Testimony of Eliza Cava
Sierra Club District of Columbia Chapter
Oversight Hearing on the Department of Energy and the Environment
Committee on Transportation and the Environment
Friday, February 21, 2025
Introduction
Councilmember Allen, thank you for the opportunity to testify at this oversight hearing on the Department of Energy and the Environment (DOEE), and thank you for your strong leadership on environment and sustainability issues. My name is Eliza Cava, and I am the Conservation Chair of the Sierra Club District of Columbia Chapter. The Sierra Club is America’s largest and most influential grassroots environmental organization, with millions of members and supporters. In DC, we have about 2,100 dues-paying members and many thousands of additional supporters.
ENERGY
Healthy Homes Act and the Sustainable Energy Trust Fund (SETF)
Councilmember Allen, we celebrate your leadership in enacting the Healthy Homes Act, which established a program to provide thirty thousand low- and moderate-income households in the District with no-cost electrification home retrofits. A number of other witnesses at this hearing are speaking to the benefits of this new law, which will cut climate pollution and hazardous indoor air pollution.
When passing the legislation, the Council intended it to be funded through a combination of federal dollars provided by the Inflation Reduction Act and locally-sourced dollars pulled from the Sustainable Energy Trust Fund (SETF).
The actions of the present Administration, however, have put the reliability of those federal dollars into question, and so the Sustainable Energy Trust Fund has assumed increased importance. In her budget proposal last year, Mayor Bowser proposed to raid the SETF and use the money for unrelated purposes, and we fear she may do so again this year. It seems that Mayor Bowser, perceives the SETF as a “slush fund“ she can pull from as she sees fit. We call upon the Council to push back vigorously against any attempts by the Mayor to siphon dollars away from the Healthy Homes Act and the Sustainable Energy Trust Fund in the budget for Fiscal Year 2026.
The Department of Energy and Environment has acknowledged that the Sustainable Energy Trust Fund is not by itself sufficient to support the Healthy Homes Act in the long-term. Other sources of funding are necessary. We encourage the Council to explore other means at your disposal to fund this broadly-supported program.
Project Pipes a.k.a. “District Safe”
I would now like to turn to one of the largest obstacles preventing the District from following through on our climate commitments: the District’s gas utility, Washington Gas.
Councilmember Allen, the Sierra Club extends our thanks to you for leading the February 11 letter from eight Councilmembers to urge the Public Service Commission to reject the most recent proposal put forward by Washington Gas for its wasteful pipeline spending proposal, previously called Project Pipes, which it now dubs “District Safe.”
As you know, though Washington Gas put a new name on it, this proposal is essentially the same as the Project Pipes Phase 3 proposal that the Commission rejected. And incredibly, the $215 million that Washington Gas requests exceeds the cost of either Phase 1 or Phase 2 of Project Pipes. This is part of Washington Gas's plan to replace nearly every gas pipeline in the District, wasting billions of dollars of DC residents' money at a time when our climate commitments require us to transition off those very pipelines.
The money that Washington Gas requested and the time they propose to devote to the project would be much better spent transitioning off gas to a new business model based on providing clean heating and cooling services. We encourage the Council to keep the pressure on Washington Gas to comply with the District’s climate commitments and protect public health from indoor and outdoor fossil fuel combustion fumes.
Fossil fuels in DC government buildings
The District government should lead the way for the private sector in reducing climate pollution and improving climate resilience. The Greener Government Buildings Act requires buildings owned by the District, or with significant DC government funding, to be net-zero energy, meaning buildings that are highly energy efficient, powered by electricity from renewable sources like wind and solar power, and do not burn any fossil fuels like methane gas. The Climate Commitment Act prohibits the District government from installing fossil fuel-burning appliances for space or water heating starting in January 2025.
The Sierra Club is dismayed that time and again, under Mayor Bowser’s leadership, the District is seeking to exempt itself from its own climate laws. Last year, the DC Archives building sought an exemption to allow combustion of fossil fuels in the building. Facing public outcry, the design was changed to electric resistance heating, an outmoded technology, rather than incorporating highly efficient electric heat pumps to power the building.
