SPOKANE, Wash. – The Washington Department of Ecology is facing scrutiny after a recent report revealed significant errors in the calculation of carbon dioxide (CO2) reductions.
The report is designed to detail how the Department of Ecology has used the $1.5 billion in revenue generated from the State’s Climate Commitment Act.
The report also details how the investments have contributed to reducing the state’s CO2 emissions.
The errors have raised concerns about the effectiveness and accuracy of the state’s climate commitment efforts.
The report, which was released the day before Thanksgiving, caught the attention of Todd Myers from the Washington Policy Center.
Myers originally noted a significant discrepancy in the cost of CO2 reduction projects from the agency’s press release.
“The cost to reduce CO2 using these projects was 40 dollars a metric ton,” Myers said. “That’s really low. By way of comparison, the previous year it was 1400.”
Myers then began investigating the projects. He found eight projects that appeared to have unrealistic costs.
“I found projects that were $1 per metric ton,” Myers said. “There is not a project in the world that costs $1 to reduce a metric ton of CO2.”
Further investigation revealed that these projects accounted for an overestimated reduction of 7.5 million metric tons of greenhouse gases.
The Departments of Ecology and Commerce acknowledged a data entry error in their report.
The corrected data now estimates a reduction of only 78,000 tons of emissions over the lifetime of those 8 projects.
In One case, Myers identified a project in Ellensburg, which installed heat pumps and appliance upgrades in 170 homes.
According to the report, Myers says this was inaccurately reported to have reduced state emissions by 3.5 million metric tons.
“Anybody that knows about this data and about these projects should have looked at that number and recognized that there was something wrong,” Myers said.
The Department of Ecology plans to update the report in January 2026 after further data review. Myers, however, remains critical, noting that the report overestimated carbon reduction by as much as 84%.
“They have to admit, actually we’re nowhere close to as effective as we claimed we are,” Myers said. “So do they change policy? Do they change approach? They should.”
