Washington state on Tuesday rejected a carbon tax ballot initiative that supporters hoped would be the first voter-approved tax on fossil fuel emissions to fight climate change.
The failure of the carbon pricing plan in a progressive Western state came after voters there rejected a similar plan two years ago, a bad sign for efforts to impose a carbon tax at the national level.
“This is a clear victory for working families, consumers, small businesses and family farmers across our state — as well as for our environment,” said Dana Bieber, spokesperson for the “no” campaign, in a statement. “Washington voters have soundly defeated this costly, unfair and ineffective energy tax.”
California remains the only U.S. state to have a carbon pricing plan — its legislators approved a cap-and-trade system that started in 2012. But anti-tax sentiment has led most Republicans to reject any form of the concept at the national level. A recent United Nations report said pricing carbon emissions is a crucial policy needed to avoid the worst consequences of global warming.
Washington’s plan would have required fossil fuel companies to pay $15 per ton of carbon dioxide they release into the atmosphere, beginning in 2020. The tax would increase by $2 each year until 2035, reaching around $55 per ton. The carbon pricing proposal appeared on the ballot as a fee, not a tax, to make the initiative more appealing to voters, and for technical reasons.
Money earned from the fee — roughly $1 billion annually by 2023 — would have been spent on clean energy and climate change resilience projects, such as wind and solar plants, mass transit, and energy efficiency improvements to buildings.
A lesser amount of the revenue was set aside to support rural and poor communities most vulnerable to climate change, and the higher cost of energy products that would result from the tax.
Those spending measures helped win the endorsement of environmental, labor, tribal, and social justice groups, who opposed the 2016 carbon tax proposal because it would have used the revenue to cut other taxes. But supporters could not overcome record spending by opponents, more than $31 million, primarily by the oil industry.
Oil and gas companies opposed the new proposal, even if some were not so vocal about it, and are even backing a revenue-neutral carbon tax plan proposed by free-market groups at the federal level.
A political action committee formed by the Western States Petroleum Association, which represents companies such as BP, Chevron, Shell and Exxon Mobil, vastly outraised supporters.
The opponents said the tax would raise the cost of gasoline and electricity without meaningfully lowering emissions.
Energy economists have said Washington’s carbon fee would have had a “modest” immediate impact, because the state already has one of the cleanest electricity grids, running mostly on zero-carbon hydroelectric power. But it would have sent a signal of public support for tackling climate change at the local level.
