choice.
• The state can get to cleaner energy, but not on the backs of low and middle income Washingtonians and small businesses. They will face big financial burdens if natural gas is cut off without a proper transition. And rate hikes are inevitable if things are left unchallenged.
• The eventual cost of HB 1589 is not worth any small gains against carbon emissions on a global scale.