How do you know all this?
I know a lot of things, Paul.
Welcome to County Connection,
the official podcast of the Washington State Association
of Counties, where we dive into the legislative issues
shaping the future of our communities.
From budgets to public safety, infrastructure to elections,
we'll break down what's happening in Olympia
and how it impacts counties from across the Evergreen State.
Stay informed, stay engaged, and join us
as we amplify the voice of Washington's 39 counties.
Welcome back, everybody, to Episode 2
of the County Connection podcast.
I'm Paul Jewell, Government Relations Director
for the Washington State Association of Counties.
And I'm back here this time with Kelsey Hulse.
If you don't remember from our last podcast
where Kelsey introduced herself, she is brand new
to the WSAC policy team. Kelsey, how are you doing?
I'm doing great. Are you implying that people
aren't binging these podcasts and just listening to them back to back?
Well, I think that, you know, the one or two people
that have heard them so far probably are super familiar
and have memorized them.
But yeah, for the for maybe some new listeners
who are just getting started with us, I wanted to make sure
that they knew who who they were listening to.
Hi, new listeners.
Yeah, it's great. It's great to have them.
It's great to have you.
We're now in week two of the legislative session.
You know, we were just here a few days ago.
It feels like kind of doing our introductory podcast,
talking about what to expect.
It feels like that's a long time ago already.
How are you holding up?
I like to say that session is just one big squishy day.
So it's sort of hard to divide it up into periods of time.
But fine. I mean, we got a lot of days ahead.
The pace of it, I think, feels a little short session to a lot of people.
So feels like there's kind of an early sprint going on right now.
It does feel that way, doesn't it?
And for those who maybe aren't familiar with Washington's
legislative sessions, we have a we have a biennial legislative session,
which is a two year session.
And we're in the first year of that.
The first the first year is always our long session, which is one hundred and five days.
And then the second year is only a 60 day short session.
And the reason we say that the long session is feeling more like a short session
is because the legislature, while traditionally the short session
was only really for doing budget updates and maybe some policy follow ups,
they've really turned it into almost a full session like the long session.
But they try to cram it in those 60 days when it's really compressed.
And so it feels like you're sprinting right from the very beginning.
Whereas the long session, even though it's longer, usually the pace is slower.
But that really doesn't feel that way this year, does it?
Yeah. A lot of people are telling me the same thing.
So what do you what do you want to chat about today?
I'd love to talk a little bit about energy.
There's a lot happening in that space, both policy wise and just changes in leadership.
We're going to have a big influence.
So that we touch on that.
Yeah, there's actually a lot going on recently.
Today's Friday.
We had the inauguration of the new president
this week as well.
And there's a lot of energy news on the national scale, too.
So this is really good timing for us.
Yeah. And I think one of the things we can highlight or touch on at this point
is that there still is a lot of unknown, which we talked about last time I was here.
But one of those pieces is just how the federal policy changes.
Federal landscape is going to influence what happens here in Washington state.
Large energy facilities are all regulated by the federal government.
So the Bonneville power system is all owned by the federal government,
run by the federal government.
So there's a lot of federal influence over the system as a whole.
And so seeing how that plays out with Washington's priorities
and goals is going to be going to be really interesting.
Well, in Washington has a really strong clean energy agenda.
A few years ago, we passed the Clean Energy Transformation Act,
also known as also known as CETA, which requires all energy
marketed, utilized in Washington state by I think, is it 2054, 2045
to be 100 percent clean.
And a lot of that depends on new development of alternative sources
of energy like wind and solar and others.
The biggest ones being right now wind and solar.
Of course, energy storage is also becoming more of a thing.
And the legislature right now is looking at small scale reactors also.
So nuclear energy.
But really, the big strides have been made in the last year
in wind and solar.
The Trump administration is looks like it's switching gears on its energy policy,
which is really interesting because I would think that our really
ambitious goals around clean energy are really going to depend on a lot
of the federal subsidies and incentives that have been coming down
that encourage the development of those new energy producing facilities
like new wind farms, like new solar farms.
