Commonwealth Court ruled last week that former Governor Tom Wolf’s plan to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative or RGGI amounted to a tax and could only be enacted by legislative action – essentially shooting down the state becoming part of RGGI for the time being.

StateImpact PA reporter Rachel McDevitt was on The Spark Monday and explained what RGGI is,"

It's a partnership among those states to set a regional cap on emissions from their power plants. And so that's basically if we were to set a limit collectively, you know, sort of take account of all of our emissions from power plants in this region, we're going to set a cap, we're going to set a goal for how we want to lower that cap and lower those emissions over time. And then we are going to have auctions four times a year at those auctions. The generators, those power plant power plants that produce pollution, they buy something called an allowance. That is their permit to pollute. They need an allowance for each tonne of carbon dioxide they emit. And so this like combination of the cap and market forces and how much pollution is actually in the whole region sets that price for how much each allowance is. So the goal of the program is over time it makes polluting expensive and then states can take the money that they raise from these power plants and invest that in energy efficiency measures or clean energy or help people with their bills in the region. Each state gets to decide what they do with that on their own, on their own terms.

As McDevitt pointed out, Republican lawmakers have generally opposed the state becoming part of RGGI,"They believe that it would threaten the energy market in Pennsylvania. We generate so much electricity in Pennsylvania and we export a lot of electricity. So it is a big business. So they didn't want to see anything that would hurt that industry and they did not want to, especially because so many of them are fossil fuel powered and a lot of Republican lawmakers and some Democratic lawmakers, they represent people that work in these industries. And so they do not want to see any job losses."

What does this mean for the state going forward – especially it’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change?

McDevitt said some believe the Commonwealth Court ruling could be overturned by a higher court, based on the state's Environmental Rights Amendment to the Pennsylvania Constitution that guarantees Pennsylvanians the right to clean air and water, but added,"If we do not join RGGI, we do not have much of a climate program in Pennsylvania. We don't have anything to back it up. Governor Shapiro has not announced any type of plan similar in scope. We are making some progress in some things. They are capping old abandoned wells. Governor Shapiro has announced new regulations forthcoming on the oil and gas industry, but we would not have a comprehensive climate plan in Pennsylvania."

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