Natural gas bills going up and Washington’s CCA is to blame

Published 1:30 am Wednesday, April 22, 2026

Thousands of Cascade Natural Gas customers can expect their power bills to go up again soon, which the utility attributes to the Climate Commitment Act (CCA) and Washington’s Clean Energy Transformation Act (CETA).

The Kennewick-based utility which provides natural gas to 220,000 residential, commercial, and industrial customers primarily in Western and Central Washington, sent a notice inside power bills this month indicating they filed a March 31 approval request with the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission to collect “compliance charges and issue credits associated with the Carbon Compliance Act.”

The notice goes on to explain the cap-and-invest program is “designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 95% of 1990 levels by 2050.”

Some customers will see their bills go down if the UTC approves Cascade’s request, that is if they were connected to service before July 25, 2021. The notice indicates those residential customers will see monthly bills go down by about $1.88 per month.

For homes hooked up after July 25, 2021, average monthly bills are expected to increase by 6.28%, or $5.83 per month. That’s because under the CCA, in the name of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the state disincentives natural gas, so anyone hooked up in the last five years does receive the cost mitigating CCA credit.

As reported by The Center Square, the Building Industry Association of Washington (BIAW) backed Initiative 2066, a measure approved by voters in Nov. 2024, to make sure natural gas wasn’t phased out as an energy choice.

The measure was then invalidated by a King County Superior Court judge for violating the single-subject rule. BIAW appealed and the State Supreme Court took up the cast this past January, with a ruling likely coming this summer or early Fall.

“The increases that we are seeing right now on home heating from natural gas are a direct result of the Climate Commitment Act, which is that tax on CO2 emissions,” said Todd Myers, vice president for research at Washington Policy Center.

Myers said the utility companies aren’t to blame for the rate hikes because they are required to comply with climate goals set by the state.

“The Utilities Commission is required to grant reasonable rate increases,” he added. “They are supposed to be the advocate for consumers; however, they also have to make sure that utilities comply with law. So, what they’ve said in the past is if your costs are being driven up by the CCA, then we will approve that. We’re not going to make you eat those costs.”

If the utilities can’t raise rates to comply with CCA and CETA mandates, Myers said the infrastructure will suffer.

“We don’t want utilities that aren’t financially sound because what do they start doing? They start reducing maintenance, right? They stop upgrading pipes and pipelines and doing all those other things that we want them to do,” Myers said. “Profit is not why this is happening.”

Myers noted that in 2022, WPC tried to sound the alarm about how much power bills and gas prices would be increased to comply with the CCA.

“What the Department of Ecology did is they sent a letter to legislators saying, ‘no, no, no, it’s going to be a very low cost,’” he said. “And in that letter, they actually said that natural gas prices would go down. Now, that was absurd at the time, right? You increased taxes, the notion that that’s somehow going to cause prices to go down, was crazy, but they actually put it in writing. Now these increases that we’ve seen just show how completely inaccurate, dishonest, uninformed….that that was.”

But it is unclear if there are environmental benefits, he said.

“In the case of statewide emissions, we have no idea since 2021 because the Department of Ecology simply refuses to release the data. They have the data. They’ve told us they have the data, they simply refuse to release it,” Myers said. “When they do put out the reports, as we showed earlier this year, the benefits are very small compared to the total amount of money that is being spent.

Myers noted that those who supported the CCA and CETA should be most bothered by not seeing results despite all the money spent to supposedly combat climate change.

“Electricity costs are going up. Home heating costs are going up. Gas prices are going up. Even if you say it’s worth it, we’re still not getting what we paid for and most of the money is going to bureaucracy, government programs, or things that don’t actually yield environmental benefits,” Myers said. “I think that is where people who truly care about these things should be most frustrated about the amount of money we waste to do absolutely nothing to reduce the risk of climate change.”

Puget Sound Energy has also been raising rates due to CCA compliance with a large rate hike right around the corner.

PSE is asking the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission to approve its plan to increase its electric bill rates by nearly 30% and gas bills nearly 20% by 2029 for residential rate payers.