A bill that would head off Gov. Tom Wolf’s controversial order to bring Pennsylvania into the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) was passed in the state House of Representatives Wednesday.
The measure, which was approved 126-72, now heads to the Republican-controlled state Senate where it is expected to pass with little trouble.
The House vote came after the bill, HB 637, sailed through the state House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee on Monday and was the topic of a sobering analysis released Tuesday by Pennsylvania’s Independent Fiscal Office, which predicted that bringing the commonwealth into RGGI would result in a near quadrupling of consumer electric bills.
House Majority Leader Kerry Benninghoff (R-171) said after Wednesday’s vote that joining RGGI would leave ratepayers holding the bag for what Republican lawmakers have long considered to be a carbon tax that would do little more than raise costs for consumers. “Pennsylvanians should not be forced to pay more due to bad energy policy from the Wolf administration that would enter Pennsylvania into a costly multi-state carbon tax program,” he said.
The RGGI program is a compact aimed at taking a sizable chunk out of the region’s greenhouse gas emissions; it requires member states in the northeast to take part in a carbon-trading market that limits carbon emissions from fossil-fuel power plant emissions by requiring the purchase of carbon credits through a regular auction. Pennsylvania would be the 11th state and the only power exporter to join the RGGI ranks. Wednesday’s bill specifically prohibits the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) from any rulemaking that would establish the required carbon trading program in Pennsylvania without receiving approval from the General Assembly.
Environmentalists said the legislation passed Wednesday would make it virtually impossible to reduce the state’s carbon emissions by requiring the General Assembly to approve any attempt by the DEP to regulate carbon emissions. HB 637 “would take away the DEP’s most important tool for mitigating climate change: the ability to regulate carbon dioxide emissions,” said Mark Szybist, a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).
Wolf used an executive order in 2019 to bring Pennsylvania into RGGI rather than seeking approval from the legislature, which is controlled by Republicans who see attempts to rein in carbon emissions as an unacceptable risk to jobs and tax revenues generated by power plants and the fossil-fuel industry. The GOP has steadfastly insisted that RGGI amounts to a tax on energy, and tax increases must be run past the General Assembly.
“The legislative check provided for in this legislation would ensure Pennsylvanians will not again be required to shoulder the burden of an executive branch’s unilateral authority that caters more to political ideology than their best interests,” Benninghoff said.