Environment & Sustainability

To prevent a 19-story apartment building long in the works, a group of Belltown residents are trying to stop code updates to Seattle's Living Building pilot program. The purported risk of bird deaths headline the group's laundry list of concerns.

Carrying nearly 20% of King County Metro boardings, the trolley fleet has been a workhorse of Seattle transit for 84 years. But oddly, trolleybuses have not been a focal point of Metro's plan to electrify its fleet.

Mayor Bruce Harrell and Governor Jay Inslee were on Thursday's program at Bloomberg Green Festival hosted at the Seattle Center. Both touted local leadership on environmental issues, even as that work remains tenuous.

Electrifying port infrastructure and traffic is already slow-moving at the expense of nearby communities, and in the absence of clean energy regulation for ports in Washington, these projects heavily rely on funding from the contested Climate Commitment Act. 

With permit applications for new apartment buildings still down in Seattle, the Harrell Administration is hoping to hit the brakes on a planned ramp-up of additional energy efficiency requirements in new buildings.

New York City's decongestion pricing program has hit an unexpected roadblock with the state's governor unilaterally imposing an indefinite pause. But decongestion pricing holds...

Part 2 of this four-part series examines arguments against focusing on land use in climate policy and provides counter arguments. Ignoring land use changes and relying on electrification alone is a slower and riskier path to decarbonization.

The Low Income Housing Institute won the bid to develop Sound Transit's surplus site near U District Station. The project will bring 160 affordable homes in a 12-story tower that is slated to be the state's tallest mass timber building.