By Kate Yoder for Grist.
Broadcast version by Eric Tegethoff for Washington News Service reporting for the Grist-Public News Service Collaboration

For months now, it’s been free for anyone 18 or younger to ride the light rail through Seattle, the ferry across Puget Sound, and buses all over Washington state. As students tapped their new ORCA cards and hopped on the bus, probably the last thing they were thinking about was the state’s carbon pricing program, the source of funding behind their free ride.

One year after it went into effect, Washington’s “cap-and-invest” system has already brought in an eyebrow-raising $2.2 billion for action on climate change. The Climate Commitment Act, signed by Governor Jay Inslee in 2021, establishes a statewide limit on greenhouse gas emissions that steadily lowers over time. The law also creates a market, like California’s, for businesses to buy “allowances” for the carbon pollution they emit, prodding them to cut their emissions — and at the same time generating a boatload of money to tackle climate change. Touted as the “gold standard” for state climate policy, the law requires Washington to slash its emissions nearly in half by 2030, using 1990 levels as the baseline.

The program’s early success has attracted attention — praise from climate advocates and pushback from anti-tax hawks. A hedge fund manager named Brian Heywood has funded a petition drive to repeal the Climate Commitment Act, over its effects on gas prices, along with other petitions to strike down the state’s capital gains tax, give the police more leeway to pursue vehicles, and grant parents access to their kids’ medical records at school. The repeal could be headed to voters as a ballot initiative this November. If voters approve it, Heywood’s initiative wouldn’t just cancel the climate law; it would block the state from creating any other cap-and-trade system in the future.

“This is going to force us to do a better job communicating and defending our policies,” said Joe Nguyễn, a state senator representing White Center, an area just south of Seattle, who chairs the state’s Environment, Energy, and Technology Committee.

Experts said that the law is already having tangible benefits. Businesses, hoping to avoid paying for costly pollution “allowances,” are figuring out how to run their operations while emitting less carbon. Meanwhile, the revenue from the program is spurring clean energy efforts, including a large-scale solar project by the Yakama Nation, and attracting green industries like clean hydrogen. The funding will also help families install energy-efficient (and money-saving) heat pumps and provide incentives for garbage trucks, delivery vans, and buses to go electric.

The fate of the climate law could have ripple effects beyond Washington, the second state to adopt a cap on carbon after California. New York, for example, just unveiled plans for a cap-and-invest program in December. Officials in New York are closely monitoring the backlash in Washington state, and, in turn, other Northeastern states are watching New York to see what it decides. If Washington’s law goes up in flames, states might decide against enshrining similar carbon-cutting laws. But if it survives the backlash, it could boost other politicians’ confidence in putting a price on carbon pollution.

Grist spoke with experts in Washington about the lessons they’ve learned, one year into the program. They suggested that advocates for any stringent carbon price should be ready to play defense right away — and should work to make its benefits tangible to people around the state.

“The success of the Climate Commitment Act will depend on whether real people in real neighborhoods are actually seeing better infrastructure and things like better transit, home weatherization and electrification, and reductions in emissions from industry,” said Deric Gruen, co-executive director of the Front and Centered, an environmental justice coalition based in Seattle.

The gas price debacle

If the state’s residents have heard anything about the law, it’s most likely been about the bane of politics: the price of gasoline. Washington’s gas prices soared to $4.91 a gallon on average in June, the highest in the country. 

Almost as soon as the first auction to sell pollution credits was held in March, raising $300 million, opponents started drawing a connection between the climate law and “pain at the pump.” The price of emitting a ton of carbon dioxide clocked in at $49, nearly double the average price in California’s cap-and-trade market at the time. Kelly Hall, the Washington director for the regional nonprofit Climate Solutions, attributes the higher prices to the stringency of Washington’s program, which requires more ambitious carbon dioxide cuts than California’s.

In a YouTube video promoting the repeal campaign, Heywood calls the law a “sneaky” gas tax and characterizes it as a money-grab by the state government. “Who knows where [the money] goes?” he asks in the video. He maintains that Inslee and state Democrats weren’t upfront about its potential cost to drivers of gas-powered vehicles. Last year, Heywood hired signature gatherers to go around the state, and in November, they turned in more than 400,000 signatures to repeal the climate law. If enough of those signatures pass the verification process, the repeal initiative will be headed to voters this November.

“Once those auctions were high, there were billboards and ad campaigns and everything blaming the price of gas on this,” said David Mendoza, the director of government relations at The Nature Conservancy in Seattle. “Being ready for that pushback as soon as implementation actually gets started, I think is key.”

