In this episode, recorded at a live event, Inslee discusses his multiple decades of climate advocacy, his political successes, and the upcoming threat to one of his crowning achievements.
WA is awesome (I live in Tacoma and love it). Inslee has been a great, under appreciated governor and I really wish he wasn’t retiring, though of course he’s earned it. I will disagree about the WA initiative system: it’s absolutely terrible and is often used by special interests to pass awful policies that they can’t get through the legislature. I suspect Inslee agrees but didn’t want to say so. If I could change anything about WA, reforming the initiative system and adding a state income tax (while cutting the very regressive sales tax) would be at the top of my list. Neither has any prospect of happening anytime soon, but a girl can dream….
Great interview and questions. I have a real problem with the concept that burning wood pellets is a zero carbon energy option. Taking the only real carbon capture method that we have in the world and converting it to avoidable CO2 emissions is a thoughtless carbon accounting trick. It is similar to the concept of low carbon fuels (which are fossil fuels spiked with biofuel generated from crops) in this sense. Oil and forestry industries have the same great PR machines: In British Columbia Drax is reported to have converted old growth trees (not just slacs waste) into wood pellets for burning. If implemented ethically, wood pellets and biofuels might have been a good invention 15 years ago when we did not have EV's and heatpumps and cheap solar and, but now they represent destructive and obsolete compromise solutions. I'm a bit shocked no one sees through the scam.
biomass incineration was never a good solution. for the utility power sector. the ecological and carbon costs are worse than burning coal. the claim that this is biogenic carbon not geological carbon is dumbed down ignorance. sorry but as someone who has researched this area and spoken to people who’ve formally investigated these accounting tricks and written peer reviewed papiers on it i’m not a fan. and as you say RE and fuel switching to electricity is the hope for today, not incinerating our forests.
great question about biomass incineration by Drax et al @56:30
Unfortunately the response Governor Jay offered was anything but expert in quality. his answer is as over-simplifying as one might expect from a coal plant owner (looking to diversify into biomass incineration) or a six year old child.
biomass from clear felled forest is not a “circular return” of forest carbon as the Governor puts it. the second part of his answer actually underlines his misunderstanding. he goes on to concede that the forest that was clear felled is no longer acting as a sink, and that remains true for most forests for decades for any “regrowth” that follows the clear felling.
a few points that Governor Jay needs to comprehend lest he keep repeating this ‘virtuous “carbon cycle” myth’ excusing ecological destruction for biomass incineration.
burning biomass pellets in power plants is more carbon intensive than burning coal in most circumstances in terms of plant emissions. (air quality emissions and public health impacts are, in many cases, worse than coal also). geological carbon (coal, fossil oil and gas) or biological carbon (biomass) isn’t any different in terms of the CO₂, CO and methane molecules that result from a combustion process (other than some obscure carbon isotope ratio stuff that isn’t relevant to this question).
we can’t aggregate historical carbon drawn down “embedded” in any given biomass to “offset” the GHG emissions from combusting it on the one hand while completely disaggregating (ignoring) the emissions resulting from clear felling forest in the first instance to make the biomass pellets you claim to contain drawdown. fossil fuel also has historical draw down biomass condensed into hydrocarbon fuels .
you either are aggregating or you ain’t, you can’t claim your carbon wins and completely ignore your carbon losses, they’re inseparable in the real world of action of forest harvesting.
as previously stated, if you are not aggregating biomass drawdown to claim biomass pellets are a clean fuel then it’s a fuel that is worse than coal for the climate (certainly worse than most coal quality). that’s clear from the data and there are papers and reports on this.
if you ARE aggregating drawdown with GHG emissions to claim biomass as a clean fuel, you must aggregate the loss of drawdown and consider the loss of drawdown over a relevant time horizon. and this is where the naive carbon-cycle accounting myths start to unravel. (same applies to livestock producers claiming their methane emissions are part of a “natural carbon cycle” that is somehow benevolent and without consequences, and it’s worse in the case of methane since it’s more potent than CO₂, → up to 1000x as potent by weight depending how you account for it).
