Good news! E-Bike Rebates continue!

Posted on March 25, 2026 by Al Bergstein

Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) are relaunching WE-bike on March 30. This e-bike rebate program makes e-bikes and certain cycling accessories more affordable for people in Washington state.

People living in Washington ages 16 and up can apply for rebates between March 30, 2026, and March 29, 2027. The program will randomly select applicants monthly starting April 13. Applicants only need to submit one application to be considered for the monthly selections.

Rebates alone will likely not fully cover e-bike purchases. Recipients can reduce the overall cost of e-bike purchases at participating bike shops by $300 or $1,200, depending on income eligibility. They can put rebates toward qualifying models of all three classes of e-bike.

To apply for a $300 rebate, you need to live in Washington state, be at least 16 years old, and have a working email address.

To apply for a $1,200 rebate, you also need to have an income at or below 80 percent of the median for your county. In Jefferson County the Median income is $74,048. 80% of that is $59,238. So many younger people likely could apply for this rebate here in the county.

Qualifying e-bike types

The rebate can be used for qualifying e-bikes, e-cargo bikes, and adaptive e-bikes.

E-bikes have batteries, working pedals and a motor. E-cargo bikes are for carrying cargo or multiple people. Adaptive e-bikes provide extra support or stability.

WE-Bike helped nearly 3,000 Washingtonians purchase e-bikes and related safety accessories in our 2025 pilot program.

University of Washington researchers learned rebates motivated people to buy e-bikes they couldn’t or wouldn’t have otherwise, especially people in lower-income households. Nearly half of rebate recipients surveyed said they used e-bikes to travel to new destinations. In all, we offered rebates to 6,861 out of 37,751 applicants from all 39 Washington counties.

Program funding

This grant program is entirely funded through Climate Commitment Act revenues. The CCA supports Washington’s climate action efforts by putting cap-and-invest dollars to work reducing climate pollution, creating jobs and improving public health.

Other ways to try e-bikes

E-bike lending library pilot program

While many people are interested in e-bikes, not everyone will be able to receive a rebate through the WE-Bike program. People also may not be ready or able to purchase e-bikes for various reasons.

Programs like e-bike lending libraries can help more people try out e-bikes.

Eligible organizations and businesses in Washington state may apply for funding to create lending library programs for employees or communities.

Here’s the website:

E-bike rebate program

Filed under: Alternative energy., Alternative Transportation, Bicycles, Clallam County, Jefferson County, legislation, Mason County, Washington State | Tagged: , , , | Comments Off on Good news! E-Bike Rebates continue!

Washington’s last coal power plant will transition to natural gas – Washington Standard

Posted on December 11, 2025 by Al Bergstein

The Washington Standard is reporting on the conversion from coal to natural gas for the Chehalis power plant. The roots of this go back to the 2000s, when People For Puget Sound (I was a board member and lobbied for our legislative priorities) , The Sierra Club and many other environmental groups started lobbying to shut down the plant.

Finally, almost 20 years after we started the efforts we are just now seeing the conversion discussed as happening soon. There was no mention in the article about *when* the conversion would happen, only that it *is* going to happen. The company (a Canadian firm) waited until the very last month of the very last year before they would have legally been mandated to announce the conversion rather than the shut down of the plant. It has to be asked whether or not the Legislature, in their 2011 agreement couldn’t have simply pushed the deadline to 2012 and we could have seen the coal particulate gone 13 years ago? How many more cases of cancer did we see and have to pay for medical bills between then and now? We’ll never know.

Obviously, this shift to natural gas, another fossil fuel, only minimally reduces our need on those fuels or the harm to the environment. It does reduce the particulates in the smoke that causes cancer, but continues to accelerate our slide towards an unstoppable global warming scenario.

Once again, our politicians acted with no urgency, in the benefit of a foreign corporation who exploited their lack of urgency to the last minute they could. Wonder how much lobbying money went to the swing votes in that legislation? Again, who knows. Those politicians are long gone, maybe even to the company itself. It is no wonder that the voters continue to see little value in the political class who seem undermine every effort to protect the environment and take the lobbying money thrown at them by the very people they are supposed to be protecting us from being harmed by their industries.

“And so it goes.” Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five

Filed under: Alternative energy., Climate Change, Environmental Law, legislation, Politics, Washington State | Tagged: , , | Comments Off on Washington’s last coal power plant will transition to natural gas – Washington Standard

Rosario Strait Tidal Energy Project

Posted on August 2, 2024 by Al Bergstein

The Hyrdo News has reported that “Orcas Power & Light Cooperative (OPALCO) has submitted a preliminary permit application to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for the Rosario Strait Tidal Energy Project (P-15368)”. The application is proposing the project just east of Blakely Island.

