3% of Washington's climate-project money bought cuts at or below the carbon price

What this chart asks

How much of the money, and how much of the emission cuts, came from projects that cut emissions at or below the carbon allowance price?

Why it is shown this way

• Two cumulative lines show where the money went and where the tons came from on one axis; the gap between them is the finding.
• The x axis uses cost ceilings that are not evenly spaced ($50 to $10,000) so the low-cost end, where most tons are, stays readable; points are categories, not a continuous scale.
• A line chart lets readers hover each point to read exact shares.

Chart annotations

These markers provide relevant context for interpreting the chart. Their timing or position does not, by itself, establish causation.

Highest carbon auction price through 2025: $70.86

Up to $71 (top auction price)

December 2025 quarterly settlement price for Washington allowances.

Data and accessibility

Download chart data · Open accessible table · Download PNG · Download SVG

Dataset wa-cca-spending-cost-per-ton, analysis cumulative-by-cost

Sources

This chart draws on the sources of the dataset versions it visualizes.

Washington Climate Commitment Act spending: cost per ton of emission cuts, fiscal year 2025

1. Washington Department of Ecology, Climate Commitment Act Investments Report: Fiscal Year 2025 (Pub. 25-14-107), updated March 2026 Project-level fiscal year 2025 spending and projected lifetime emission cuts (Appendix B); biennium totals and cost-effectiveness (pp. 13, 40-45).

   Retrieved November 3, 2026. Washington State public record. Curated values redistributed with attribution; the PDF itself is linked, not hosted.

   Reliability: Government. Has a stake in this finding. Ecology runs the CCA and compiles this report from figures each agency reports; it revised the report in March 2026 after errors in Commerce data. The agency benefits when CCA spending appears effective.

2. Washington Department of Ecology, transmittal letter to legislators on the updated CCA investment report, March 19, 2026 Original and revised biennium totals (8,635,900 and 1,201,286 tons; $40 and $322 per ton) and the 61 corrected Commerce projects.

   Retrieved November 3, 2026. Washington State public record. Linked as a public record.

   Reliability: Government. Speaks against its own interest. Ecology’s own account of its correction, which lowers the program’s reported results.

3. Washington Department of Commerce, "Commerce submits corrected greenhouse gas emissions data for state climate report," January 6, 2026 Commerce’s correction of eight rebate projects (7.5 million to 78,000 tons) and its own total of nearly 308,000 tons.

   Retrieved November 3, 2026. Washington State public record. Quoted with attribution.

   Reliability: Government. Speaks against its own interest. Commerce made the data-entry error and announced the correction.

4. Todd Myers, Washington Policy Center, "State CO2 report shows 86% of Washington’s claimed climate benefits are probably fake," January 6, 2026 Statement: Myers’ estimate that 86% of the claimed cuts were wrong.

   Retrieved November 3, 2026. Copyrighted; short quotation for commentary. Short quotation only.

   Reliability: Advocacy group. Has a stake in this finding. The Washington Policy Center is a free-market think tank that opposes the CCA’s design; Myers first identified the error.

5. Todd Myers, Washington Policy Center, "HB 2251, Weakening Oversight While Expanding Climate Spending," February 3, 2026 Statement: the 308,000-ton figure applied to all CCA-funded projects.

   Retrieved November 3, 2026. Copyrighted; short quotation for commentary. Short quotation only.

   Reliability: Advocacy group. Has a stake in this finding. Legislative memo opposing HB 2251 by a think tank critical of CCA spending.

6. FactHub, Washington Gasoline Price Premium and Carbon Allowance Costs, 2015-2026 (dataset version 2), auction-prices table Quarterly auction settlement prices used as the carbon-price benchmark; each price is sourced there to Ecology auction reports.

   Retrieved November 3, 2026. FactHub dataset. Cited by exact version.

   Reliability: Other. An earlier FactHub dataset; prices transcribed from Ecology auction summary reports and secondary reports citing them.

7. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Report on the Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases, November 2023, Table ES.1 Social cost of CO2 ($190 for 2020 emissions, $230 for 2030, 2% near-term rate) as an alternative benchmark.

   Retrieved November 3, 2026. U.S. federal government work. Linked as a public record.

   Reliability: Government. Peer-reviewed federal estimate of climate damages per ton; higher values make emission cuts look more worthwhile.

Limitations

• Emission cuts are agency projections over each project's lifetime, not measured.
• About 71,000 tons (8% of the total) appear to be counted twice, almost all at ferry terminals in the lowest-cost group; removing them lowers the tons line at the left.
• Covers fiscal year 2025 only; Ecology's 2023-25 total also includes fiscal year 2024 projects.
• Cost per ton counts only fiscal year 2025 CCA dollars on each line.