Capital One Arena
The Capital One Arena, one of most carbon intensive structures in the District, has been granted exemptions from the Greener Government Buildings Act. So, as the rest of the District‘s built landscape becomes more energy efficient and transitions away from fossil fuels, in its center remains a major public building adhering to the antiquated regulations in part responsible for the energy and climate related problems we now face.
We appreciate the challenges of such a structure achieving net-zero energy usage, but it is beyond frustrating to see the District utterly fold and fail to insist that Monumental Sports take any meaningful steps at all toward decarbonizing the building. What sort of precedent has this set? The District has, in effect, signaled to corporate interests the possibility of receiving a blanket exemption from climate-related regulations if they make enough noise about compliance being “too difficult” for them to manage. The building sector has taken notice, and if they weren’t already convinced before they could effectively push back against our clean energy laws, they are now.
RFK Stadium site
With the RFK Stadium site now under the District’s management, we are deeply concerned that Mayor Bowser will take the same dismissive approach to DC’s clean energy laws for this important redevelopment opportunity. At the community meeting on February 13, a Sierra Club member asked the Mayor to commit that all new buildings at the site comply with the Greener Government’s Buildings Act’s requirement to be net zero energy, meaning they are highly efficient, maximize renewable energy generation, and burn no fossil fuels. Her reply, in its entirety, was: “We are not at that level of planning yet.” Her answer was a disappointment, because the question was not for detailed energy plans for the site, but whether the mayor would comply with the law.The Mayor should commit to the highest clean energy standards for this project–and zero waste standards as well.
Climate Commitment Act prohibition on fossil fuel systems
In the Sierra Club’s view, the Climate Commitment Act allows the Department of General Services (DGS) to conduct emergency repairs to gas boilers and water heaters. However, under pressure from DGS and the Mayor’s office, the Council in January passed emergency and temporary legislation[1] that will give DGS more leeway to replace significant components of gas-burning systems, potentially extending their use by many years.
We do not agree with DGS’s position that existing gas-burning boilers and water heaters should be operated to the end of their lifespan. Combustion fumes from these systems generate air pollutants that harm our health both indoors and outdoors. The climate crisis is upon us, and to prevent the worst possible outcomes, we must act urgently to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by replacing these systems with highly efficient electric heat pump systems.
It is clear from DGS’s responses to the Facilities Committee’s performance oversight questions that the agency does not know when the existing fossil fuel combustion systems in DC government buildings will need to be replaced. As a result, unanticipated failure of these aging systems is likely to result in emergency replacements with new gas-powered systems.
The Sierra Club asks that the Council hold a hearing before making any further changes to this provision in the Climate Commitment Act. We have some concepts to propose, including the following:
- Requiring a detailed timeline and plan for replacing fossil fuel space and water heating systems with non-combustion alternatives.
- In emergency replacement situations, allowing fossil fuel combustion equipment to be installed and operated for up to 10 years, or until 2040.
- Requiring an annual report to the Council on emergency installations of fossil fuel combustion equipment.
DC Construction Code update
We appreciate DOEE’s contributions toward the updating of the District of Columbia Construction Codes. Improving our building codes will increase building energy efficiency, reduce energy use, and cut greenhouse gas emissions while saving money for businesses, homeowners, and tenants. While the Construction Codes Coordination Board completed its work on the codes in November of 2023, the draft still has not been released for the first round of public comment. Building codes should be updated approximately every three years, but in DC the updates are taking twice that long. We recognize that the Mayor’s office is the cause of the current delay, not DOEE, but we mention it here since updating the building code is so critical to decarbonizing DC’s building sector and reducing indoor air pollution.
Clean Energy DC 2.0
The Sierra Club calls on DOEE and the Mayor to finalize and release the Clean Energy DC 2.0 plan, which is the District’s climate and energy action plan. DC released the first version in 2018, with the intention of updating it in five years, and it is now two years overdue. The last action on this plan that we are aware of, a public comment period, occurred in late 2023.
Combined heat and power (CHP) gas projects
In recent years, the District has seen a proliferation of cogeneration projects, facilities that combine producing heat and power (CHP) by burning fossil fuels locally in our backyards. Recent examples include the District’s project at St. Elizabeths and the redevelopment of Walter Reed. CHP plants used to be seen as a smart alternative to burning gas for power while wasting the residual heat and then needing to burn gas in a building for heat. But with the advent of heat pumps, this comparison is outdated. The alternative to cogeneration is not an 80 percent efficient gas boiler, but rather a 300-400 percent efficient air- or ground-source heat pump.
