Good morning.
Welcome, everyone.
My name is Jessen Farrell.
I am the director of the Office of Sustainability and Environment.
And on behalf of the city of Seattle, I am so excited to welcome you here today to have the mayor of Seattle, Bruce Harrell, sign our legislation building emissions performance standards into law.
So let's give a big round of applause for that.
So I am so thrilled to be here today.
Everyone knows that this was a long road to getting to a place where we are going to be decarbonizing 4,000 buildings of our largest buildings in Seattle to get to net zero by 2050. I cannot underscore what a big move this is on behalf of the environment.
on behalf of addressing the climate crisis.
This will reduce emissions from our building sector by 27%, and it will do an overall emissions reduction for our city by 10% by 2050. So this is a really big deal, and I am just going to say thank you to every single person who was involved in this.
So to I'm going to be our master of ceremonies today, so I'm going to help move us through.
I'm going to start by introducing our mayor of Seattle, Bruce Harrell, who has been such a stalwart champion of this legislation and this policy.
I just want to remind us that this was an issue that he campaigned on.
This was an issue that he highlighted in his state of the city address in January as a key objective to getting done in 2023. And we're just pulling it off.
And so I just want to say a huge thank you to him because this is a complicated policy.
There are a lot of stakeholders.
There are a lot of buildings that are involved.
And his willingness to really stand up and say this is something we are going to do is absolutely what kept us on track on this long and bumpy but ultimately successful road.
So with that, let's give a huge round of applause to our Mayor Bruce Harrell.
Thank you, Director Farrell.
Had to take the long way around there.
I have a lot of thank yous to make, but I'm going to save that good part till the end.
So let me just share a few words to echo Director Farrell, just in my friend's words.
This is a landmark achievement, not necessarily for our administration, but for the city.
You know, I've been dealing with a lot of the faces that I see for over 12 years, leaders, community activists, strong, effective advocates.
And so what I, to some extent, asked my administration to do was, in leadership, sometimes you can get out of the way.
and let the voices of the community, the climate warriors, if you will, lead the way.
That's been our leadership style.
There are times to be very vocal and very, I don't want to say argumentative, because my wife's not around, so if she says I'm being argumentative, I think, well, let me put it this way.
She's always saying I'm argumentative, so after three decades together.
But in all seriousness, it has been the community that stepped up to allow us to do some of this great work.
This represents a real milestone in our efforts to address the climate crisis, to create clean buildings, and most importantly, to create green jobs in building healthy communities.
It reflects our commitment to work together to do this kind of hard work and to protect and create a healthy city.
But quite candidly, the coalition that you see, that you feel.
The coalition between building owners and environmental leaders, community activists, labor activists, affordable housing advocates, all standing together.
A few of us, many of you were together a couple of days ago with the governor and state legislators talking about the Climate Commitment Act.
And I will be presenting this legislation.
I serve on the Executive Board for the U.S.
Conference of Mayors, and I also am a part of the African American Mayors Association as well, and some other groups.
We're going to share this legislation with leaders across the country.
that we think that this is where we need to head.
We have strong state leadership, strong county leadership.
And indeed, with your work, our city is on the map for this kind of work that we're doing.
We understand fully that these buildings that you can see are one of the largest and fastest growing sources of climate pollution.
Interestingly enough, that wasn't easily or readily identified in the climate discussions 10 or 15 years ago.
We sort of knew it intuitively.
But when you look at these buildings being responsible for more than one-third of our city's greenhouse gas emissions, this was not part of the conversation.
It needed to be, and it became part of the conversation.
That's why it's critical that they are part of the solution.
I effectively call the building emission performance standards BEPS.
B-E-P-S sort of rolls off the tongue, so I'm going to refer to it as BEPS.
but it's through smart policies like BEPS that will result in Seattle having some of the cleanest and most energy-efficient buildings in the country.
Now, this is a critical step, again, to advancing, I think, what we all are passionate about, saving the planet, saving our air, saving our water for the next generation.
As we transition off of fossil fuels, it becomes equally important again that we are creating local, good-paying, union, clean energy jobs at all levels.
And let's give that a hand.