You know, it'll be interesting to see over the next few years
how the change in federal policy does or doesn't affect the change
in our state policy.
Yeah, I think that's a great point.
And one thing that I've noticed is that there, while we've got some bills
that are moving in the legislature that have to do with setting up
some sort of a transmission authority and a couple of those bills
also have some element that speaks to the financing piece
and where that financing comes from.
I don't actually think that's a real barrier in the energy space so far.
We've seen a lot of companies and a lot of people who are willing
to put a lot of money behind these developments.
So I think we will continue to see that as long as there is a place to sell
that renewable carbon free energy, which at least in Washington state,
there will be a market for it.
So it'll be interesting to see how the change in preference around energy type
kind of collides with the desire to let market-based solutions come about
and to start working in the landscape.
And so I'm not sure how that tension will play out,
how that tension will change what we see in terms of energy development
in the near term, but it's certainly something to watch.
Well, I think tension is actually a good word for it.
When you think about the energy system, it's already really complex.
A lot of people really don't understand how it works,
how energy produced actually gets into the grid system
and where it goes and how it's directed and who manages that.
But for the last several years,
our policies have really been aligned on a national level.
Now they're not going to be, but you're right,
there still will be a market in the Northwest and specifically in Washington state
because even though maybe some of the financial incentives
and some of the support on the federal level has gone away,
I don't see our policy really changing.
I don't really see a huge shift between the Inslee administration
and the Ferguson administration in that just because those federal subsidies go away,
just because those federal incentives go away,
that Washington is going to say, OK, we're going to switch gears too.
I think we're probably going to stay the course in many ways,
which creates that demand that you're talking about and that market that you're talking about.
What will be interesting is we have traditionally enjoyed
a pretty inexpensive power market here in the West, really since inception.
One of the lowest kilowatt hour rates nationwide,
maybe even globally in some of our areas.
And a lot of that is due to the federal investment that occurred
as part of the New Deal really under FDR
and all the projects they did on the Columbia River,
building out the hydro capacity and otherwise.
It will, you know, without continuing subsidies,
without those federal incentives, the financial incentives,
but with continued demand for the power,
are we just going to get more expensive power than we've had in the past?
And are we going to have to kind of change our mindset a little bit
in what we expect to pay for that resource?
Yes, probably.
In the interest of full disclosure,
I'm a former Puget Sound Energy employee,
but I'm also a Puget Sound Energy customer,
and they just announced an 18% rate increase on the electric side of the business.
So I live in an all electric house.
That's, you know, that's a pretty substantial rate increase,
not something that we used to see at all.
Very substantial.
And part of that, the reason that it is so large is, you know,
compliance with some of these new laws.
So because this is law in Washington, you know, that piece is not going to change.
So we will have to get used to thinking a little differently about it
as we're paying more for the types of resources that we've decided that we want.
There's nothing like getting home and getting that envelope,
cracking that thing open and seeing that letter that says,
you get the right to enjoy an 18% utility rate increase.
Welcome home.
That's part of the reason I have 52 solar panels on my roof was
I have lots of feelings about solar panels,
but really I saw them as a hedge against increasing energy prices.
Yeah.
Because we pay, you know, we pay for less kilowatt hours
because our home needs less of them.
Sure. You're doing the whole net metering. Correct.
Program. Sure.
That's been in place for a long time in Washington state.
And a lot of people think that that distributed generation type program
with smaller scale solar and wind power, you know, on rooftops and parking lots
and other spaces is actually the real future of energy production, even globally,
that we're we don't have enough land.
We don't have enough resources to really justify putting together these huge,
massive plants on the scale that globally that we're going to need in the future
if we completely get off of fossil fuels to renewable resources.
So we're going to have to do a lot more of that.
And you see it in a lot more communities, but that's kind of off the point a little bit.
Let's come back more to kind of statewide policy.
How do you see the state kind of maneuvering in this new reality
under the Ferguson administration and under new leadership over
at the Department of Commerce, who is usually pretty involved
in this industry from a state agency perspective?
I think, yes, that's that's exactly right.