State officials have estimated that the program added somewhere around 26 cents to the price of a gallon of gas, though some economists have put the number as high as 55 cents. Confidentiality rules around which companies are participating in cap-and-trade auctions make the analysis difficult. Lawmakers like Nguyễn are working on a “transparency bill,” similar to one that went into effect in California last year, that aims to open financial records from oil companies to see if they’re price gouging.

Proponents of the Climate Commitment Act argue that Washington’s gas prices have always been higher than the national average — they reached $5.50 in 2022, before the climate law began — and that oil companies are choosing to pass the costs onto consumers. They also point out that drivers of electric vehicles in the state are paying the equivalent of less than $1.50 a gallon in electricity. Last year, tens of thousands of Washingtonians switched to electric vehicles. 

“If we are concerned about the cost of transportation for Washington businesses and residents, we have to keep our focus away from the arm-waving of the variations of gas prices that we’ve suffered through for decades and really look to true solutions,” said Michael Mann, the executive director for Clean & Prosperous Washington, a climate-friendly business coalition. “And the true solution to lower our transportation costs is to get off of fossil fuels.”

Who’s getting the money?

Legislators are using the revenue from the auctions for dozens of programs to tackle the state’s two biggest sources of carbon emissions: transportation and buildings. They have set aside $400 million for public transit projects, including the free transit for youth program, and $120 million for electrifying garbage trucks, delivery vans, school buses, and other large vehicles. Another $115 million is earmarked for rebates to help low-income households and small businesses install energy-efficient equipment like heat pumps, a key tool for lowering carbon emissions and energy bills.

The Climate Commitment Act requires that at least 35 percent of the investments go toward “overburdened communities,” such as the $25 million that’s for improving air quality in polluted neighborhoods. An additional 10 percent of investments are set aside for projects that directly benefit Native American tribes. The state budgeted $50 million to help tribes address climate change and adapt to its effects, for example, and $20 million for the Yakama Nation’s utility to build solar panels over irrigation canals. 

The rest of the proceeds go to cleaning up transportation, accelerating the shift to clean energy, and helping communities and ecosystems withstand the effects of climate change, without specific percentages attached. 

Front and Centered, which originally opposed the law based on concerns that cap-and-trade would fail to limit pollution, is now focused on making sure that communities get their promised share of the revenue. “The conversation is leaning into this thing about gas prices,” said Gruen, the group’s co-executive director, “but the attention really needs to be on effectiveness in reducing pollution and justice for frontline communities, and that seems to be getting lost in the conversation.” He says that communities should get more of a say in the budgeting process, so they get to be part of climate solutions in their neighborhoods. 

It’s taking a while for some projects to get up and running, but that’s sort of the nature of the work, Mendoza said. “From my own engagement with government agencies, they’re trying to do things differently,” he said. “They know that they need to invest in overburdened communities. They know they want to reach smaller organizations to get in a pipeline to receive these funds that invest directly in communities.”

How things are changing for businesses

Climate policies are often discussed in terms of “carrots” (the rewards) and “sticks” (the punishments for emissions). The “stick” in Washington’s law prompts businesses to clean up their act so they don’t have to pay for pollution credits. Some progress is already happening on that front, according to Mann of Clean and Prosperous. The oil giant BP, which supported the Climate Commitment Act, spent about $270 million on efficiency upgrades at its refinery in Cherry Point near Bellingham, estimated to reduce the facility’s emissions by 7 percent. Washington’s law also gave the U.S. its first all-electric Amtrak bus line when the transportation company MTRWestern, which contracted with Amtrak, swapped its diesel-powered bus between Seattle and Bellingham for one that charges on electricity.

Then there are the carrots. Every dollar invested by the state has yielded $5 in federal money through matching grant programs from the federal Inflation Reduction Act and bipartisan infrastructure law, according to Nguyễn. Legislators in other states are jealous, he said, “because we were able to take advantage of these things when they couldn’t, and it’s going to really accelerate the work that we’re doing.”

The global mining company Fortescue, for example, obtained $20 million from the state to build a multibillion-dollar “clean hydrogen” plant in Centralia, Washington, near an old coal-fired power plant that’s set to retire in 2025. (Hydrogen can replace fossil fuels in a range of tough-to-decarbonize industries, from aviation to steelmaking.) The project was recently awarded an additional $1 billion in federal funds. Without the revenue from the Climate Commitment Act, Mann said, getting the grant money from the state that made the project eligible for federal funding “would have been next to impossible.”

Another example is Group14, a Seattle startup that’s building the world’s largest factory for advanced silicon battery materials, which promises to make the lithium-ion batteries used in EVs more powerful and faster-charging. The factory, set to open in Moses Lake, Washington later this year, is expected to provide enough battery materials for 200,000 electric vehicles every year. It’s bolstered by funds from Washington’s program and the federal bipartisan infrastructure law.