We, in this fight against climate change, we try to leave no one on the field, so to speak, from our refrigeration mechanics to our insulation contractors to electricians to sheet metal workers, engineers, architects.
These are all high quality, high paying jobs.
They can't be outsourced.
They have to be done here and will directly benefit Seattle area workers and residents.
And so that's why this critical collaboration, critical sort of ecosystem of people and advocates become so critical in this work.
The city is leading in these efforts to decarbonize our own buildings as well.
And so I should note that Seattle Municipal Tower recently became fossil fuel free and we adjoin 10 other buildings in this commitment of similar size in downtown Seattle that are now decarbonized.
So buildings like the Seattle Municipal Tower and those right behind me, can show us that decarbonization is possible to build a healthier future for those who live, work, and play here.
Now, I have a few thanks, as I would say, but I also want to note that our charter responsibility, when I talk about safety and saying that I have to keep everyone safe, you know, health and safety are like first cousins.
If someone is safe and they're sick, well, we have failed in our commitment to the next generation.
And so what I'm most passionate about is making sure that every person from every walk of life are safe and they're healthy.
And so this work, again, it was just proud to be side by side or shoulder to shoulder with some of these great leaders.
So I'm just going to call out a few.
And first, I'm going to thank Director Justin Farrell and the staff at the Office of Sustainability and the Environment, who spent just quite frankly years listening to the coalition of stakeholders to design this legislation and get it passed.
They never gave up.
They always had their North Star.
They were tireless in their efforts, and I want to thank Director Just and her crew.
Let's clap on that one, please.
And again, the environmental advocates, labor and housing partners, building owners and community organizations and so many more.
We have a very ambitious and achievable plan for clean buildings.
All of you represented here today and those who couldn't make it, thank you for your quite frankly, your passion in getting this work done.
I want to thank Deputy Mayor Audium Emery, who is out of the state right now.
She couldn't be here today, but Dan Nolte on our team and especially Krista Valles from our office.
Where are you, Krista?
We never recognized your efforts.
Thank you.
Your passion in getting this work done is, for you, because I know it's more than a job, it's what you're passionate about, so thank you.
And of course, I want to thank the City Council, Council President Juarez and Council Member Herbold.
I want to say, I'm going to introduce Councilor Herbold in a minute.
And I say this word with nothing but affection, her tenacity in getting this done.
is, I think, what we needed at the council level.
Her creative thinking, her environmental leadership, she found a way to get it done.
And in my conversations with Councilmember Herbold, and she will be missed, she said she wants to get this done.
She was passionate about it, and she always has been.
And so it's really my honor to not only welcome Councilmember Herbold to the podium now, but to publicly thank her for her strong leadership, not just for this legislation, but for years.
I've got to save something, because I'm supposed to save something later today at a party.
But thank you, Councilmember Herbold.
Hello, everybody.
So first, I just want to say a lot of times legislation comes to the council and it's characterized to be a grand bargain.
But once we get into the deliberations, we find that there are parties, stakeholders who still really felt that the legislation wasn't fully baked.
Well, this wasn't one of those times.
And that's why we were able to get this through in such a short period of time.
And that's why departing council members had the honor and the privilege and the opportunity to bring this historic legislation to a close in the last weeks of many of our time at the council.
So it's really, this is truly a political hat trick and it could not have been so.
if it was not for the work of the mayor's office, the mayor, OSC, and the stakeholders who have come together and realized how important it was to do something now so we can start on implementation next year.
You know, and those stakeholders, as the mayor has said, is everybody from environmental advocates to building owners to labor to affordable housing developers.
You know, everybody truly coming together and saying this is the version of the bill that we want.
made it possible for us to do this huge piece of legislation in two committee meetings.
It's not something, unless you follow the council really carefully, you may not be aware, it's not something that happens very often at all.
And the symbolism of this legislation at this moment is powerful as well.
At the international summit yesterday, the COP28 summit, nearly 200 nations just agreed, however imperfectly, to transition away from fossil fuels.
And we also are taking that step here today.
Addressing greenhouse gas emissions is one of the greatest challenges of our time, and we must, of course, take action at every level of government, including our local municipal level.