A CHP facility has higher CO2 emissions than just procuring electricity from our regional grid, PJM, for all power needs of a building and then running a highly efficient heat pump on that PJM power for heating purposes. Part of the reason for this is that CHP facilities have terrible efficiency for power generation; their combustion engines are only about 30 percent efficient, about the same efficiency as a coal plant. Furthermore, they run for power production nearly year round at close to full capacity, but the waste heat is used for heating purposes only part of the year. As a result, a CHP facility is similar to an inefficient coal power plant seven months of the year, with the slight benefit of using the waste heat for up to five months of the year. In essence, a CHP plant is basically a part-time coal power plant.
Why are CHP facilities spreading in number then? Essentially because the electricity from CHP plants is exempt from rules that apply to all other electricity in DC. Unlike the rest of electricity in DC, power from CHP is exempt from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative’s carbon price, requirements of the Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS), payments to the SETF and other surcharges that everyday DC households must pay. None of these regulations apply if one simply moves a power plant into DC and locates it “behind the meter” by placing it right here in our backyards. By our estimate, these regulations will add about three to five cents per kWh to the cost of electricity by 2032 when the RPS has fully phased in. We are not complaining about these costs; they represent necessary investments in a cleaner energy future. There is no reason to treat a power plant here in DC, like a CHP plant that pollutes the air in our communities, differently than a power plant in the wider PJM territory.
CHP plants are gaming the very regulations that the Council has been so proud to enact. If we all built a CHP facility on our properties and produced electricity locally, DC would have a 100% fossil fuel-based power generation system and a 100% fossil fuel-based heating system. In turn, our RPS would be meaningless, since it does not apply to behind the meter generation and we would not be moving off gas heating purposes. It’s obvious that this is not the wonderful green world that the CHP proponents want to make us believe.
Building Energy Performance Standards
Last year, the Council made amendments to the District‘s Building Energy Performance Standards at the recommendation of the program‘s Advisory Council. These amendments represented minor administrative changes to the most important energy efficiency program the District has established to date, which will significantly improve energy efficiency in existing large buildings.
This program, as you may know, served to inspire many other municipalities to follow in our footsteps. We expect that building sector interests will continue to lobby the Mayor and Council to add more exceptions or to dismantle BEPS in its entirety. We strongly encourage the Council to stay the course and ensure the program is able to function as it was intended.
Climate Commitment Amendment Act Task Force
We applaud DOEE for its leadership in convening the DC government task force required by the Climate Commitment Act, although we regret the lengthy delay, since the climate crisis has accelerated in the meantime. The purpose of the task force is “to prepare an action plan for carbon neutrality for District government operations by 2040, including the estimated funding and timeline for each action identified.”
Solar For All
We were disappointed in the reduced funding for the Solar for All program due to the FY24 budget cuts to the Renewable Energy Development Fund (REDF). While DC proposed closing the funding gap with an award through the Environmental Protection Agency’s Solar for All grant program, funding from that program among other federal programs is now frozen by the Trump Administration. The District must prioritize, and fund, programs like Solar for All that create pathways to energy affordability.
We also urge DOEE to increase transparency by providing more data in its Solar for All annual report. The report should detail more specifically the benchmarks by which the DOEE is measuring success and how DOEE is performing against them. Part of this transparency is also timeliness. The FY22 Solar for All report, for the fiscal year ending on September 30, 2022, was sent to the Council only recently, in July 2024. In order to create accountability, ensuring this important program is reaching its intended benchmarks, we urge DOEE and the Mayor’s office to release the FY23 report as soon as possible, and release following years’ reports much sooner or within at most one year following the end of the covered fiscal year.
TOXICS
Cumulative impacts legislation
The Sierra Club supports the Cumulative Impacts Analysis Amendment Act of 2025, recently introduced by Councilmember Parker along with Councilmembers McDuffie and White, which aims to rectify historical injustices from many years of environmental health impacts on Black and Brown communities in the District.