Rosario Strait courtesy of Bing Maps

The preliminary permit is looking to study and possibly implement a tidal turbine that could generate as much as 5.7 GWh of electricity, approx. 5% of the current capacity needs. “The proposed project would serve as a pilot project to test the capacity of Rosario Strait for tidal turbine technology that supports OPALCO’s microgrid. The Orbital O2 device proposed for use in this location is a floating tidal turbine with a 245-ft-long hull and twin rotors suspended underneath. The device is 165 ft wide including the span of the blades underwater. When operating, the Orbital O2 sits about 90 ft deep in the water column and floats about 5 ft above the waterline and 7.5 ft below the waterline.” – Hydro News

OPALCO was selected by the Department of Energy for Phase 1 grant funding to explore the development of a tidal generation project in San Juan County. The funding is to explore the feasibility of this pilot project. An upcoming workshop will go over the various aspects of this project including the technical and logistical considerations involved.  This will be on August 27th via Zoom if you are interested to learn more and ask questions. 

Here is the link to the upcoming public Zoom meeting: https://opalco.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0pdO-urD8pGtCqSdkfRoIz-P_Grbv7x6sp#/registration

Orca researchers have expressed concerns about putting a turbine in the location where endangered Orca’s routinely travel. At this point apparently none have been consulted.

These are the issues we face as we have to make very difficult choices away from the clear and present danger of the use of fossil fuels to the unclear choices of renewable resources from wind to tidal energy. We have no time left to make hard decisions that are going to become even more harder or draconian as the next few years bring larger wildfires and melting ice caps that soon will accelerate the loss of shorelines across the globe. According to virtually all global climate scientists we are passing the point of no return now taking us into a future that may bring the end to democracies like ours if not human civilization as we know it. As the election of Trump a few years ago and his near tie in the current election, as people grow concerned, they often throw complex solutions out of the window and turn to fascism or a ruler who promises that he is the “answer” to their concerns. We should not forget that this country, like Saudi Arabia is captured by our ever-growing need for more oil and gas, and our politicians find themselves having millions of dollars of campaign contributions by the oil and gas industry as they continue to do everything they can to stop a move to renewables (though they claim natural gas is also renewables and even the Democrats parrot this). This is not a time to move slowly! But across the U.S. we are seeing locals work to stop or slow renewable projects. We also see corporations and their allies in various oil and gas industry NGO’s use words like “so called Climate Crisis”. Are they not watching thousands of homes destroyed every year in California, Canada and Colorado, to name just a few of the more forest fire active locations as the planet warms and hits new record high temperatures every year?

I would ask the opponents of this project who are from the green side of this debate to bring forward a list of suitable sites to locate a project like this if they don’t like the existing site. In 2013 the Orca Conservancy brought out a petition to oppose the Admiralty inlet site, saying the site was “unsuitable” but they never proposed an alternative site. Since it seems every site proposed by either wind or tidal projects is “unsuitable” it’s up to the green alliance to tell the corporations where they would like to see these sited so we can move more quickly. As an environmental activist I am frankly very frustrated with opposition without clarity of alternatives. As stated above, there is no time to waste!

I hope that the project planning for this will bring aboard at least one Orca research scientist to represent what may be a show stopping concern for this project. A similar project off Whidbey Island some years ago also ended up in failure for some of the same reasons.

The full article in Hydro News is here.

Filed under: Alternative energy., Around the Salish Sea | Tagged: , , , | 2 Comments »

Washington tribes seek to pause offshore wind development – Axios Seattle

Posted on July 30, 2024 by Al Bergstein

Axios Seattle is reporting that Washington Tribes under The Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission have asked for a pause in the planning for the offshore wind farms along the Washington coast while the tribes concerns are addressed. The Tribes are not asking for a total ban on the farms but have environmental concerns they say have not been addressed.

Worth noting is that the farms are in the very early stages of permitting by the Federal Government.

As Axios notes:

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has received two unsolicited lease proposals for offshore wind farms along Washington’s coast.

  • One, from Trident Winds, would cover an area of about 315 square miles about 45 miles off the coast of Grays Harbor and Pacific counties.
  • The other, from Hecate Energy, seeks to lease 403 square miles in a nearby area about 17 miles off the coast.

Both these farms are planning on wind turbines with virtually no impact on the visual look of the coast, but the concerns are more about their impacts on fishing and whales.

