Cost per ton by project type

What this dataset measures

Ecology publishes project-level spending and projected emission cuts only inside a 565-page PDF. Putting the 567 line items with estimates in a table lets anyone compare cost per ton across projects and against the carbon allowance price, and check the state’s corrected totals.

Geography

Washington, United States

Unit of observation

One Appendix B line item: a CCA expenditure by one agency under one appropriation, as reported to Ecology.

Update cadence

One-time release; a new version may follow Ecology’s next CCA investment report.

Curator

FactHub Research Team

Curated data tables

Cost per ton by project type

Totals and cost per ton for each FactHub project type.

Unit of observation: Project type

categories.csv text/csv · 884 bytes

All 13 rows 7 columns Download the file

All 13 rows

category	projects	spending US dollars	tons metric tons CO2e	costPerTon US dollars per metric ton CO2e	medianProjectCostPerTon US dollars per metric ton CO2e	timesHighestAuctionPrice ratio
Industrial and clean-fuel projects	10	7178700	116828.2	61	308	0.9
Ferry hybrid-electric conversion	9	42985043	424964.2	101	58	1.4
Farms, soils and waste	45	7952702	28144.9	283	785	4
Solar and grid	71	28619648	60323.1	474	559	6.7
Transit buses and service	49	61145326	100060.7	611	3645	8.6
Home appliance and electrification rebates	50	36072855	58839.6	613	613	8.7
State agency vehicles and buildings	35	6001556	6639.2	904	253	12.8
Habitat and forests	43	9307769	9939.8	936	6790	13.2
Public and commercial building upgrades	56	33689141	21834.2	1543	4533	21.8
EV charging	124	57331417	35600	1610	1713	22.7
Walking, biking and e-bikes	46	21449564	1606.2	13354	26260	188.5
Home weatherization	26	19127851	1293.6	14787	15873	208.7
Tribal consultation capacity	3	2266778	41.9	54100	48301	763.5

7 field definitions

Field	Type	Meaning	Units	Value type
category	string	FactHub project type.	—	derived
projects	integer	Number of line items.	—	derived
spending	number	Fiscal year 2025 CCA spending.	US dollars	derived
tons	number	Projected lifetime cut.	metric tons CO2e	derived
costPerTon	number	spending / tons, rounded.	US dollars per metric ton CO2e	derived
medianProjectCostPerTon	number	Median line-item cost per ton.	US dollars per metric ton CO2e	derived
timesHighestAuctionPrice	number	costPerTon / 70.86.	ratio	derived

Supporting files

Source snapshots, manifests, quality reports, documentation, and other materials used to produce or review this release.

• possible-duplicates.csv Quality report · text/csv · 1.2 KB (1,229 bytes)

  Line items that repeat another line item’s full lifetime tonnage.

• dump.mjs.txt Transformation manifest · text/plain · 806 bytes

  Node.js script (pdfjs-dist 4.10.38) that dumps every text item with its page and position from PDF pages 63-565.

• parse.mjs.txt Transformation manifest · text/plain · 4.4 KB (4,466 bytes)

  Node.js script that rebuilds Appendix B table rows from the text positions.

• build_dataset.js Transformation manifest · text/javascript · 40 KB (40,968 bytes)

  Node.js script that assigns types and computes every table and saved analysis.

• content-parts.json Documentation · application/json · 42.4 KB (43,457 bytes)

  The dataset’s sources, tables, saved analyses, replications and statements as JSON.

Sources

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 and reproducibility

Reproducible from public sources: Download Ecology Pub. 25-14-107 (revised March 2026), run dump.mjs on pages 63-565, parse.mjs on its output, then build_dataset.js. The fiscal year 2025 sums match the report’s stated totals ($333,128,350 and 866,116 tons).

• Emission cuts are agency projections over each project’s lifetime from calculator tools, many adapted from California’s; none are measured.
• Since fiscal year 2025, Ecology has credited CCA money with a co-funded project’s whole emission cut, not a share in proportion to the CCA dollars, so cost per CCA dollar can understate a project’s full cost per ton.
• Cost per ton divides only the fiscal year 2025 CCA expenditure by the lifetime tons; projects paid over several years may report a share of tons each year.
• Many projects have other goals (resilience, health, walkability, habitat). Their cost per ton is not a measure of their full value.
• Under a binding cap, a cut at a covered emitter can free allowances for others; this dataset reports the state’s projections and does not adjust for that.
• Rows were rebuilt from PDF text positions. Totals match the report exactly, but individual descriptions may contain line-break artifacts.
• Project types are FactHub groupings, not Ecology categories.