Councilmember Parker comments on these impacts in his introduction: “For decades, the District has concentrated facilities that produce air pollution, hazardous waste, water pollution, stormwater runoff, and urban heat island effects in low income and predominantly Black neighborhoods. During that time, the District has placed the burden of fighting these injustices on the residents in Ivy City, Brentwood, Mayfair, Bellevue, and countless other communities in Wards 4, 5, 7, and 8.”
This bill is an updated version of the Environmental Justice Amendment Act of 2023, which was also introduced by Councilmember Parker and went through a hearing process in 2024. The only notable change to the new version of the bill is the title, which means a new hearing should not be required. Empower DC and other local environmental justice advocates and organizations continue to lead on this effort, with support from the Sierra Club, and work in collaboration with councilmembers, their staff and other leaders in the community.
The Sierra Club encourages DOEE to work with advocates and the committee to develop an effective framework for identifying cumulative impacts and protecting these communities that have endured a disproportionate amount of cumulative environmental harms over decades.
ZERO WASTE
Time for a District bottle bill
Councilmember Allen, on behalf of the Sierra Club DC Chapter, I wish to thank you for introducing, along with ten other Councilmembers, the District Recycling Refund and Litter Reduction Amendment Act of 2025. This landmark legislation will cut bottle and can pollution across the District and address an environmental injustice that has blighted neighborhoods, parks and waterways along the Anacostia River for decades, exposing residents to microplastic and PFAS contamination. The legislation will significantly reduce plastic pollution in the District, create green jobs, cut greenhouse gasses, and fund water filters to stop lead exposure from lead service lines. It’s an amazing piece of environmental legislation, developed after two years of community outreach and discussions with the Council.
The Sierra Club and the 25 members of the Return, Refund, Recycle Coalition for DC (3RC), of which the Sierra Club is a founding member, fully support the Council holding a hearing on this bill, and then passing this bill as soon as possible to prevent opponents from spreading falsehoods. Indeed, Big Beverage Companies, like Coke and Pepsi who are members of the American Beverage Association,have begun spreading misinformation about the legislation in an effort to scare the public and small businesses. We learned that they began distributing flyers door-to-door in Petworth with a number of false messages. Let the District public hear the truth, and soon, in an open hearing for both the Committee on Business and Economic Development and the Committee on Transportation and the Environment.
We would also like to know whether DOEE has begun talking with any of the ten U.S. bottle bill jurisdictions to learn about their implementation practices.
What projects is the interagency waste reduction group working on?
The Department of Public Works’ response to its performance oversight pre-hearing questions noted that DPW and DOEE work on an interagency waste reduction group without explaining the focus of this work. We would welcome DOEE sharing which programs and projects the two agencies are working on in this group, and any successes they have had.
District agencies should lead creation of a reusable foodware working group
One of the nation’s largest reusable cup service providers, r.World, plans to hold a discussion on reuse at entertainment venues and sports venues, and is calling for the creation of a DC sports reuse working group. We understand discussions have begun on this topic, led by DPW with DOEE and Department of Health participation. We support the creation of such a working group, led by District agencies, with participation by environmental stakeholders, private sector players, and representatives from sports and music venues. The working group’s goal should be to establish a legislative framework to require reusable cups in both sports and entertainment venues. The r.World experience in the District seems to show the economics work. Reusables are also a proven method to stop waste from being generated. The District should adopt frameworks to expand reusable foodware, starting in closed-loop environments such as music and sports venues. The timing is right as the District has already offered financial support for arena development, and is expected to offer support in the future for other sports venues. These venues should contribute to the goals of the Zero Waste DC Plan to reduce the solid waste stream and increase the District’s waste diversion rate. Moving to reusable cups in sports and music venues will contribute to these goals..
Need for DOEE to educate and enforce current zero waste laws
The District has a plastic straw and stirrer ban as well as a requirement for restaurants to give customers utensils – and other single-use accessory items like condiment packs – only if they request them. Yet many residents find that they are still served drinks with plastic straws and that their takeout orders are full of single-use items they didn’t request, and often specifically indicated they did not want. The lack of education and outreach to restaurants and the lack of enforcement makes us wonder if we can really say these zero waste requirements are in effect. It’s a bit like the old riddle that if a tree falls in the forest and there's no one there to hear it, did it make a sound? If a law isn’t enforced, can we expect it to accomplish its goals?