In Seattle, we experienced the impacts with extreme heat, drought, forest fire, haze during the summer, and even autumn, these weather patterns have become normal.
King tides are more of a threat to our coastal communities, including folks in my district in South Park.
And these king tides are due to sea level rise due to greenhouse gas emissions.
Some of the most moving comments that we have heard from the public during the council deliberations about this legislation have come from parents and grandparents.
testifying that their children and grandchildren are their inspiration for supporting this legislation.
And my grandchildren are mine as well.
I'm proud to have had the opportunity to answer the call from the mayor, the Office of Sustainability Environment, and all of the advocates to sponsor and shepherd this legislation through the council in our last weeks of 2023. And of course, I thank Mayor Harrell, the Office of Sustainability, Director Farrell, and all the advocates for the diligent work that they've done getting us across this finish line.
Thank you.
Thank you so much, Councilmember Herbold.
We are so appreciative of your just tireless leadership on helping get this over the finish line.
So truly, thank you.
You know, I want to just say a moment and thank the members of the OSC team.
Why don't you raise your hand if you are here?
You know who you are.
This team.
is truly extraordinary, and literally every single member of the OSE team helped do this.
We conducted 140 stakeholder meetings.
Sometimes people decry the Seattle process, but this is the Seattle process to create a great piece of legislation that has action attached to it.
And it's because of the deep listening of the team at OSE, and so we're just so grateful for you.
And so now we're gonna hear from some stakeholders.
I would love to introduce Patience Malaba, who is at the helm of HDC, and has been such an important voice in representing affordable housing.
Let's give her a round of applause.
Good morning.
It's a great day in Seattle, everyone.
I hope you are celebrating as much as I am.
As introduced, I am Patience Malaba with the Housing Development Consortium, and we are a membership association of the major affordable housing developers across King County.
The passage of the building emissions performance standards policy for us is a giant leap forward.
It's getting us closer as a step to a clean energy future, and doing so while we're preserving affordability in under-resourced buildings and creating healthier communities.
In the face of exacerbated climate impacts, there is a need for housing solutions that embrace social justice, that embrace environmental sustainability.
I must underscore, affordable housing is crucial, but so is addressing the ever-growing climate crisis.
And with this policy, we are tackling climate change simultaneously with ensuring that we're building resilient, healthy communities for the future of our residents in Seattle.
So this is truly a rare moment where we get to make substantial progress at the nexus of critical issues.
And to Mayor's point on calling this policy BEPS, BEPS is truly that policy that does that.
But I want to take a moment and express my heartfelt gratitude to Mayor Harrell for his leadership.
Mayor, your ability to get things done is truly admirable.
And we're immensely grateful for all you do on this issue and so much more.
Round of applause for the mayor for that.
I also want to extend our deep gratitude to Councilmember Hibboldt.
I cannot say the words any better than they have been said in just how tenacious, how quick you moved the legislation.
So we're deeply grateful to you.
We're grateful to the full Council for the partnership.
And we're also deeply grateful to Director Farrell.
I know we've done a lot of back and forth.
But we've gotten better, and I think our relationship is stronger because of the back and forth.
And we deeply appreciate your leadership.
And many thanks to your rockstar team at OSE that has worked with us immensely over the last almost two years in developing this policy.
I must say I am proud of the work that we did with OSE to ensure that the building emissions performance standards policy worked for affordable housing, that there was an on-ramp for affordable housing, and we've ensured that that is there.
We're now gearing up at the state level, talking to the governor's office, and securing additional funding to build on what we have here locally.
to ensure that the decarbonization of multi-family buildings prioritizes the decarbonization for affordable housing, which is where we're going to need more resources to support this work.
Our city is a leader in the nation on this issue.
Our climate action work is undertaken with the sense of urgency that recognizes that the clock is ticking.
It recognizes that we must make substantial reductions in greenhouse gas emissions over the next decades, or else the future of our children is on the hand.
It's hanging in the balance.
And that's why we do this work.
We know that the time for action is now.
The time for action is now, and we've just taken a big, giant leap as a community in Seattle.
We're paving a path for a better future for all residents, and we're building a more sustainable and equitable community.
And I am proud to stand with all of you.
