EDITORIAL: Carbon plan serves economy, environment
Whether Pennsylvania remains a member of the Regional Greenhouse Gas initiative will be determined by the state Supreme Court. But Gov. Josh Shapiro has demonstrated the program’s benefits by including massive revenue from it in his first proposed state budget.
The RGGI is an agreement among a dozen states to, in effect, put a market price on carbon emissions that drive atmospheric warming. Failure of the state and federal governments to put a price on carbon pollution has produced vast amounts of it; the RGGI already has demonstrated that putting a price on it produces far less pollution.
Gov. Tom Wolf enrolled Pennsylvania in the RGGI, prompting several lawsuits contending that he needed legislative approval to do so.
Under the RGGI, fossil-fuel-powered plants that produce 25 megawatts or more of electricity must acquire one RGGI credit for every ton of carbon dioxide that they produce. The number of available credits is capped, by state, according to the amount of relevant pollution produced in each states. Generators acquire the credits at quarterly auctions.
Pennsylvania’s entry into the program is especially significant because it is by far the biggest producer of fossil-fuel-generated electricity within the compact. Natural gas has replaced coal as the primary fuel. The other states in the RGGI are Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont and Virginia.
States use money from the auctions to fund renewable energy research and deployment, conservation, improve air quality, job training in relevant industries and more. The most recent carbon credit auction, in early March, sold 21,522,877 credits at $12.50 each and generated nearly $270 million for the participating state governments.
Pennsylvania cannot yet participate because of the pending litigation. But in his proposed budget for the 2023-2024 fiscal year, which begins July 1, Shapiro penciled in $663 million in anticipated carbon credit revenue from the RGGI. The estimate is based on the results of 59 credit auctions and Pennsylvania’s proportionally high number of credits.
Shapiro did not specifically embrace the RGGI while campaigning but his budget proposal speaks loudly to the program’s benefits. He should stay the course.