there’s a commonly shared myth that young forests drawdown more CO₂ than old forests. even if this were true, and it isn’t, you still would have decades of denuded forest floor with very minor drawdown compared to a mature forest for the first decade or two after clear felling.
all forests are dissimilar but in Australia for example, our eastern temperate-zone rainforests don’t peak in their annual CO₂ drawdown rates and ecological complexity until after some 200 years of regrowth, following some destructive clearing event. in 200 years we might not even have a liveable climate so that’s a long time to wait to get back to what you had. .
another thing is that forest products management of native forest tend to clear fell and burn in austrlaia such that degrowth is limited to one or a few limited regrowth euclyptus speciaes that most support their commercial agenda. regrowth forests managed for commercial interests tend to be cultivated as monocultures. ecologically barren as far as Koalas, owls, all manner of marsupials like gliders, echidna. are concerned. the trees and other plant community species that support fauna and insects supporting fauna are eradicated by design. can take hundreds of years for them to return.
when you do the math, as many ecological experts have in papers and reports available in the literature and pointed to by conservation groups like the Dogwood Alliance, it’s really clear that burning forests for biomass doesn’t stack up either in GHG accounting terms or in ecological terms.
i could go into a heap more detail but not the place for it. i would welcome a Dr Volts episode devoted to the false accounting of biomass incineration. i can recommend forest ecologists and campaigners who are across this material as guests.
Biofuels in general are sketchy, including low carbon fuels. On paper they sound like magic, but they are not. This is fossil fuel industry and forestry industry greenwash story all the way. I agree that a Volts deepdive would be useful.
i can recommend some ecologists who have done a lot of research on the false accounting of BECSS/biomass and the ecological devastation that results from clear felling old growth forest for pellets. and also the ultimate loss of drawdown potential of plantations vs old growth forest with complex ecological tiers.
Fantastic interview! Strongly agree with the governor's point, "The one thing I would suggest is to find a way to share your story with the broader public. I think this is really important. Because when I look at this whole climate change issue, you don't win arguments based on despair and gloom. You just don't. You win arguments based on confidence and optimism and a can-do spirit of a cleaner and healthier future that we know we can build if we put our minds to it. And so helping people to develop that vision where they can see the future coming, that's the most important thing we can do here."
and you completely ignore issues to leave them get worse by “bright siding” issues and doing things like greenwashing biomass incineration which is what Governor Jay did in this very interview.
Great interview! One person asked a question and alluded to an initiative that is intended to restrict the 'nation-leading' energy code from advancing. The initiative is 2066. The really insidious part is that it prevents governments from even 'discouraging' gas and gas appliances in homes and businesses. An interpretation could be that if the state energy code required homes to have a certain level of efficiency that encourages electric heat pumps, and that means a gas line is less likely to be installed, it may be considered to discourage gas use. https://www2.sos.wa.gov/_assets/elections/initiatives/finaltext_3177.pdf
Another person asked a question about embodied carbon in codes. California has embodied carbon reductions in codes (CalGreen) in force as of July, Vancouver BC has the Vancouver Bylaws that includes embodied carbon reductions. We passed Buy Clean/Buy Fair in WA, but that is only for public buildings. The legislature passed a proviso in 2024 for the state building code council to study embodied carbon in codes for applying to all buildings of a certain size. There will likely be a bill in 2025 on embodied carbon in codes that could do for embodied carbon what the legislature did in 2009 (RCW 19.27A.160 which is set a 70% energy use reduction goal by 2031), which is to set a future target for significant embodied carbon reduction. People are starting to work on bill language for it.