Congratulations, Seattle.
Thank you so much Patience.
Before we turn it over to Katie, I also wanted to acknowledge some of our city partners who are here.
We have members of the SDCI team, the City Light team.
Could you please just raise your hands and let's give them a round of applause.
They have been so instrumental to helping get the policy over the finish line.
And they are going to be our very close partners as we turn towards implementation.
And so we're just so grateful for everything that you've done so far.
And we know we're going to get to work with you quite a bit in 2024 and 2025. So thank you for that.
So I now want to introduce Katie Garrow.
We are so pleased that She is here.
She has been such a supporter.
I see Nicole and Keith in the audience.
Labor has been such a key partner in designing a policy that is truly about creating an equitable green economy.
We talk about that a lot, but it really is about building labor, voices, investments in our workforce into the policy from the get-go.
And I really want to acknowledge the OSE team and the OED team who's working.
Why don't you raise your hands?
Our Green New Deal folks, our folks who are working on climate workforce.
Really and truly, this has been an effort that has cut across so many different voices, and we're so deeply appreciative.
So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Katie.
Let's give her a big round of applause.
Good morning, brothers, sisters, and siblings.
My name is Katie Garrow.
I have the honor of leading MLK Labor AFL-CIO.
MLK Labor represents 150,000 unionized workers here in King County in 150 different affiliate unions.
I want to thank all of the unions of MLK Labor who nearly unanimously endorsed this policy back in February of this year.
I especially want to thank and acknowledge the Electricians Union, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, IBEW Local 46, who has been a stalwart supporter of this policy since the beginning and brought the motion for MLK Labor to endorse back in February.
I also...
I also would like to thank Mayor Harrell for your leadership on bringing this policy to fruition and Councilmember Lisa Herbold for getting us over the finish line.
Workers in Seattle know that climate change is here.
We heard from teachers last summer about purple air days where the classrooms filled with smoke during wildfire season.
UPS drivers recently bargained air conditioning in their trucks because they report as hot as 130 degrees inside their trucks.
We're proud to do our part to be here supporting a policy that is pragmatic and responsible and will protect our environment for future generations of workers.
But we know that there's another positive collateral consequence of this legislation, and that is job creation.
BEPS is poised to create thousands of union jobs over its lifetime, and that is why the sheet metal workers, Local 66, tuned in to the hearing yesterday and testified in support of the legislation.
This is a good thing for all of us.
And I know that because so many environmental fights over the history of at least my lifetime have been what we refer to as no fights, no drilling, no logging.
We needed a yes fight.
We needed a heat pump installation fight.
And I know this really intimately because I was a fourth-generation Hoquemite.
My family worked in the woods for four generations.
My father was a boilermaker in the mill, my grandfather worked in the mill, my uncle cut cedar shakes, and my grandmother built chairs using lumber from our forests on the Olympic Peninsula.
In the late 1980s, a federal regulation came down that limited logging production and 60,000 people, mostly men, who were breadwinners for their families lost their jobs.
They supported hundreds of thousands of women and children.
In its wake, there was no economic revitalization plan.
There was no heat pump to go install.
What was left were long unemployment lines, jobless men, and unfortunately in the years to follow, Purdue Pharma to try and treat our back injuries and our hopelessness.
And while the decision to limit logging was necessary for the future of our forests, and I can say that now, it had a deeply damaging effect on the place that I come from.
And so that is why it is so important to me as a labor leader that here and today within our environmental policies, there are also plans for job creation.
There are also plans to reduce the racial wealth gap and to ensure that people from marginalized communities have economic opportunities within these new jobs to retrofit buildings here in Seattle.
And that is something that BEPS does.
And so I can confidently say that it is in the best interest of the labor movement to support policies like this.
And so long as I am the leader of MLK Labor, we will be a partner in proactive, smart, environmental policy that also keeps in mind and centers the best interest of workers.
Thank you for the opportunity to be here today, and thank you for the opportunity to be a part of such an impressive coalition.
Thank you so much, Katie.
I would now love to turn it over to Deepa, who has been such a stalwart, just voice of keeping the climate crisis centered as we are designing this policy.
And I see so many environmental and climate activists in the audience.