Whatever happens next with Washington’s cap-and-invest law, whether it gets overturned or continues to bring in billions for climate action, it’s bound to influence how other states choose to tackle global warming. “It’s so funny when people see these things like this happen, and they say, ‘Oh, well, this went wrong, and that went wrong, and that went wrong,’” Nguyễn said. “And it’s like, of course — that’s what leadership looks like. You know, nobody had a map of how this was supposed to happen.”


Kate Yoder wrote this article for Grist.

New Mexico farmers finding it more difficult to grow historic crops are taking up conservation techniques to meet the challenge.

Drought, water scarcity, and extreme weather events combine to require growers to adopt new methods and modern tools.

John Idowu, extension agronomist specialist at New Mexico State University, shows farmers how to improve soil health and help control wind erosion. For long term success, he said they need to focus on sustainable, regenerative practices.

"How can I optimize my system and make it more resilient to climate change, to weather changes?" Idowu explained. "Once we have all those things worked out, farmers will tend to stay in business for longer."

Earlier this year, a NOAA satellite captured an image of winds lifting vast amounts of dust and dirt from New Mexico's dry farmlands. Some forecasters compared it to images last seen in the 1930s Dust Bowl.

Plowing agricultural fields annually was a common practice until the Dust Bowl period but in recent decades no-till or low-till farming operations have gained traction.

Bonnie Hopkins Byers, program director for the San Juan County Extension Service, encouraged New Mexico farmers to get a soil analysis and consider adopting the less aggressive approach. She said it could mean they do not need to till every year.

"One of the biggest problems is that people do something because that's the way they've always done it, or because it's the way their parents have done it, or their grandparents," Hopkins Byers acknowledged. "My philosophy has always been if you're going to till something over, till something in."

Intense dust storms known as "haboobs" were originally thought to be confined to Africa's Sudan but are becoming more common in other arid regions such as the Southwest.

Idowu stressed it makes the adoption of regenerative practices more urgent, as topsoil on New Mexico farmland disappears due to drought, land use changes and wind, which he noted has been particularly strong this year.

"The wind has been a major force, especially in the spring, so many days where you couldn't do anything outside because of the wind," Idowu observed. "You have a lot of dust and that means a lot of erosion and that is exactly what you don't like when it comes to crop production."

The New Mexico Healthy Soil Working Group formed to help farmers improve their land and livelihoods.


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By Carolyn Beans for Lancaster Farming.
Broadcast version by Mark Richardson for Keystone State News Connection reporting for the Lancaster Farming-MIT Climate Change Engagement Program-Public News Service Collaboration

At Mountain View Holsteins in Bethel, Pennsylvania, owner Jeremy Martin is always working to make his dairy more efficient.

Currently, he has his sights set on a manure solid-liquid separator. He’d like to use the solid portion of his manure as bedding for his 140 cows and the liquid as fertilizer.

But the project is pricey — he expects the equipment alone will run around $100,000. So Martin hopes to defray the cost through grant funding for dairy projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Removing much of the solids from manure reduces the feed for the methane-producing microbes that thrive in the anaerobic conditions of liquid manure.

The approach is just one of many dairy practices now considered “climate-smart” because they could cut production of climate-warming gases.

For Martin, a manure separator wouldn’t be possible without a grant.

“Once it's in place and going, I think some of these practices will pay for themselves, but the upfront cost is more than I can justify,” he says. “If there's money out there to pay that upfront cost to get started, it makes sense to me to do it.”

Across Pennsylvania, dairy farmers are learning more about climate-smart practices and funding opportunities, and weighing whether these changes are really sustainable for their businesses as well as the environment.

The Latest Buzzword

USDA has defined climate-smart agriculture as an approach that reduces or removes greenhouse gas emissions, builds resilience to the changing climate, and sustainably increases incomes and agricultural productivity.

“Before climate-smart was a thing, we called it conservation. We called it stewardship,” says Jackie Klippenstein, a senior vice president at Dairy Farmers of America.

Indeed, long before the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations coined the term “climate-smart agriculture” in 2010, Pennsylvania dairy farmers had adopted many of the practices that now fall under the label.

For dairy, climate-smart practices largely include strategies that reduce greenhouse gases emitted from cows, manure or fields. Tried and true conservation practices like cover cropping and reduced tillage count.

So do newer practices like using the feed additive Bovaer to reduce methane production in a cow’s rumen, or precision nitrogen management to reduce nitrous oxide emissions from fields.

