King County Executive Ron Sims has shown concern for and leadership on climate change and related issues for over 15 years:

In 1988, King County Councilmembers Bruce Laing and Ron Sims proposed an ordinance to establish a county office of global warming. Sims and others followed this ambitious though ultimately unsuccessful effort with a number of initiatives that have helped King County reduce greenhouse gas emissions and prepare for climate change impacts.

Executive Sims launched his "Acting Locally" initiative for global warming preparedness, and issued Executive Orders 7-5 through 7-8, which directed production of the 2007 Climate Plan (March 2006).

Executive Sims convened the Executive Action Group on Climate Change, charged with reviewing every policy, plan and infrastructure investment in light of greenhouse gas emissions and climate change impacts. The main task for this group is to develop, implement and update the King County Climate Plan, with the facilitation of a climate change program coordinator. The team published the plan in February 2007, and continues to publish an annual report (PDF) each subsequent year to report on the plan's implementation.

Greenhouse gas emissions accounting

Executive Order PHL 10-1 (AEO) of 2002 and Council Ordinance 11364 of 2000 approved King County's entrance into the ICLEI - Cities for Climate Protection program and establishment of a greenhouse gas emissions inventory. The first King County inventory was published in 2002 and updated in 2003.

King County was the first bus transit agency and first county in the United States to join the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX), a voluntary market in which members commit to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and works actively with other government members of the CCX to advocate for a United States federal cap on greenhouse gas emissions (July 2006).

The King County Department of Development and Environmental Services, in consultation with a workgroup with representation from business, local governments, the state, and the public, is developing an ordinance to implement a proposed policy that would allow King County to exercise substantive authority under the State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA) to condition or deny proposals that would have a significant, adverse impact on the environment due to their greenhouse gas emissions.

Climate-friendly transportation choices

King County has won multiple grants to fund the purchase of hybrid buses, with the program beginning in 2004. An addition in 2008 brought the total number of hybrid buses in the Metro system to 236 - one of the largest articulated hybrid fleets in North America.

King County is committed to being a nationwide leader in the commercialization of the electric vehicle technology. As a first step, it is converting four existing Toyota Priuses to PHEVs as part of a joint research project with Idaho National Labs and three other regional agencies: the City of Seattle, the Port of Seattle, and the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency. This research will collect valuable performance data that will lead to better electric vehicle technology--technology that will one day transform the automobile industry as we know it.

The county and 21 other Puget Sound cities and municipalities came together at King County's Clean Vehicles NOW! conference in September 2007 to form the Evergreen Fleets Initiative. This coalition was tasked with identifying the attributes that define a "green fleet," recommending a suite of policies and actions for standardizing these attributes, and helping fleets become more environmentally friendly. The product of that effort is the Evergreen Fleet Standard, a standard for vehicle fleets that is similar to the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards for green buildings.

Led by King County, in 2005 14 fleet departments in the state formed the Northwest Hybrid Truck Consortium. The members include: King, Pierce, Snohomish, and Thurston counties; the cities of Bellevue, Renton, Tacoma, Seattle, Kent, Richland, Bremerton, and Everett; Seattle Public Utilities and the Washington State Department of Natural Resources. They joined together to open the market for hybrid diesel-electric truck purchases, and have also served as a testing ground to provide on-the-road experience, data collection, and analysis of the new trucks.

The purpose of transit-oriented development (TOD) is to reduce the use of single-occupant vehicles by increasing the number of times people walk, bicycle, carpool, vanpool, or take a bus, streetcar, or rail. It does this by bringing potential riders closer to transit facilities rather than building homes away from population centers, which makes people more dependent on roads and automobiles. TOD makes transit investments work more efficiently by putting more riders on existing buses.

King County was a major consumer of biodiesel in the State of Washington between 2004 and 2008, as part of its leadership to mitigate climate change and advance clean energy technologies. King County has continued to invest in biofuel for transportation as feasible according to fiscal circumstances.

Land use and buildings

Executive Order FES 9-3 (AEP) of 2001 directed departments to adopt green building practices and to form an internal "Green Team" responsible for development of countywide green policies. This led to creation of the Green Tools program, and the updated King County Green Building and Sustainable Development Ordinance, which went into effect in July 2008.

Some of the county's high-profile LEED-certified projects include: King Street Center, the Chinook building, and the Shoreline Transfer Station.

The King County Comprehensive Plan 2008 Update sets the policy basis for King County to work with local governments in the region to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through the region to 80 percent below 2007 levels by 2050; recognizes the county's impact on greenhouse gas emissions from its own operations and has set an additional short term goal of reducing its net carbon emissions; and sets a policy basis for preparing the county for the impacts of climate change.

