We Can’t Have It Both Ways in Washington

Contributed by RNW Staff

Washington boasts some of the most ambitious clean energy targets in the country. Based on our climate laws, clear public support to transition to clean energy, and abundant wind and solar resources, Washington state should be a national leader, building hundreds of megawatts of clean energy per year. Instead, we’re 50th out of 50 states for new clean energy development. Announcements of completed projects have all but ground to a halt. What is going on?  

Naturally, the full answer is complicated. But one critical barrier is that our environmental policies haven’t evolved alongside our clean energy goals; we have a system built to prevent harm, rather than build solutions. There is no better solution to reducing emissions than clean energy. Now we need a system designed to make building responsibly possible.  

For example, siting and permitting clean energy in Washington has become a death-by-a-thousand-cuts process – it’s slow, uncertain, and expensive, which discourages investment and innovation. Then, in October, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) dealt another blow towards our state’s clean energy future with new wind and solar siting guidelines that make a difficult situation worse.

WDFW’s role is important: the agency provides recommendations to permitting authorities on species, habitat, and mitigation measures. Their existing wind siting guidelines are rigorous and are layered on top of Washington’s already complex web of federal, state and local laws guiding development. These include local Growth Management plans, the State Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, and the Bald and Golden Eagle Act. These policies represent decades of thoughtful environmental progress to ensure all energy development is responsible.

Unfortunately, the newest guidelines from WDFW fly in the face of any reasonable attempt to strike a balance. The guidelines will more than double the cost of mitigation for many clean energy projects, or push development onto agricultural land. These changes will further slow progress, discourage investment, and ultimately increase costs for everyone. When clean energy projects are delayed or canceled, the cost shows up in higher electricity bills for households and businesses across the state because more expensive (and often, dirtier) electricity has to be imported.

This is not the future Washingtonians want. Since the Trump administration gutted federal clean energy tax incentives in the Big Beautiful Bill, the state has responded in force. State agencies have been racing to find ways to get clean energy projects in the development pipeline built quickly. The legislature passed HB 1216 in 2023 to address some of our siting and permitting challenges, and other proposals continue to arise. And support for clean energy remains strong among Washington residents, who overwhelmingly want to see more of it built.

And yet: we remain stuck between ambition and action. The new guidelines are the latest example of well intentioned policy that doesn’t take trade-offs into account, resulting in real-world consequences. Without a more balanced approach, Washington risks missing its climate targets, raising costs for ratepayers, and forfeiting the economic benefits that come from building clean energy locally.

Washington needs to decide what kind of energy future it wants. Every source of energy has tradeoffs. It’s not enough to say we want clean energy – we must also make it possible to build clean energy responsibly and affordably in our own state.
We can’t have it both ways.