Pennsylvania Republicans this week laid their cards on the table with a written list of demands aimed at killing the reviled Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) one way or another.
Twenty-seven GOP state senators fired off a five-page letter to newly inaugurated Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro calling on the state to either walk away entirely from the process of enlisting Pennsylvania in the multi-state compact aimed at curbing climate change, or at least call a hard stop to administrative steps being taken toward RGGI membership until legal challenges have been resolved at the state supreme court level.
“We look forward to you taking action on these items as your first energy order of business and begin the process to extract our Commonwealth from the onerous and ineffective carbon tax program,” said the letter, which was signed by lawmakers, including Senate President Pro Tempore Kim Ward, Majority Leader Joe Pittman, and Environmental Resources and Energy Chairman Gene Yaw.
The letter was the latest round of withering political fire that the GOP has leveled against last year’s executive order by Gov. Tom Wolf, which committed Pennsylvania to joining RGGI and sidestepped a likely defeat by the state legislature. Wolf’s order would make Pennsylvania the 11th state overall and the first significant energy-exporting state within the agreement.
It repeated the standing argument that RGGI and its associated caps on greenhouse-gas emissions would quickly cause Pennsylvania power prices to spike at the same time it would cost the state jobs and tax revenues as fossil-fuel power plants could be forced to shut down. It contended that Pennsylvania is already making great strides in reducing power plant emissions, and that unregulated fossil-fuel plants in neighboring states would happily step in to replace those exports should the Commonwealth’s power production fall off.
In addition, the Republicans questioned the ability to even meet in-state demand during extreme weather such as the frigid late-December winter storm that prompted a warning from PJM that rolling blackouts were possible due to a spike in demand. “The result is RGGI imposes a multi-billion-dollar compliance burden on Pennsylvania citizens, businesses, and industries without a meaningful reduction in CO2 (carbon dioxide) emissions,” they said.
The RGGI plan is currently in court with the constitutionality of Wolf’s order, and the GOP this week told Shapiro the state should not take part in any planning or participation with the RGGI organization until after the state high court rules, and if the plan survives in court, then wait until Jan. 1 of the year following the ruling before implementing it.