Tell your Pennsylvania senators and representatives that as a member of the League of Women Voters, you stand squarely behind the state joining the 11-state Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative to reduce carbon emissions and mitigate climate change.

Things are happening fast on the issue of RGGI. 

• The Pennsylvania Senate on April 5 failed by one vote to override Gov. Tom Wolf's veto of a bill that would have blocked the state from entering into the RGGI.
• Legislative Republicans on April 6 obtained a stay in a lawsuit In Commonwealth Court,  effectively blocking Gov. Wolf's executive order to enter into the compact until further order of the court.  The court has scehuled a preliminary hearing of the lawsuit May 4.
• The court order blocks the Department of Environmdental Protection from publishing a regulation April 9 to allow the state to join the compact by July 1. 
• On April 5, the Pennsylvania House passed HB637, which also blocks Wolf's executive order, by a vote of 126-72.  That bill now goes to the Senate.
• A second bill, SB119, which would also block the state from joining the RGGI passed the Senate in June 2021 by a vote of 35-15 and is in the House Appropriations Committee, where it is expected to emerge from committee for a full House vote.

Both bills are purported to be "authorization bills," serving the public interest by requiring the governor to submit any carbon cap and trade proposals to public hearings and full legislative process.  They are, in fact, intended to serve the interests of the state's oil, gas and coal industries by sending any such proposals to die in committee, thus preventing the state from joining RGGI.  Gov. Wolf is expected to veto those bills as well. 

The Pennsylvania League of Women Voters fully supports RGGI.  The League adheres to Article 1, Section 27 of the PA Constitution, which states in part, “The people have a right to clean air, pure water, and to the preservation of the natural, scenic, historic and esthetic values of the environment...” The League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania played a leading role in the adoption of Article 1, Section 27.

The RGGI is a long-standing cooperative effort among the states of Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Virginia to cap carbon dioxide pollution from power plants through a cap and invest program.

Within the RGGI states, regulated power plants must acquire one RGGI CO2 allowance for every short ton of CO2 they emit. The RGGI states distribute allowances at quarterly auctions, where they can be purchased by power plants and other entities.

In this way, the RGGI states have already reduced emissions by more than 50%—twice as fast as the nation as a whole—and raised over $4 billion to invest into local communities.

Seventy percent of Pennsylvanians support RGGI as an efficient and equitable means of lowering carbon dioxide emissions. Proponents estimate it will raise $410 million a year in Pennsylvania to invest in clean energy and new jobs. HB637 would provide a one-time subsidy of $250 million, most of which would go to the energy industry to research ways to reduce methane gas and other emissions.  Very little would go to improving infrastructure in communities hard hit by climatee change and environmental injustice. 

Republican leaders in the state Legislature strongly oppose RGGI, claiming it will cost jobs, create a new tax and force closure of power plants.