Paying for Climate-Smart

“Margins are very tight on the dairy farm,” says Jayne Sebright, the executive director of the Center for Dairy Excellence, a public-private partnership to strengthen Pennsylvania’s dairy industry. “Some of these (climate-smart practices) are good for the climate, but they don't make good economic sense until they're subsidized.”

In 2022, the center joined a Penn State-run program called "Climate-smart Agriculture that is profitable, Regenerative, Actionable and Trustworthy" to provide dairy farmers with funds for switching to climate-smart practices.

CARAT was launched with a $25 million USDA Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities grant, but the future of the Pennsylvania project is in doubt. In April, USDA canceled the partnership program, suggesting that recipients reapply to a new USDA initiative called Advancing Markets for Producers.

Over 60 dairy farmers across Pennsylvania, including Martin, had already applied and been accepted into the first phase of CARAT. This initial phase was intended to help farmers identify the best climate-smart practices for their operations. In the second phase, farmers would have applied for funding to implement those practices. One farmer was already paid for his project before the USDA canceled the partnership program.

“There are fewer funding sources for climate-smart projects than in the last administration. However, private organizations and other entities are funding climate-smart projects,” Sebright says. “Depending on what the practice is, (climate-smart) could also be conservation projects. It could be water quality projects.”

Sebright suggests that dairy farmers also look for support through state-level funding, such as Pennsylvania’s Resource Enhancement and Protection program, which offers tax credits for implementing practices that benefit farms and protect water quality.

Pennsylvania dairy farmers can also contact their county conservation districts to ask about funding opportunities for climate-smart projects, says Amy Welker, a project manager and grant writer for Pennsylvania-based Jones Harvesting, which operates Maystone Dairy in Newville and Molly Pitcher Milk in Shippensburg.

In the next year, Jones Harvesting plans to install a methane digester and solid-liquid separator at a site near Maystone Dairy. The digester is funded with an Agricultural Innovation Grant from the state and an Environmental Quality Incentives Program grant from USDA, along with private funds.

There’s money out there for farmers who implement climate-smart practices, says Welker. But “you can't just look at one source.”

Long-Term Payoffs

Ultimately, for climate-smart projects to make economic sense, they must continue paying for themselves long after the initial investment. One major goal of the USDA’s Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities program was to develop markets where farmers adopting these practices could earn a premium.

Some dairy farmers might see that return in the carbon market. National checkoff organization Dairy Management Inc. and its partners have pledged to shrink the industry's net greenhouse gas production to zero by 2050. There are growing opportunities for companies working toward that goal in the dairy supply chain to pay farmers for their contributions.

Early last year, Texas dairy farmer Jasper DeVos became the first to earn credits through the livestock carbon insetting marketplace. DeVos earned carbon credits by reducing methane emissions with a feed protocol that included the feed additive Rumensin. Dairy Farmers of America then purchased those credits through Athian, a carbon marketplace for the livestock industry.

Increased Efficiency

Even without direct monetary payoff, many farmers who adopt climate-smart practices reap rewards in improved efficiency and productivity.

“When you look at climate-smart, you also have to look at what's farm smart,” Sebright says. She suggests that farmers choose practices that benefit their farms, not just the climate.

A farmer might decide to put a cover and flare system on a manure pit, not only because it reduces methane emissions but also because it keeps rainwater out of the pit and reduces the number of times each year the pit must be emptied.

Andy Bollinger of Meadow Spring Farm in Lancaster County has been running a manure separator since 2009. The liquid fertilizes his fields, and a portion of the solids becomes bedding for his cows.

He estimates the system saves him at least $20,000 a year in bedding costs.

“We put a fresh coating of it onto the stalls that our cows lay in every day and scrape the old stuff out,” says Bollinger, who is also the vice president of the Professional Dairy Managers of Pennsylvania. “It seems to work quite well, and it saves us from buying other bedding products.”

No-till farming is also a cost saver because it reduces field passes with equipment, says James Thiele of Thiele Dairy Farm in Cabot, which has been 100% no-till for at least six years. The practice saves him money on fuel and herbicides.

“You're saving your environment, and you're also saving green,” he says.

But Thiele questions whether some other climate-smart practices like methane digesters would be practical for his farm, which has 75 to 80 cows.

“I don't know if it'd be worth it for somebody as small as I am,” he says.

“I think over the next few years, we'll rapidly see (climate-smart) tools become more available, and we'll see more organizations like DFA talking to our small to mid-sized farmers to make sure they understand they've got a place in this, they can benefit from it, and the practices and tools are affordable to them as well,” Klippenstein says.

