The working group Gov. Josh Shapiro assembled to sort out the mess that is the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), and Pennsylvania’s possible participation in it, was strikingly non-committal in its final report. There was one crucial point that legislative leaders, including Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman (R-Indiana), have made ever since the prior administration: joining RGGI, a failed environmental cartel of Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic states, imposes a carbon tax on industry and ultimately consumers when only the General Assembly has the power to tax.
“For the last several years, I have stressed the RGGI Electric Tax violates our state constitution, which grants exclusive power to the legislative branch to levy taxes,” Pittman said in a statement upon release of the working group’s findings. “The actions of Gov. Wolf and his decision to unilaterally force Pennsylvania to join RGGI was a failed policy. Unfortunately to date, the Shapiro administration has chosen to follow in those same footsteps.”
He continued: “The outcome of Gov. Shapiro’s working group is overall quite hollow, and it is abundantly evident there is no consensus of the group on how to implement any type of electric tax on carbon emissions. However, the report makes two points clear: ‘There was no consensus on the preferred specific form of cap-and-invest (i.e. RGGI vs. PJM-wide)’ and ‘Legislative codification is the preferred method of institutionalizing the various elements outlined.’
The prospect of enacting a carbon tax through participation in RGGI was forced on Pennsylvania consumers and businesses through a regulatory scheme by the Wolf Administration; a move that at least for now is tied up in the courts.
PMA President & CEO David N. Taylor called Wolf’s imperious move to force the state into the RGGI cartel one of the most egregious abuses of power in recent memory in Pennsylvania politics.
“As Majority Leader Joe Pittman said that move is a clear violation of our Constitution, which gives the General Assembly, and only the General Assembly, the power to tax,” Taylor said. “On that basis alone, Governor Shapiro should put an end to this travesty immediately.”
Meanwhile, industry, labor unions, and consumer groups await a decision by a Commonwealth court panel that heard arguments nearly a year ago on the constitutionality of Wolf’s move.
In addition, in May, the state Supreme Court heard oral arguments on DEP’s appeal of the lower court’s preliminary injunction order blocking RGGI implementation. The timing of both rulings is unclear.
The working group also made other two other recommendations that all but require the current broad mix of energy producing sources, including coal and natural gas.
The group unanimously agreed that Pennsylvania should remain the nation’s number one exporter of electricity and protect existing energy jobs. That would take all our current energy sources to accomplish that. And the working group recommended that the Commonwealth, “should ensure that energy consumers do not unreasonably or disproportionately shoulder the cost and potential reliability burdens associated with the clean energy transition; this is especially essential as it relates to low-income residents of the Commonwealth and the most vulnerable populations.” Unless some quick evolution in green energy technology is on the horizon – as has been falsely promised for years – the only way to guarantee that lower income residents don’t suffer is to keep the current mix of energy sources.
Last year, Shawn Steffee, Business Agent for Boilermakers Local 154, testified before a joint Senate committee and put it all on the line regarding RGGI.
Joining RGGI, “will eliminate dozens of coal and natural gas plants that, today, provide two-thirds of our state’s generation capacity,” he told committee members. “These plant closures will wipe out thousands of family sustaining, union jobs who operate and maintain those plants, including my union brothers and sisters who would otherwise be able to work at these plant for another 5-10 years.”
And for “for Pennsylvania families, including union retirees, and low- and fixed-income families who pay 40 percent more than the average of all electric consumers, the RGGI tax will increase monthly electric bills by as much as 30 percent or more than $300 per year,” he said.
For what? Even Wolf’s own Department of Environmental Protection predicted that our joining RGGI will have virtually no impact on overall carbon emissions. Energy production will increase in our neighboring states to the west that are not RGGI members, as they make up for the gap in energy production we will leave behind.