HealthScape is King County's effort to promote public health by improving how communities are built. We are continuing to build on the work begun with the LUTAQH (Land Use, Transportation, Air Quality and Health) study, and our focus remains the same. Land use patterns and transportation investments can play key roles in making communities healthier. Well-planned neighborhoods have features like connected street networks, nearby shopping, walking paths, and transit service. These amenities reduce dependency on cars, increase opportunities to be physically active, and improve air quality. As a next step, the county plans to develop tools that will help communities set priorities to promote individual health and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Under Executive Sims, King County has also preserved major amounts of forest land through purchase or acquisition, notably transfer of development rights. One primary example is the Snoqualmie Forest easement acquisition. King County's Transfer of Development Rights or TDR Program is a voluntary, incentive-based, and market-driven approach to preserve land and relocate development growth away from rural areas and into urban areas.

Clean energy and waste-to-energy

King County Executive Ron Sims issued an Executive Order in 2006 establishing renewable energy use goals for King County government operations and directed the development of a plan to meet these goals. ing County has mapped a comprehensive strategy for achieving the Executive Order goals through its Energy Plan, major elements of which include:

• Staffing an Energy Task Force representing all major energy-using departments and divisions in the county to implement the Plan.
• Broad adoption of utility accounting software to benchmark facilities and track progress towards energy goals; reporting results to Executive
• Energy policy definition and implementation to improve energy efficiency, conserve energy aggressively, and expand use of renewable energy sources.

Both the Executive Order and the Energy Plan set specific targets around energy: 10% conservation and 50% of County energy use from renewables.

King County demonstrated hydrogen fuel cell technology through a pilot project (PDF) at the South Treatment Plant in Renton, with the support of major grant funding from USEPA. The project is completed but contributed important lessons from the experience to the general state of knowledge about hydrogen technology.

King County's Solid Waste Division has embarked on a new project to generate usable energy from methane gas produced by the decomposition of garbage at Cedar Hills Regional Landfill. King County has contracted with renewable energy company Ingenco--doing business as Bio Energy (Washington), LLC ("Bio Energy")--to convert methane gas produced at the landfill into pipeline quality natural gas for use in the region. https://aqua.kingcounty.gov/solidwaste/facilities/cedarhills.asp

Preparing for climate change impacts

On October 27, 2005, King County and regional partners hosted a climate change conference. The goal of the conference was to engage a broad cross-section of Washington State governments, businesses, tribes, farmers, non-profits, and the community-at-large in a dialogue about climate change impacts and potential adaptations. With over 650 in attendance and follow-up activities underway, the 2005 Climate Change Conference delivered a road map for local governments to anticipate and adapt to changes in the following areas: agriculture, coastal areas, fisheries and shellfishing, flooding, stormwater and wastewater, forestry, hydropower and water supply. The Climate Impacts Group at the University of Washington developed materials for this conference.

King County and the Center for Clean Air Policy in Washington, D.C. launched an Urban Leaders Adaptation Initiative to exchange lessons about dealing with global warming emissions and impacts among leaders of large urban regional governments (December 2006).

With the Climate Impacts Group, King County co-authored a guidebook for regional governments on how to adapt to climate change impacts, which was published by ICLEI - Local Governments for Sustainability in September 2007.

Flooding is expected to become more frequent and intense throughout the Pacific Northwest, according to climate change scientists at the University of Washington. Warmer, wetter winters are projected to result in higher river flows over longer periods of time, which could damage levees and structures on which King County relies to protect citizens, property, transportation corridors, and the prosperity of the entire region. Information about these likely climate change impacts helped King County last year to build support and approve plans for a regional flood district funding source that will make much needed repairs over the next decade to King County's aging system of 500 levees and revetments. One of the first projects in the plan involves acquiring chronically flooded property along the Cedar River in south King County, relocating the residents of a mobile home park, and setting back the levee. These actions will reduce flood pressure on a nearby highway, help to move floodwater downstream and restore natural floodplain functions.

King County treats a significant amount of wastewater to such a high level that it can be safely recycled for irrigation and industry, and the county places a priority on making this "reclaimed water" widely available for these uses. This approach provides important flexibility for the county to plan ahead for the pressures of climate change and population growth on water supply, while also reducing effluent discharges and supporting statewide efforts to clean up Puget Sound. King County's new wastewater treatment plant, Brightwater, will use state-of-the-art membrane bioreactor (MBR) technology to treat wastewater. King County is constructing a reclaimed water distribution "backbone" from Brightwater to bring reclaimed water closer to future customers in the Sammamish Valley. This distribution system will ultimately have the capacity to carry 21 million gallons per day of Class A reclaimed water. Using reclaimed water from Brightwater for irrigation in the Sammamish Valley can replace some water now being drawn from the Sammamish River. This can keep water in the river where it will benefit salmon and other wildlife.

In July 2008, King County released a report about projected vulnerability of wastewater facilities (PDF) to flooding from sea level rise.