Copyright The Philadelphia Inquirer
Pennsylvania’s top legislators and Gov. Josh Shapiro reached a budget deal, sent to lawmakers Tuesday, that kills the state’s entry into a major regional greenhouse gas program designed to reduce carbon emissions. It is a move cheered by state Republicans and one that the state’s environmental groups feared was coming. One environmental leader referred to the deal, if adopted by the General Assembly, as “climate infamy.” An amendment to the $50.1 billion state budget withdraws Pennsylvania from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), an effort by 10 Northeastern states to curb greenhouse gases. Former Gov. Tom Wolf enrolled the state in RGGI through an executive order that took effect in 2022. But Republicans have zealously fought against RGGI, citing it as threat to the state’s natural gas industry. As a result, Pennsylvania has never been able to fully enroll in RGGI, which has been tied up before the state’s Supreme Court after a GOP-led lawsuit. Under RGGI, power plants buy allowances for emissions they produce, which are then sold at auctions with proceeds going to states. New Jersey, for example, gets up to $80 million annually from the auctions. Environmental groups have known for several weeks that there appeared to be a deal between Shapiro and House leadership to scrap RGGI in return for finally getting a budget approved. An impasse grew over spending priorities when the budget deadline lapsed June 30. » READ MORE: Environmental groups rally in fear Harrisburg budget deal will sink major greenhouse gas initiative “The agreement by Democrats in the State House, Senate Republicans, and Gov. Shapiro to pull Pennsylvania out of what is arguably the most successful state level program in the nation for reducing global warming pollution will be remembered as a day of climate infamy in Pennsylvania politics,” said David Masur, executive director of PennEnvironment, a nonprofit advocacy group. Masur called it a “dubious achievement” for Shapiro and that scrapping RGGI amounts to a “profound or far-reaching rollback of environmental protections.” But RGGI has always been a harder sell in Pennsylvania than in the other RGGI states such as neighboring New Jersey and Delaware. Pennsylvania is the nation’s second-largest natural gas producer, after Texas. It is also the third-largest coal-producing state, after Wyoming and West Virginia. So any program that seeks to reduce the use of fossil fuels faces significant headwinds in a state where jobs are tied to its production. The state’s purple political makeup also gives Shapiro, who has never outright embraced RGGI, and Democrats, less room to maneuver: the state legislature is currently split, with Democrats holding a one-seat majority in the House and Republicans holding a six-seat majority in the Senate.
