[Vision2020] Washington Best State

Tue May 14 09:29:56 PDT 2019

US News and World, 5/13/19

SEATTLE — That Washington
<https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/washington> state boasts a booming
economy is hardly a shock. The state is home to Amazon.com, after all, and
a mature tech sector led by Microsoft. Washington apples, wheat, hops and
grapes feed and inebriate the world. Boeing Co. aircraft circle it.

But Washington has a supercharger: power.

Cheap, climate-friendly electricity drives Washington's economy, the
nation's fastest growing, according to the U.S. News' Best States ranking
of economic growth
<https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings/economy/growth>. The
tech-heavy state's expectedly strong broadband network sits atop one of the
nation's best electrical systems, one well-positioned as the country shifts
away from coal- and natural gas-generated electricity. The state expects to
be coal-free by 2025, while still charging rates among the nation's lowest.

Aging hydroelectric dams provide most of the electricity Washington uses or
exports, but windmills and solar arrays are increasingly common sights on
the arid rolling hills east of the Cascade Mountains. Gov. Jay Inslee, the
state's leading clean energy evangelist-turned-presidential hopeful
<https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2019-04-17/for-jay-inslee-a-methodical-buildup-to-a-long-2020-campaign>,
describes those projects as doubly fruitful: Customers get clean energy,
and rural residents get economic opportunity
<https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings/opportunity/economic-opportunity>
.

"Washington state is an example of how climate action and a strong economy
go hand in hand," Inslee told U.S. News & World Report.

"Renewable energy projects create significant new revenues for rural
communities where most of these projects are sited," said the governor,
whose bid for the Democratic presidential nomination centers on climate
change. "New wind development projects in Washington generate millions of
dollars in annual lease payments; much of it goes to small rural
landowners."

*A Tech-Sector Powerhouse*

Cleaner power is increasingly a priority for large businesses, particularly
those in the tech sector. That sector's growth in and around Seattle has
made the state a hub for invention while drawing droves of young, educated
workers. Seattle-headquartered Amazon dominates e-commerce and cloud
computing globally
<https://www.usnews.com/news/the-report/articles/2019-03-15/elizabeth-warren-democrats-put-big-tech-in-the-2020-spotlight>,
while a resurgent Microsoft
<https://www.usnews.com/news/cities/articles/2019-01-17/microsoft-pledges-500m-for-affordable-housing-in-seattle>
and rapidly expanding life-sciences sector
<https://www.cbre.us/research-and-reports/us-life-sciences-clusters-2019>
that includes startup stars Adaptive Biotechnologies and Sana
Biotechnologies are generating new technologies at a rapid clip.

Older corporate powerhouses founded or headquartered in the Seattle area –
Starbucks, Costco, T-Mobile and Boeing – have been eclipsed by Amazon,
whose recent growth remade Seattle's downtown core and recast its skyline.
Washington’s gross domestic product growth rate – 5.7 percent in 2018, the
highest in the nation – is largely thanks to that tech expansion, which has
driven up real estate values.

In the state, the tech sector's long-term annual growth rate tops 10
percent, said Chris Green, an assistant director in the state commerce
department. But that measure actually undersells the tech boom's impact.

"The explosion in applications of machine learning, data analytics and
automation has extended into all sectors, which has created an accelerating
impact," Green said via email.

"Tech giants bring talent to the area," he continued. "Those with an
entrepreneurial bent find a thriving startup ecosystem to support them."

It follows, then, that the state ranks highly – third in the nation – for
economy <https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings/economy> in U.S.
News' latest Best States rankings. It also places No. 2 for infrastructure,
No. 4 for health care and No. 4 for education. Washington's showing in
these categories also helps it achieve the overall No. 1 ranking among
states this year.

*Infrastructure, Opportunity Challenges*

But despite the top 5 placements, each area shows deficiencies in access to
high-quality systems: Washington lags in opportunity, ranking between
Alaska and Kentucky at No. 19. And, while the state's infrastructure ranks
second in the nation thanks to strengths in energy and internet access, its
transportation system is middling and average commute times are among the
longest in America.

Necessities, particularly housing, are beyond the means of many workers in
booming areas of the state. An acute lack of affordable housing has been
accompanied by yearslong waits for subsidized rentals in the Seattle area,
where roadside greenbelts and sidewalks are packed with tents and shanties.

Growth has proven to be a mixed blessing, said Taylor Hoang, a Seattle-area
restaurateur who founded the region's Ethnic Business Coalition.

"If I really look at the scale, I would say it tips a little more to the
positive than the negative," Hoang said. "But civic leaders have a huge
challenge and responsibility to make sure the scale doesn't tip the other
way, and I think we're somewhat on the verge of that at the moment."

While it will remain a cornerstone employer for the region, Amazon has said
it has no plans to expand inside Seattle's city limits. The city may well
be full from Amazon's perspective, but a tiff in 2018 that saw Seattle City
Hall pass
<https://www.usnews.com/news/healthiest-communities/articles/2018-05-14/seattle-backs-tax-on-companies-like-amazon-to-help-homeless>
and then immediately withdraw a headcount-based tax on employers did
nothing for relations between the company and city leaders.

