Senators Joe Pittman, Gene Yaw, and Dave Argall are leading an effort to convince Governor Tom Wolf to rescind his executive order instructing the state Department of Environmental Protection to participate in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative which is also known as “RGGI”.
Eighteen members of the Senate Republican Caucus have signed on to a letter to the governor, telling him the Covid-19 pandemic has “reshaped Pennsylvania’s economy”, according to Pittman. He says high unemployment and business closures and the Wolf Administration’s “unilateral action and additional mandates” make the regulations “the last thing we need to do” because of the nearly $300 million in annual taxes on carbon that the state’s electricity consumers and employers would have to pay.
RGGI would hit Indiana County particularly hard, with the certainty that at least one and maybe all of the county’s four coal-fired power plants would be forced out of business. Participating states in the coalition agree to a tax and spend program that require coal-fired power plants to buy a credit or allowance for each ton of carbon dioxide they emit.
Wolf executive action cut the General Assembly out of the process but Pittman and Representative Jim Struzzi have introduced bills to require DEP to submit any such plan to the General Assembly for approval. With Covid-19, the Senate Environmental Resources & Energy Committee has had to cancel four public hearings on the bill, at which it would have heard testimony from representatives of organized labor, local business and political leaders, and electricity consumers.
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