The Pennsylvania Senate Majority Policy Committee addressed the state’s growing need for reliable electricity and considered strategies to prevent future electric bill increases across the northeast portion of the commonwealth during an Aug. 14 public hearing.
“We should all agree that to limit even higher electricity prices, we need more energy production and fewer regulations — both here in Pennsylvania and especially in many of our neighboring states,” said State Sen. Dave Argall (R-29), one of the event’s co-chairs. “Our neighboring states’ failed energy policies are driving up our electric bills right here in Shenandoah and across all of Pennsylvania.”
State Sen. Gene Yaw (R-23), also a hearing co-chairman, pointed out that “aggressive renewable energy mandates” have pushed dependable power plants into early retirement while demand continues to increase.
“If this trend continues, consumers could face higher electricity costs, reliability concerns, and power shortages,” said Yaw. “We need to build more reliable baseload generation, starting yesterday.”
Neal Lesher, vice president of government affairs for the Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry, agreed, noting that for much of the state’s energy history, coal-fired power served as the backbone of its energy portfolio, providing a significant portion of reliable electricity across the state and beyond.
“However, in recent years, this landscape has shifted dramatically,” Lesher testified during the hearing. “Many of our coal-fired plants have come offline due to a combination of market forces, environmental regulations, and increasing economic viability of alternative energy sources.”
The mismatch in timing between the retirement of resources and the integration of new energy sources poses a significant risk to the reliability and affordability of energy in Pennsylvania, he said.
“As these plants retire, they are not being replaced quickly enough, nor are new generation sources able to produce the capacity needed to fill the ‘energy gaps’ left by the retirement of these plants,” said Lesher. “As such, it is critical that we act now to address this shortfall and ensure a stable energy future for Pennsylvania.”
Indeed, generation retirements are exceeding the building of new power plants, while demand is increasing due to electrification, manufacturing growth, and large-load operations like data centers, testified Shelby Linton-Keddie, senior director of public and external affairs for PPL Electric Utilities, which delivers electricity to 1.5 million customers in 29 counties across central and eastern Pennsylvania.
“Pennsylvania needs more generation, and we need policies now that increase the likelihood that new generation is financed, constructed, and operational when customers need it,” Linton-Keddie said.
PJM Interconnection — the regional transmission organization based in Pennsylvania that’s responsible for managing the grid and ensuring the reliability of power supply across a region that includes 13 states and the District of Columbia, serving some 65 million people — also has repeatedly warned that generation retirements outpace the building of new power plants despite increasing demand.
A key factor in the lack of new generation, according to Nathan Benefield, chief policy officer at the Commonwealth Foundation, is Pennsylvania’s attempted participation in former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf’s Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) from 2019 to 2025.
“Even though legal injunctions blocked the RGGI carbon tax, the credible threat alone was sufficient to send power plant builders out of Pennsylvania,” Benefield said, adding that when the State Senate successfully fought to repeal the RGGI carbon tax in November 2025, there was a tenfold increase in electric generation proposals.
Benefield called for the General Assembly to “make that certainty durable,” noting that employers will go where rules are easy to predict.
Meanwhile, the role of Pennsylvania-produced natural gas is helping to meet the energy needs of Pennsylvanians and the wider region, according to Patrick Henderson, vice president for government affairs and communications for the Marcellus Shale Coalition.
In the past 15 years, for instance, the commonwealth rose from being the 15th-largest to the second-largest natural gas producer in the United States, he testified.
Henderson also called for pro-growth policies to continue expanding the industry, including cutting red tape to speed up the permitting process and support for building more pipelines and infrastructure.
A current and helpful strategy are the unique benefits of coal refuse reclamation to energy plants, testified Jaret Gibbons, executive director of the Appalachian Region Independent Power Producers Association, a nonprofit trade association based in Camp Hill, Pa., representing independent electric power producers, environmental remediators, and service providers that reclaim polluting waste coal piles often on abandoned mine land sites to produce alternative energy.
To date, the coal refuse reclamation to energy industry has reclaimed over 257 million tons of polluting coal refuse, improved 1,200 miles of impaired streams, and restored 8,000 acres of mining affected land, Gibbons said, noting that without these plants, the full cost to taxpayers to remediate this land would total $9.3 billion.
Two Schuylkill County coal refuse plants, for example, are having a positive benefit, added Alexander Brush, general manager for both Gilberton Power Company and Schuylkill Energy Resources Inc.
Brush testified that the plants he manages generate roughly enough electricity to serve half a million people — the population of Schuylkill, Carbon, and Northumberland counties — all while restoring land and water impaired by historic coal mining and providing more than 100 family-sustaining jobs.
He called for the creation of more facilities using waste as fuel to address Pennsylvania’s energy needs.
“We need to meet our energy needs and protect our environment,” added Sen. Argall. “I know we still have more work to do on this front, but we have made considerable progress since the ‘bad old days.’”