HB 2020 Dies, But CUB Will Continue Work On Climate Policy

Though already adopted by the Oregon House, HB 2020 did not become law in 2019 due to the Senate Republican walk-out and inaccurate attacks on a complicated but well developed piece of legislation.

For CUB, the broad coalition of business and environmental groups and policy makers that worked tirelessly to amend and improve HB 2020 during the 2019 legislative session - as well as Oregonians concerned with the real and present dangers associated with climate change - this news is an affront to the democratic process in Oregon and to modern climate science.

HB 2020 represents the culmination of over a decade of policy development work, resulting in a well-crafted and Oregon-specific cap, trade, and invest approach to reduce economy-wide carbon emissions by mid-century. To address our changing climate and instill long-term resilience into Oregon’s economy, the bill established a comprehensive and declining greenhouse gas (shorthand: carbon) emissions cap to reduce overall emissions to 45 percent below 1990 levels by 2035, and 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. These benchmarks were based on previously adopted state goals and recent climate studies emphasizing the need for prompt action.

Under HB 2020, large polluters either would have been assigned carbon emission credits directly, or would need to purchase and could trade carbon emission credits from a state-run marketplace. Depending on their source, the proceeds from the sale of these credits would then be allocated toward further decarbonization efforts, certain transportation projects, rebates to affected households and businesses, and programs to offset the known harms to frontline communities - particularly low-income families - associated with our state’s rapidly changing climate.

CUB’s input focused on HB 2020’s energy utility provisions. HB 2020 recognized and gave credit for previously adopted mandates on our state’s major electric utilities: to remove coal from their electricity generation mix, increase renewables, and invest in energy efficiency, battery storage, and electric vehicle infrastructure. Additional decarbonization steps would have been required, but HB 2020 was designed to keep electricity bills affordable. Its facilitation of investment in transportation electrification and affordable electricity would have also enabled more households to purchase electric vehicles, thereby saving money on operation and maintenance costs.

Ultimately, HB 2020 would have represented a truly historic milestone for Oregon, in that it would have been only the second economy-wide program of its kind in the United States. Oregon’s cap, trade, and invest program was notable for its significant safeguards for both vulnerable industry groups and Oregonians more generally – but particularly low-income natural gas and transportation fuel customers.

My staff and I are deeply frustrated by this turn of events, but not only because of our work on the policy steps leading up to HB 2020. And not only because climate change is, in CUB’s organizational view, the most serious public policy issue of our time. As CUB has worked on this issue, we have become convinced that our energy systems can adapt to a low carbon future and that the technology to do so is available and affordable. What is missing is the political will by our political leaders. It is important - now more than ever - to highlight that Oregonians, and the residential utility customers CUB represents, believe that climate change poses an increasingly serious threat to our state’s economic, environmental, and social livelihood - and that the Oregon legislature must act.

This is why neither I nor my staff, nor the coalition of advocates, businesses, and committed policy makers that pushed for HB 2020 in 2019, are deterred. I am confident that we will regroup and redouble our collective efforts to implement comprehensive, consumer-first climate change policies sooner rather than later.

In the meantime, CUB will continue working to ensure that our utilities close uneconomic coal plants, make cost-effective investments in energy efficiency and renewables, support the move to electric vehicles, and take other actions that reduce carbon emissions.

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