We've got a new new governor, new policy shop there.
There are less folks in that policy shop that are focused on energy and climate
than we saw in the previous administration.
Not clear what that's going to mean exactly.
But I think part of it is that we do have somebody who's very energy
focused now in Director Wynn leading the Department of Commerce.
So watching how the governor's office and the Department of Commerce
are going to work together to try and solve some of these massive challenges
that have been certainly identified and something we've been aware of for a long time,
but certainly are, I would say, coming to the fore just in the last few years.
And I'm speaking about challenges around resource adequacy, for example.
We just don't have the power that we're going to need, particularly
as we watch the proliferation of AI and the amount of energy
that's required for those tools.
Yeah, aren't they saying aren't they estimating that Washington's
going to need like 90 percent more power in 20 years?
I think that's the number than we have now.
Right. And that number just keeps going up, right?
Because we're only at, I think, the very beginning of understanding
what AI can do, but also what it will cost us.
And so we've already got there are, you know, county based public utilities
out there in Washington and other utilities who when companies come to them
and say, I'm going to, you know, I want to locate in your service area
and I'm going to need this much power.
They're already saying we don't have it.
You don't have it to give it to you.
So.
And that was never the case in the past.
This is a new problem that we're dealing with.
And we're watching as this demand for energy is going to
rapidly increase in the future.
We have not been able to build out resources to meet that.
So that is that sort of confluence of AI and the energy demand around that.
When you couple that with electrification of everything else.
I drove an electric car here today.
Right.
When you add that to it and the fact that we haven't been building
large generation resources for the most part, we've got some, but certainly
not on the order of magnitude of what we need.
Those two things kind of come, come, come into conflict.
Right.
Yeah.
And it's not just generation either.
Right.
It's transmission to the transmission infrastructure that we have now was built,
you know, 50, 60 years ago to, you know, carry loads that were a lot different
than we need today and a lot different than what we're going to need in the future.
And of course they were built when there was a lot less population.
Right.
So it was a lot easier to locate that type of infrastructure,
much more difficult today.
I was talking with some other folks in the power industry and they were
talking about Eastern Montana and the potential for Eastern Montana from a
wind perspective, they were calling it the Saudi Arabia of wind because it
blows so much there and the spaces are just wide open, but they can't build
the capacity that they want to because they don't have the transmission
capability that they need.
And it's, and they need that transmission, that transmission to come out of
Montana and come to the West.
And I imagine a lot of our communities are going to be asked at some point in
the near future to consider being locations for pretty massive, scaled,
you know, high capacity transmission lines and new lines, not just adding
to the ones that are there or maybe improving the ones that are there, but
even adding new lines and new locations.
Are you hearing the same thing?
Yeah.
And even if you're talking about kind of adding lines to existing corridors or
existing right of ways, which has been a big part of the conversation, you know,
every wire can only carry so much power.
At some point you're going to need bigger wires or more wires.
And as those get bigger, or there are more of them, you've got to build
larger towers and if you've got a larger tower, you need a, you need a larger
setback from, you know, tree line and vegetation setback from those wires.
And the farther you go, the more you lose in conveyance loss, right?
Correct.
Yep.
Because it just, you lose some of that power as it travels along those wires.
Yeah.
I think there was a desire or a hope that sort of reconducting or making
better use of the corridors that we already have was going to be an answer
to, to kind of solve the problem.
Yeah.
Maybe put big tower, bigger towers there, or maybe put more lines on the towers.
Yes.
And that is probably still going to require cutting millions of trees to
widen those corridors.
And especially if you're talking about an East West corridor, you know,
perhaps across the Cascades.
So that's something that I think is hard for folks to wrap their heads around
just logistically how that would work or what it would look like.
But you're right.
It's going to impact a lot of communities if for no other reason, the linear
nature of the infrastructure you're trying to build, right?
It's a big, long straight line that's going to cut through a whole bunch of stuff.
Interesting.
So when, when we think about how this is going to affect counties, you know, we,
we just were chatting about transmission.
Obviously counties make up every square inch of Washington, and they're
every inch of Washington state.
