Inslee's carbon fuels folly could halt transportation bill

You had to like that nice Christmas present, and maybe some of the extra cash with gas costing under $1.75 a gallon provided, right?

I know my wife and I enjoyed saving about $300 a month from the fuel bills that were nothing short of overwhelming eight years ago when I first started working at the Cheney Free Press in the latter half of 2007.

That’s when gas hit the mid-$4 range and the minimum 50-mile daily round trip was quite a shock to the wallet and budget. Especially for a guy who, for 25 years, rarely had to drive more than five miles each way per day to work.

Got my first overpriced Seattle Seahawks T-shirt with some of the savings so as to be properly attired at playoff bandwagon parties.

But as a strike at some refineries and other factors have helped gas prices slowly edge upward into the $2 range, it still takes less than $30 to fill my tank.

Unless that is if Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee gets his wish and end-runs his low carbon fuels initiative into law — and most certainly lawsuits.

If the governor’s wishful fantasy comes true and we start adding ethanol to our fuels in his Don Quixote quest to have Washington single-handedly combat climate change, what is accomplished and what is compromised?

From the standpoint of what can be done about pushing back at Mother Nature, realize the math that recently appeared in an Associated Press story. It said the Earth has warmed 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit since 1880.

That’s a whole .0107 degrees a year. Warming, yes, but worthy of the panic that seems everywhere?

Interestingly enough, the state of Washington is, and has already been a leader in reduction of carbon emissions. But according to a washingtonstatewire.com blog, the state produces a miniscule three-tenth’s of one percent of greenhouse gasses.

With cost estimates from consultants to Inslee’s own Climate Legislative and Executive Workgroup saying the price per gallon of gas will rise anywhere from 93 cents to $1.17 per gallon, one of the first casualties of low carbon legislation could be our roads and bridges.

Because if the low carbon fuels initiative comes to fruition, those from both sides of the aisle say it’s unlikely the Senate’s recently unveiled $15 billion transportation package, funded by an 11.7-cent per gallon bump in the state’s gas tax, will survive.

House Transportation Chairwoman, Democrat Judy Clibborn, said of all the things that could stop the roads bill in its tracks, “The possibility of a low-carbon fuel standard executive order is the biggest hazard of all.”

The specter of Inslee trying to take a back-road to deliver one of his pet green initiatives surfaced last October when he joined California Gov. Jerry Brown and recently deposed Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber, plus representatives of the government of British Columbia to promote low carbon fuel standards, vowing he’d see it through to fruition.

This concerned Senate Republican Leader Mark Schoesler from Ritzville.

“The fact that the agreement was signed with two other governors without any input from the rest of us is a complicating factor,” Schoesler told washingtonstatewire.com.

California initiated a low carbon fuels program that has been a disaster in many ways, mainly because ethanol is in short supply. Much like in Washington where in 2006 Seattle’s Metro Transit proudly promoted biodiesel use in their transit fleet. Metro quietly bowed out when the green product doubled in price to $6 a gallon versus $4.80 at the time for regular diesel.

As a way to put a roadblock in Inslee’s way, 7th District Rep. Shelly Short (R-Addy) and a member of the House Transportation Committee, helped author HB-1881 which said in part, “If we adopt any low carbon fuel standard, that decision ought to take place in a very deliberate legislative arena,” Short explained in a Feb. 20 interview.

Besides being costly, ethanol contains about two-thirds as much energy as gasoline, meaning vehicles will typically go 3-4 percent fewer miles per gallon on E10 (a 10 percent mix) and 4-5 percent with E15 versus 100 percent gasoline.

So where is the benefit to the environment from less efficient fuels?

That’s just one of many, many puzzling questions, the least of which being I thought many of our roads and bridges were supposed to have been fixed with President Obama’s 2009 stimulus?

Paul Delaney can be reached at pdelaney@cheneyfreepress.com.