I see Northwest Energy Coalition and Sierra Club and RMI and 350. Why don't you all raise your hand if you're part of an environmental organization.
We're so grateful for you.
So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Deepa.
Let's give her a round of applause.
Hi, everyone.
My name is Deepa Sivarajan.
I am the Washington local policy manager at Climate Solutions, which is a local nonprofit working to accelerate clean energy solutions to the climate crisis.
It's really great to be here today.
Since 2020, along with many other climate advocates, I have been working in cities and counties across Washington to tackle the problem of greenhouse gas emissions from buildings.
As Mayor Harrell mentioned, for many folks, even those of us deeply involved in climate work, building emissions have been a relatively new focus in the past several years.
And working to reduce them created new challenges, but also new opportunities to take advantage of our increasingly clean electric grid.
Clean, safe, highly efficient electric heat pumps not only help to reduce our emissions, but also do not emit harmful air pollutants like nitrogen oxides, particulate matter, and carbon monoxide, all of which are emitted when we're using fossil gas.
Electric heat pumps also provide cooling alongside heating, which helps protect our health during the increasing smoke and heat events that we're having in the summer.
This is crucial for our communities of color and low-income communities who already face disproportionate harm from climate impacts and air pollution.
The COVID-19 pandemic intensified these risks since exposure to these air pollutants increases the chance of adverse health impacts from COVID, something that is especially close to home for me as I have been living with long COVID for a year and a half.
Over the past several years, Seattle, which is my lifelong hometown, has been a leader in Washington on policies that tackle the use of fossil fuels in buildings, including passing the strongest energy code in the country in 2021 for new commercial and large multifamily buildings, which served as a model for similar action in other local jurisdictions like Shoreline, Bellingham, and King County, and eventually for clean residential and commercial energy codes across the state.
Having mostly addressed the problem of fossil fuels in new buildings through these codes, Seattle now continues to lead by passing the first policy in the state to help move existing buildings to net zero.
This policy is necessary for Seattle to meet its climate targets, as well as helping to achieve Washington's statutory greenhouse gas reduction targets of reducing emissions 95% from 1990 levels by 2050. The city's commitments to establish an early adopter incentive program, amp up their buildings accelerator, and spend at least 40% of the revenues from the BEPS on communities most harmed by environmental justice is also crucial to helping frontline communities transition to clean energy.
Thank you so much to Director Farrell and OSC, to Mayor Harrell, to Council Member Herbold and City Council for working so hard on this policy and collaborating with us and other key partners in the climate, labour and affordable housing worlds including of course HGC and MLK Labour Council who have been key partners but also to the Sierra Club, 350 Seattle, Shift Zero, RMI, Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility, Unite Here, IBEW, Stand.Earth, the Seattle Green New Deal Oversight Board, and many, many more.
Together, I think that we all worked really well to ensure that the policy is as equitable, effective, and enforceable as possible.
Seattle's BEPS is one of the strongest BEPS policies in the country, and we're already hearing interest from other cities in Washington who might want to use Seattle's policy as a model.
I look forward to continuing this work both in other parts of the state and in Seattle, where there's still work to do on existing buildings, but where we've made an absolutely fantastic start with the BEPS.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
And I'm going to close us out, and we'll move to the signing.
But before I do, I really want to acknowledge all of the work of owners and operators of the largest buildings in our community.
We spent countless hours sitting down, talking through how to make this legislation actually implementable.
Because at the end of the day, this isn't about just standing up here and patting ourselves on the backs.
It's actually working with the 4,000 buildings to get to net zero by 2050. And that's going to require deep dialogue, technical expertise, education, and in some instances, particularly like affordable housing, resources to help everyone get there.
And so I just want to really emphasize that the spirit and intention of this law is really to help everyone get there.
It is not punitive.
It is about collaboration and working in partnership.
And I think that the coalition and the process that we've embarked on has really shown that.
And I just want to really underscore that publicly.
So with that, we are going to now turn to the mayor who will sign this legislation.
All right.
And I think why don't we have folks come on up and gather around?
Those were some fire speeches.
There we go.
Good thing it's fast, Harold.
All right, Beppas' Law.