You know, there's some county somewhere and those lines are going to have to go
somewhere and those lines are going to cross counties.
And so we're definitely going to have some involvement there or be asked to
host, you know, those, those transmission lines in our communities.
But what else are we going to see, you know, kind of in the future around energy
policy in Washington, you know, that's either similar to what we're seeing now
or maybe even not similar to what we're seeing now.
I'd start by saying that I've been encouraged as I'm reviewing bills that
have come out so far that every one, I think without exception, that deals with
energy and energy infrastructure also includes language about local governments,
including local governments in the conversation, include making sure that
local governments are benefiting from anything that's going to be cited in or
around their communities.
I think that's a really positive thing and something that, you know, we want to
encourage more of.
But I think to your previous point about distributed generation, my understanding
is that we'll see a bill around
DERs, distributed energy resources, so small
batteries and other kind of sources of energy.
So DERs will be a thing, you know, community solar, we've seen one bill drop.
I think there's at least one more on the way.
So there's a variety of those kind of smaller tools that are distributed, could
be based in every community, could provide some value to, you know, members
of communities across the state, almost regardless of location.
So we'll see a lot of that democratization, I suppose, of the energy
and the generation picture as well.
Interesting. Well, so that's the small scale stuff.
You think we're going to we've seen a lot of that in recent years.
You think we're going to see even more and maybe some different kinds.
Like you said, the energy resources, so small scale battery storage.
What about the larger projects?
Do you think we're going to we're going to continue to see development
at the same level? Do you think we're going to see development at a greater level?
What are your predictions?
I think we're going to see a real seriousness around development.
I think all of these projects take a very long time, typically,
even in the best of circumstances.
And so there is more conversation right now about how we
how we think about large scale resources than I think there's ever been,
you know, since I've been in Washington.
So I think, you know, we're seeing bills to kind of amend
FSEC and the way that FSEC works and the, you know, how it operates,
the kinds of projects that it can approve.
We're seeing more conversations around nuclear power, whether it's big nuke or small.
Just more. The volume of it is more.
And I think particularly on the transmission side,
there's a real seriousness and an urgency to the conversation
that we haven't seen before.
So you mentioned FSEC.
That's the first time you've mentioned it in the podcast today.
For the listeners who don't know what you're talking about, what is FSEC?
FSEC is the Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council.
Yeah, that's right.
So it's kind of an interesting acronym.
It doesn't sound it doesn't sound like that when you say it, but it's EFSEC.
Right. So Echo Foxtrot.
I can't remember what the S is.
Echo Charlie.
If you're using the most of it, you're using the phonetic alphabet.
And what is what is this council?
What do they do?
FSEC has been given the authority to cite large scale energy projects.
So they have an evaluation process.
They make a recommendation to the governor
and they essentially have the power to authorize projects to move forward.
So even if they aren't compatible with local codes around land use
and zoning and development, right? Yeah.
Yeah. So and sometimes that's a rub with our members for obvious reasons.
Yeah. But also at the same time, you can understand why at a statewide level,
when you have a statewide policy and you have things like transmission lines,
major transmission lines that might need to cross different jurisdictions,
why in some cases you may need a statewide permitting agency
like the Energy Facility Site Evaluation or Siteen Evaluation Council
so that you could expedite those permits in a way that, you know,
doesn't necessarily allow every local jurisdiction to kind of have their say in their way.
Yeah. I mean, I think it's fair to say that we've got a big statewide problem
that we have to solve and somebody's got to have a focus on that. Right.
How do we solve this this problem that this is generational in nature?
Right. We've never seen anything like this before.
Hopefully, we will make some bold steps and we won't just be talking about it forever.
But I think it's fair to say that you have to have entities and agencies.
And that's kind of the job of the state government, right, is to keep in mind
the best interest of the state as a whole, which is a tough thing to do because it does, again,
you know, we talked about tension before, but it will always exist in tension with
the needs, wants, desires and preferences of local communities.
Yeah. I mean, that's another really appropriate time to use that term tension.
