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When I travel to Portland it’s almost always on the train, which delivers me to the Pearl District. The Peal has been much hailed as an example of comprehensive planning, financing, and redevelopment. On my most recent train trip my reading included a recent report that found that the North Pearl District has all the right ingredients to move ahead with district energy. The North Pearl District might be able...

A plan to create a dedicated source of funding to help pay for projects to clean up and control stormwater died in Olympia. The polluted runoff that pours off roads, roofs, and highways is the number one source for the toxic chemicals that foul Puget Sound and is a key pollution source for waterways throughout the Northwest. The proposed legislation would have slightly increased a state tax that’s already applied...

It sounds deadly boring to most people, but the idea of a Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) is an exciting one to me. Imagine a way to acquire, develop, and operate large-scale property investments using securities. Now do I have your attention? But first, what is a REIT anyway? REITs were originally developed in the early 1960s, and they were designed—oddly, when we think about it now—to spur investment in...

California’s nascent cap-and-trade program appears to be threatened by a ballot measure that is both substantively idiotic and yet diabolically clever. Basically, the measure would suspend implementation until California’s unemployment rate declines to below 5.5 percent. Financial backing comes from oil companies and other big polluters. Shocking, I know. Anyway, it’s a stupid idea on the merits because, apart from one industry-funded study, detailed analysis has shown that the bill...

This could have been an April Fools post, except that it’s not a joke.  On Monday morning, Bloomberg News reported that the financial whizzes at Seven Days Ahead, a firm that gives market trading advice to hedge funds and banks, were predicting that oil prices would fall this week: Crude oil’s two-month rally is unlikely to continue after the commodity slid under a so-called Fibonacci level, according to technical analysts...

In part II, I described the extraordinary growth of electric bikes in China, which grew from novelty items in 1998 to almost one e-bike per ten people today. What caused this growth? What can we learn from China about overcoming the Northwest’s four barriers to e-bikes? The economic context of e-bikes is radically different in China than in the Northwest. In China, most buyers of electric bikes are stepping up...

Washington Policy Center, a right-leaning think tank, is shopping around a legislative memo opposing an increase in the state’s hazardous substance tax. The memo is riddled with errors, including two big ones. First, WPC claims on page 1: The state would collect new revenues by increasing the tax rate on hazardous substances imported into Washington. This would increase gas prices by four to six cents per gallon. That’s false. And it’s obviously...

The Seattle Times is opposing an increase to Washington’s hazardous substance tax, for two reasons: The tax applies to hazardous substances that are manufactured in Washington but sold out-of-state; In the next couple of years, not all of the money will go to clean up pollution. Let’s take these one at a time. First, the reason it’s a good idea to tax hazardous substances manufactured in Washington is because they tend to...

Why does energy efficiency matter? Jobs—Comprehensive energy efficiency retrofits to existing buildings can create thousands of new jobs in Washington State, reduce carbon emissions, and at the same time save money for struggling families and small businesses alike.  How many jobs? A Washington State University analysis found that retrofitting 1 million homes in Washington could create 43,000 new jobs across the state—reducing the unemployment rate by more than a percentage...

It’s a huge challenge to clean up the nasty water that gushes through gutters and into Washington’s rivers and bays. But cleaning it is essential to reaching the region’s goals for saving Puget Sound. Legislation was just proposed in Olympia that takes an important step towards solving our stormwater woes. House Bill 3181 and Senate Bill 6851, called the “Clean Water Act of 2010,” would boost a tax that’s already...