We understand that DOEE only has enough inspectors to conduct 300 restaurant inspections each year, in addition to restaurants identified through the 311 tip line. That’s clearly insufficient to enforce these requirements in a dynamic restaurant market in which new restaurants, owners, managers and staff come and go. What steps is DOEE taking to reach out and educate restaurants? Does it send them emails reminding them about the need to respect District Zero Waste Laws? I would imagine that DOEE has contact information on all permits? In addition, has DOEE tried working with the Business Improvement Districts (BIDs), Main Streets and restaurant organizations to get the word out about these requirements? Has DOEE requested health inspectors to provide handouts as part of their inspections? Several years ago, DOEE had an engaging video about the straw ban. Maybe it’s time for more social media outreach? We have raised this vexing issue in past testimony. We look forward to seeing meaningful steps to ensure that we cut single-use plastic straws, utensils and more and move closer to reaching the District’s 80 percent waste diversion goal.
TRANSPORTATION
Electric Vehicle (EV) Charging Infrastructure
We applaud the progress DOEE has made in expanding EV charging across the District. Transitioning to a zero-emission vehicle future, along with reducing vehicle miles traveled (VMT), will require EV charging infrastructure to meet the District’s goal under the Clean Energy DC Omnibus Act of 2018, which aims for at least 25% of registered vehicles in DC to be zero-emission by 2030.
We were pleased to join DOEE and the District Department of Transportation (DDOT) last year for their groundbreaking event to repair and upgrade an EV charger on Benning Road, write a letter of support for one of DOEE’s federal grant applications, and have Deputy Director Nick Burger join us at the National Drive Electric Week event in the fall.
We also thank Councilmember Allen for his leadership in introducing and passing the Comprehensive Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Access, Readiness, and Sustainability Act (B25-0106).
In light of President Trump’s executive order to pause federal EV charging funds—intended to expand EV charging stations across the District and planned to partially fund the new EV charging bill—it is particularly incumbent on the District to ensure funding for the bill so we can build the infrastructure needed. We urge that funding for the bill’s key components be prioritized, including: establishing an EV charger deployment plan, launching a public education campaign, providing incentives for charger installation, ensuring a right-to-install provision for renters and condo owners, and setting charger requirements for residential and commercial properties.
Beyond EV infrastructure, our testimony for this year’s DDOT Performance Oversight Hearing includes our other priorities for a sustainable transportation system, such as:
Improved transit service, including Bus Priority and equitable distribution of bus shelters
- Protected bike lanes and pedestrian infrastructure, including timely clearing of snow and ice
- Traffic safety enforcement, including removal of dangerous cars from our streets
Demand management to reflect the true costs of car use, including congestion pricing and parking reform
WATER AND NATURAL PLACES
Lead Service Line Removal
The District’s performance on lead service line removal has languished. The legislation introduced in 2024, reintroduced in 2025 as bills B26-0111 and B26-0092 is responsive to the urgent need for timely and cost-effective lead service line replacement. This legislation should be prioritized, finalized and passed by the DC Council immediately. Another year of delay means another year of children exposed to lead, and the consequences that they are less likely to finish school and more likely to end up in the criminal justice system. It is also critical that there be clear public messaging explaining that all residents with lead pipes are at risk of lead poisoning, and that all households should have their water tested properly because many types of in-house plumbing can also release lead.
Ecological Restoration and the Anacostia River
Sierra Club has generally found the DOEE a transparent and constructive partner in protection of the District’s natural environment. The work conducted on Kingman Island in Ward 7 to restore the meadow ecosystem demonstrates the depth to which DOEE implements its mission for ecological restoration.
Like many, we were disappointed that the permitted swims in Kingman lake were not achieved in 2024. However, we applaud the District’s movement toward swimmable and fishable waters, and we look forward to the day when we again normalize surface water contact and recreation. We propose a working group of public interest organizations to work with DOEE to develop a system that will enable citizens to recreate in our surface waters safely.
[1] B26-0006 - Climate Commitment Clarification Emergency Amendment Act of 2025, and B26-0007 - Climate Commitment Clarification Temporary Amendment Act of 2025, which expires 9/3/25.