With a lot of our members, you know, some have had a really good experience with
the council and the siting process. Some have had mixed reviews and others,
you know, would tell you they've had a really negative experience.
And I think the rub really comes where the, you know, the state has placed communities in a position
where they've created a statewide planning framework that really requires a ton of robust
public participation and decision making. It's not a top down approach where the legislative
authority just kind of dictates, you know, zoning and land use codes and development codes.
There really is this very lengthy and very thorough public process that the community
has to go through in deciding kind of, you know, what it wants to be, you know, envisioning not
just how it is today, but where it wants to be in 20 years, right? Looking out at a 20 year window.
And then, you know, suddenly they get an application for something like a wind farm or
several wind farms or a solar farm or several solar farms or a transmission line that can screw
all of that up or really change how that might look. And they have no ability to shape that
project or stop that project. Because at the end of the day, this siting council, the energy
facility site evaluation council, which exists for a good reason, also can undo and undermine
those plans. And that can that's where that tension is and where some of our members really
feel pretty negatively about the process. A lot of the bills that we're seeing this year,
and we've seen in recent years, meaning within the last two, are really trying to make it easier,
in my opinion, to develop these projects, given even more authority to the council
and trying to, you know, speed up that permitting process. You mentioned that you're seeing a few
bills this year, they're mentioning local governments and the involvement of local governments.
Are they kind of slowing down some of those processes or are they trying to find ways to
kind of have the best of both worlds? I think there's a realization that we can't continue
doing exactly what we're doing. That's not working. So I think that extends to the that tension that
we talked about between entities like FSEC or the state and local governments. So I think the
signals that I'm seeing is that are that there is a desire to perhaps take a step back, reset a
little bit and figure out how do we find a way forward that can work for everybody, right? It's
not going to be everybody's favorite option, but we've got to find something that gets us where we
need to go without alienating, separating, dividing, you know, communities and folks apart. So I think
that what we're seeing is a recognition that these systems need to work better together and that I
think is what a lot of the leadership that we've got right now is going to be really interested in
working on. If we're going to meet our clean energy goals, the ones that the state has set out for
itself, then we're going to need a lot more of this clean energy production to come online, which
means more facilities, more transmission lines, more solar panels, more wind turbines, you know,
maybe small scale nuclear, maybe geothermal, who knows what the next technology will be. You know,
there's some new pump storage projects that are being proposed out there and likely to be created.
Hydrogen. Hydrogen is another one for sure. So without a doubt, we're just going to need more.
So finding a way to make this work better for everybody, I think is in all of our interests.
And I'm glad that we're seeing some legislation that's pointing in that direction.
Yeah, I think it really does come down to the right thing in the right place, but it's not
going to be a single solution. It's going to be all of them, right? It's going to be some blend of
all the things we talked about, whether it's the smaller, the smaller, the smaller, the smaller
batteries and community solar projects and rooftop solar and that the small scale stuff
and the large scale stuff coupled with, you know, things like conservation and energy efficiency
and, you know, demand response and some of the other programmatic stuff that can be done to help
either reduce the amount of energy that we're using overall or make it easier for the resources
we have to meet the demand that we need. Well, it's good stuff, Kelsey. Thanks for coming by. I just
love talking about this stuff. I feel like we could be here forever if we didn't artificially
put an end to this at some point, put our listeners out of their misery a little bit.
Well, thanks for coming by, Kelsey. Great topic today. A very interesting conversation. Once
again, I know I've said this a few times on other podcasts, but I learned a lot today. I feel like
every time I have one of these conversations, I just get a little bit smarter. I doubt that's true
for you, but I think that you, I think I'm glad you came in anyways. We'll see you in a couple
weeks. Hopefully we'll have something more to chat about. I'm sure we will. Looking forward to it.
All right. Take care till then. Thank you. Thanks for tuning in to County Connection. Stay in the
loop by subscribing to us through your preferred podcasting app and following us on LinkedIn,
Facebook, and Instagram. And don't forget to join the hub, your go-to source for the latest news
and updates from the Washington State Association of Counties. Until next time, stay connected and
stay informed.