WA is awesome (I live in Tacoma and love it). Inslee has been a great, under appreciated governor and I really wish he wasn’t retiring, though of course he’s earned it. I will disagree about the WA initiative system: it’s absolutely terrible and is often used by special interests to pass awful policies that they can’t get through the legislature. I suspect Inslee agrees but didn’t want to say so. If I could change anything about WA, reforming the initiative system and adding a state income tax (while cutting the very regressive sales tax) would be at the top of my list. Neither has any prospect of happening anytime soon, but a girl can dream….
Great interview and questions. I have a real problem with the concept that burning wood pellets is a zero carbon energy option. Taking the only real carbon capture method that we have in the world and converting it to avoidable CO2 emissions is a thoughtless carbon accounting trick. It is similar to the concept of low carbon fuels (which are fossil fuels spiked with biofuel generated from crops) in this sense. Oil and forestry industries have the same great PR machines: In British Columbia Drax is reported to have converted old growth trees (not just slacs waste) into wood pellets for burning. If implemented ethically, wood pellets and biofuels might have been a good invention 15 years ago when we did not have EV's and heatpumps and cheap solar and, but now they represent destructive and obsolete compromise solutions. I'm a bit shocked no one sees through the scam.
biomass incineration was never a good solution. for the utility power sector. the ecological and carbon costs are worse than burning coal. the claim that this is biogenic carbon not geological carbon is dumbed down ignorance. sorry but as someone who has researched this area and spoken to people who’ve formally investigated these accounting tricks and written peer reviewed papiers on it i’m not a fan. and as you say RE and fuel switching to electricity is the hope for today, not incinerating our forests.
great question about biomass incineration by Drax et al @56:30
Unfortunately the response Governor Jay offered was anything but expert in quality. his answer is as over-simplifying as one might expect from a coal plant owner (looking to diversify into biomass incineration) or a six year old child.
biomass from clear felled forest is not a “circular return” of forest carbon as the Governor puts it. the second part of his answer actually underlines his misunderstanding. he goes on to concede that the forest that was clear felled is no longer acting as a sink, and that remains true for most forests for decades for any “regrowth” that follows the clear felling.
a few points that Governor Jay needs to comprehend lest he keep repeating this ‘virtuous “carbon cycle” myth’ excusing ecological destruction for biomass incineration.
burning biomass pellets in power plants is more carbon intensive than burning coal in most circumstances in terms of plant emissions. (air quality emissions and public health impacts are, in many cases, worse than coal also). geological carbon (coal, fossil oil and gas) or biological carbon (biomass) isn’t any different in terms of the CO₂, CO and methane molecules that result from a combustion process (other than some obscure carbon isotope ratio stuff that isn’t relevant to this question).
we can’t aggregate historical carbon drawn down “embedded” in any given biomass to “offset” the GHG emissions from combusting it on the one hand while completely disaggregating (ignoring) the emissions resulting from clear felling forest in the first instance to make the biomass pellets you claim to contain drawdown. fossil fuel also has historical draw down biomass condensed into hydrocarbon fuels .
you either are aggregating or you ain’t, you can’t claim your carbon wins and completely ignore your carbon losses, they’re inseparable in the real world of action of forest harvesting.
as previously stated, if you are not aggregating biomass drawdown to claim biomass pellets are a clean fuel then it’s a fuel that is worse than coal for the climate (certainly worse than most coal quality). that’s clear from the data and there are papers and reports on this.
if you ARE aggregating drawdown with GHG emissions to claim biomass as a clean fuel, you must aggregate the loss of drawdown and consider the loss of drawdown over a relevant time horizon. and this is where the naive carbon-cycle accounting myths start to unravel. (same applies to livestock producers claiming their methane emissions are part of a “natural carbon cycle” that is somehow benevolent and without consequences, and it’s worse in the case of methane since it’s more potent than CO₂, → up to 1000x as potent by weight depending how you account for it).