Weighing Climate-Smart

Many dairy farmers wonder whether some of the practices championed as climate-smart will really support their businesses.

Donny Bartch of Merrimart Farms in Loysville has adopted environmental practices from cover cropping to a manure management plan.

“I want to protect the environment. I want to keep my nutrients here on the farm and be sustainable for another five generations,” Bartch says. “But we have to make sure that we're making the right decisions to keep the business going. And to do some of these (climate-smart) practices, the only way they pencil out is to have those subsidies.”

There is also frustration with a system that rewards climate-smart improvements made today without acknowledging the contributions of farmers who were climate-smart before anyone put a name on it.

“You come around and want to start rewarding people for doing these things. You really need to start with the ones that have been doing it for a long time, but that's really not what happens,” says Jim Harbach of Schrack Farms in Loganton, whose farm has been no-till for 50 years.

Climate-smart grant money and carbon credits are typically awarded for the implementation of new practices.

“It’s just the unfortunate way that all of the policies and regulations were written,” Sebright says. “What I would say is, if you do a climate-smart plan, maybe there are practices or things you can do to enhance or support or take what you're doing a step further.”

Scientific Measurements on Real Farms

Some dairy farmers also want to know more about how climate-smart practices will affect their farms before jumping in.

Steve Paxton remembers participating in a government program to improve timber over 50 years ago on his family dairy, Irishtown Acres in Grove City. His family members were paid to climb up into their white pines and saw off many of the bottom branches.

The goal was to create a cleaner log. Instead, more sunlight shown through, which caused grape vines to climb up and topple the trees.

“The bottom line is, there was research done, it looked good, but it hadn’t had enough time to follow through and see just really what the end results would be,” Paxton says.

When Paxton sees estimates of how some practices might reduce greenhouse gases emitted from cows, he wonders how much of that research has been tested on actual dairies.

“I think some of it now is just kind of a textbook estimate of what's happening,” he says.

More meaningful data is needed to show how climate-smart practices reduce greenhouse gases on individual dairies, Sebright says.

As part of the CARAT program, Penn State researchers planned to place greenhouse gas sensors on a dozen dairies and test how much greenhouse gas production falls as farmers experiment with different practices. The researchers intended to then use that data to build models that predict how those practices may affect emissions on other farms. They will still measure emissions this spring on one farm that is experimenting with a new approach for spreading manure in fields of feed crops.

“The real goal of (CARAT) is to have research that says, if you put a cover and flare (manure storage system) on a 500-cow dairy, this is how greenhouse gas emissions will change,” Sebright says. “Or if you use Bovaer on a 90-cow herd, here's how this will affect greenhouse gas emissions.”

Martin of Mountain View Holsteins has his own personal beliefs about where a dairy farmer’s responsibilities to the planet begin and end. But from a business perspective, he feels compelled to adopt climate-smart practices because he expects the industry will eventually require them.

“Climate concerns are coming whether I'd like it or not,” he says. “So my thought is, I might as well get started on it while there's funding to do it.”


Carolyn Beans wrote this article for Lancaster Farming.


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Oregon's new state budget cuts funding for programs intended to protect residents from extreme weather and make renewable energy more accessible.

Climate justice advocates said it is a major setback after years of progressive climate policies.

Ben Brint, senior climate program director for the Oregon Environmental Council, is disappointed to lose funding for the Community Renewable Energy Grant Program, which supports a variety of projects tailored to communities, including microgrids and solar storage.

"We felt legislators didn't fund climate resilience programs while fires are raging, people's houses are burning down and the state has already experienced record heat waves in June," Brint pointed out. "Legislators don't see we are in an actual climate emergency and chose inaction."

Brint said the grant program aimed to help low-income, rural and communities of color, those most impacted by climate disasters. Lawmakers attributed the cuts to budget shortfalls and uncertainty over federal funding.

Joel Iboa, executive director of the Oregon Just Transition Alliance, said the Community Resilience Hub program, which creates networks as well as physical places to protect people from extreme cold, heat and smoke also lost funding this session. He argued the hubs are effective because communities design them to meet their unique needs.

"Whether it be a place to plug in your phone or a place to go get diapers or get an air conditioner or whatever your community may need," Iboa outlined. "Depending on what's going on."

A heat pump program for rental housing, aimed at making energy-efficient heating and cooling more affordable, was also cut this session.

Brint added he realizes legislators have to make tough decisions about how to fund health care and housing but emphasized climate change is connected to those issues.

"When we're talking about heat pumps or the C-REP program, we're talking about people's health and livelihoods and saving lives in the face of climate fueled disaster," Brint stressed.

Brint added since climate change is not going away, the movement to push for climate resilience will not either.


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