As stated in an earlier blog post, this blog along with the stated goals of the tribes in the article is to support wind energy projects, but “not on the backs of the tribes”. The assumption is that the wind energy companies can provide reasonable scientific backing for their proposals. The east coast has implemented wind energy farms much closer in than the proposed Washington coast project, with no signficant impacts. Some of the background on those efforts are found here:

BOEM Completes Environmental Analysis for Proposed Wind Project Offshore Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New York | Bureau of Ocean Energy Management

Comparison of Environmental Effects from Different Offshore Wind Turbine Foundations (boem.gov)

The Institute for Energy Research does have this conclusion to the New England wind farms. It appears that high interest rates, which are impacting the sales of electric cars, are also impacting the implementation of wind energy. Note the concerns in bold:

While a few offshore wind projects have gotten off the ground and have started producing electricity, others have been canceled, often with developers occurring fines. Developers have canceled several projects along the East Coast, saying they were no longer financially feasible. Offshore wind projects have struggled to surmount rising construction and material costs, as well as serious manufacturing problems. In recent months, rising materials costs, high interest rates, and supply chain delays have prompted project developers to cancel or try to renegotiate power contracts for commercial-scale offshore wind facilities in the United States with operating start dates between 2025 and 2028. Offshore wind facilities are among the most expensive utility scale power projects under construction in the United States and would not have gotten off the ground without massive support from state and federal governments and pre-approved power purchase agreements. With the cancellations that have occurred, President Biden’s goal of 30 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity by 2030 is expected to be half that amount.

New England Is Moving Ahead with Offshore Wind Facilities, Despite Their Cost – IER (instituteforenergyresearch.org)

The wind farm built by Avingrid has started producing 68 Megawatts of power to Massachusetts since then.

A good scientific reearch paper on the subject was produced by Nature:

Reviewing the ecological impacts of offshore wind farms | npj Ocean Sustainability (nature.com)

Microsoft’s CoPilot produces this summary of it’s search on the topic:

Wind farms in New England, particularly offshore wind projects, have both positive and negative environmental impacts.

On the positive side, the development of the New England Wind lease area is projected to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by nearly 4 million US tons annually, which is equivalent to taking approximately 700,000 cars off the road each year during the lifespan of the project1. The New England Wind project is expected to generate up to 2,600 megawatts of electricity, sufficient to power more than 900,000 homes with clean renewable energy23.

On the other hand, there are potential negative impacts associated with the construction and operation of wind farms. These can include disruption to marine life during the construction phase, potential collision risks for birds and bats, and changes to the seascape that can impact tourism and fishing2. Research is being conducted to prevent environmental damage4.

It’s important to note that the specific impacts can vary depending on the location and design of the wind farm, and measures are often put in place to mitigate potential negative effects. For example, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) completed an environmental review of the proposed New England Wind project offshore Massachusetts3. This review process is designed to carefully analyze the environmental impact of the proposed project3.

In conclusion, while wind farms can have some environmental impacts, they also play a crucial role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and providing a source of renewable energy. It’s a balance between managing these impacts and transitioning to cleaner energy sources to combat climate change.”

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Washington tribes seek to halt offshore wind farms – Axios Seattle

Filed under: Alternative energy., Clallam County, Climate Change, Environmental Science, First Nations, fisheries, Olympic Peninsula | Tagged: , , | 4 Comments »

Wind energy surpasses coal use

Posted on July 9, 2024 by Al Bergstein

More good news. In April, wind power generated more electricity than coal for the second month in a row, according to the latest available data from the Energy Information Administration. Wind briefly surpassed coal once before in April last year, but this time it’s by a much larger margin and for two consecutive months.

It was inconceivable to me 20 years ago that we would be at this point today . I didn’t believe that we would get here this quickly. This is one of the reasons why I support efforts for wind energy off the coast of Washington. We have no time to lose in fighting climate change, and the rising levels of CO2 in our atmosphere. It is threatening our very existence and virtually every scientist in the planet is in agreement with this. There are certainly downsides to every single project possible but the need for generating more electricity everywhere we can in an environmentally neutral way has never been more important.

The next time you hear of wind energy project and hear objections to it. Please be willing to be open minded to the bigger picture as to why this is needed.

Filed under: Alternative energy., Global Warming, Olympic Peninsula | 1 Comment »

What’s better: Electric Cars or Combustion Cars?

Posted on May 27, 2024 by Al Bergstein

Interesting podcast by Living Planet out of Germany. An in-depth look at the environmental costs of both kinds of autos, and the answers might surprise you.

On the road to a carbon-free future, a lot of drivers are facing a tough dilemma: Is it worth switching to an electric car if the gas-powered car I have can still run a few more years? Is the environmental footprint of an EV really that much better? We spoke to several experts about the upside and downside of e-mobility from range anxiety to charging infrastructure and more. Click here to listen.

The URL is

https://www.dw.com/en/whats-better-electric-cars-vs-combustion-cars/audio-69160469

Filed under: Alternative energy., Environmental Science | 2 Comments »

Wind Energy Growing

Posted on April 20, 2024 by Al Bergstein

More good news on the wind energy front. The naysayers from PR firms working for global big oil always said that we’d never get enough energy out of the wind to make it valuable. Latest stats show that we’re getting over 10% of energy from the wind in the U.S. and new installed capacity nearly doubled in one year. The capacity shown on the far right is enough to supply over 22 million homes with electricity in this country. An oil free future is coming whether they like it or not. The chart provided by my favorite stat blog, Chartr.

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