there’s a commonly shared myth that young forests drawdown more CO₂ than old forests. even if this were true, and it isn’t, you still would have decades of denuded forest floor with very minor drawdown compared to a mature forest for the first decade or two after clear felling.
all forests are dissimilar but in Australia for example, our eastern temperate-zone rainforests don’t peak in their annual CO₂ drawdown rates and ecological complexity until after some 200 years of regrowth, following some destructive clearing event. in 200 years we might not even have a liveable climate so that’s a long time to wait to get back to what you had. .
another thing is that forest products management of native forest tend to clear fell and burn in austrlaia such that degrowth is limited to one or a few limited regrowth euclyptus speciaes that most support their commercial agenda. regrowth forests managed for commercial interests tend to be cultivated as monocultures. ecologically barren as far as Koalas, owls, all manner of marsupials like gliders, echidna. are concerned. the trees and other plant community species that support fauna and insects supporting fauna are eradicated by design. can take hundreds of years for them to return.
when you do the math, as many ecological experts have in papers and reports available in the literature and pointed to by conservation groups like the Dogwood Alliance, it’s really clear that burning forests for biomass doesn’t stack up either in GHG accounting terms or in ecological terms.
i could go into a heap more detail but not the place for it. i would welcome a Dr Volts episode devoted to the false accounting of biomass incineration. i can recommend forest ecologists and campaigners who are across this material as guests.
Biofuels in general are sketchy, including low carbon fuels. On paper they sound like magic, but they are not. This is fossil fuel industry and forestry industry greenwash story all the way. I agree that a Volts deepdive would be useful.
i can recommend some ecologists who have done a lot of research on the false accounting of BECSS/biomass and the ecological devastation that results from clear felling old growth forest for pellets. and also the ultimate loss of drawdown potential of plantations vs old growth forest with complex ecological tiers.
Fantastic interview! Strongly agree with the governor's point, "The one thing I would suggest is to find a way to share your story with the broader public. I think this is really important. Because when I look at this whole climate change issue, you don't win arguments based on despair and gloom. You just don't. You win arguments based on confidence and optimism and a can-do spirit of a cleaner and healthier future that we know we can build if we put our minds to it. And so helping people to develop that vision where they can see the future coming, that's the most important thing we can do here."
On that front, podcasts and blogs are great ways to spread can-do stories. One climate-related podcast I recommend is: https://www.avocadogreenmattress.com/pages/a-little-green-podcast
And a climate-related blog I recommend (full disclosure: I write) is: https://www.cleanprosperouswa.com/latest-news/newsletter/
and you completely ignore issues to leave them get worse by “bright siding” issues and doing things like greenwashing biomass incineration which is what Governor Jay did in this very interview.
Great interview! One person asked a question and alluded to an initiative that is intended to restrict the 'nation-leading' energy code from advancing. The initiative is 2066. The really insidious part is that it prevents governments from even 'discouraging' gas and gas appliances in homes and businesses. An interpretation could be that if the state energy code required homes to have a certain level of efficiency that encourages electric heat pumps, and that means a gas line is less likely to be installed, it may be considered to discourage gas use. https://www2.sos.wa.gov/_assets/elections/initiatives/finaltext_3177.pdf
Another person asked a question about embodied carbon in codes. California has embodied carbon reductions in codes (CalGreen) in force as of July, Vancouver BC has the Vancouver Bylaws that includes embodied carbon reductions. We passed Buy Clean/Buy Fair in WA, but that is only for public buildings. The legislature passed a proviso in 2024 for the state building code council to study embodied carbon in codes for applying to all buildings of a certain size. There will likely be a bill in 2025 on embodied carbon in codes that could do for embodied carbon what the legislature did in 2009 (RCW 19.27A.160 which is set a 70% energy use reduction goal by 2031), which is to set a future target for significant embodied carbon reduction. People are starting to work on bill language for it.
Wile overall a solid conversation, I was disappointed by his dodge of the congestion pricing question.
Very much doubt this will be his last!