Helping Residents Convert From Oil Heating

Mayor Durkan recently introduced legislation aimed at accelerating Seattle’s conversion of Seattle’s homes that burn oil for heat to cleaner electric heating. This legislation is a key tool to help us reduce our climate impacts. Oil is one of the most expensive and polluting forms of home heating the urgency of the climate crisis requires us to act swiftly and to take these bold steps in order to preserve our quality of life.

Converting Seattle’s oil heated homes to clean electricity is expected to reduce Seattle’s climate emissions by 433,000 metric tons over 10 years. That is the equivalent of taking nearly 90,000 passenger cars off the road for a year!

The legislation supports the phase out of home heating oil to more energy-efficient and clean heating and cooling systems by 2028 through the following:

• an excise tax on heating oil starting July 1, 2020 on heating oil providers
• a requirement for heating oil tank owners to decommission or upgrade all existing underground oil tanks by 2028.

Revenue from the tax will provide grants to low-income households to fully fund upgrades to heat pumps, expand Seattle’s existing rebate program to non-low-income households, and support oil service providers with workforce training needed to help them transition to heat pump installation services.

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