*A 'Leaky' College Pipeline*

Regardless, Washington continues to train and draw young workers. State
students are among the nation's best in eighth-grade reading and math test
scores as measured by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, and
come to their college degrees with less debt than most.

The state's universities, particularly the University of Washington, are
both an educational force and an economic driver as Washington's innovation
economy flourishes. Despite expansions in key initiatives like the UW's
computer science department – a world-class program, expected to double in
size in coming years – the state lags when it comes to converting high
school graduates into college students.

The state has "a leaky pipeline," said Paul Francis, executive director of
the Council of Presidents, which coordinates efforts at Washington's six
four-year public universities.

"We're losing students throughout the process," Francis said. "We've just
got to do a better job of creating a college-going culture, otherwise
you're going to see business and industry continue to import people from
out of state. They're not able to meet their needs, because we're simply
not growing our own."

*An Economy Fueled by Energy and Invention*

Venture capital is flowing more freely in the state, which once badly
trailed California's <https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/california>
Silicon Valley by that measure, and Washington now ranks No. 3 in patents
granted per capita nationally thanks to inventors at Microsoft, Boeing and
Amazon.

Washington's economy has long relied on cheap, reliably available
hydroelectric power from dams on the Columbia River and elsewhere. Hydro
fueled Boeing factories around Puget Sound during World War II and at the
dawn of the jet age. It now spins servers and lights offices around the
western United States.

The state never depended on carbon-heavy electricity, and is in the process
of shuttering its last coal-fired power plant. Washington utilities are
stepping beyond the dams and boosting wind and solar capacities in the
state, which currently ranks 11th among the states in wind-generated
electricity <https://www.awea.org/resources/fact-sheets/state-facts-sheets>
and 30th in solar <https://www.seia.org/states-map>, according to trade
associations. The University of Washington
<https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/university-of-washington-3798>
recently opened a 15,000-square-foot shared "testbed" lab
<https://www.wcet.washington.edu/about/> meant to provide clean energy
businesses with open access to state-of-the-art research and development
tools.

Access to renewable energy is a priority for corporate customers such as
Walmart, Google, Microsoft and Amazon that have pledged to shrink their
carbon footprint, said Lauren McCloy, senior energy policy adviser for
energy with the governor's office. Washington-generated power is also among
the cheapest in the nation, McCloy said, offering the state a competitive
advantage when courting new industry or selling power out of state.

For customers considering cleaner energy, McCloy said, "it's both an
economic decision as well as a values-based decision."

"In Washington, we're really uniquely positioned to lead on both of those
data points," she continued. "We'll continue to be looking at resource
diversity going forward, but we obviously want it all to be clean."

Thanks to three large wind farms east of the Cascades, Puget Sound Energy,
the state's largest power company, has become the nation's third-largest
supplier of wind-generated electricity, said Ron Roberts, who directs power
generation for the Bellevue-based utility. PSE, whose 1.1 million customers
include Costco, has found a strong market for renewable, climate-friendly
electricity.

The utility now allows customers to buy into a pot of 100-percent
local renewable
energy <https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings/infrastructure>
through a 2-year-old program called Green Direct. PSE has opened up the
program to new subscribers twice thus far, and Roberts said the energy
inventory sold out swiftly both times.

"There's a pretty large appetite in the region for renewable energy," he
said. "When we look at investments, we continue to look at investments that
align with our customers' needs and wants and desires. Obviously, a
carbon-neutral form of generation fits in to that."

*New Developments on the Horizon*

The state is also poised to lead in the development of electric grid
modernization technologies. Intelligent, efficient electric grids allow
intermittent energy generators like windmills to flourish. Two eastern
Washington-based firms, Itron and Schweitzer Engineering Labs, are leaders
in the field. Inventors elsewhere in the state hope to refine low-carbon
biofuels that can power aircraft.

Earlier this month, Washington lawmakers passed a suite of clean energy
measures that put the state on a path to a fossil fuel-free electrical
system by 2045. New programs shepherded through the state legislature by
Inslee would also dramatically expand access to electric vehicles
<https://www.governor.wa.gov/sites/default/files/documents/clean-transportation-policy-brief-bill-signing.pdf>,
support and eventually mandate energy efficiency in large buildings
<https://www.governor.wa.gov/sites/default/files/documents/clean-buildings-policy-brief-bill-signing.pdf>,
and ban “super-pollutants”
<https://www.governor.wa.gov/sites/default/files/documents/hfc-policy-brief-bill-signing.pdf>
that can do thousands of times more damage to the environment than carbon
dioxide.

In Inslee's view, Washington has shown that "cleaner is cheaper," and
stronger. The clean energy sector, by his reckoning, is growing twice as
fast as the rest of the regional economy, and creating opportunities in
areas far from coastal tech centers.

"We're as confident as ever," the governor said, "about our efforts to
speed the transition to clean energy."

Copyright 2019 U.S. News & World Report

-- 

A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they
shall never sit in.

-Greek proverb

“Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity.
Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance
from another. This immaturity is self- imposed when its cause lies not in
lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without
guidance from another. Sapere Aude! ‘Have courage to use your own
understand-ing!—that is the motto of enlightenment.

--Immanuel Kant
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