Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Electrical Generation | Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania | Regulation | Statewide PA
Liberals on PA’s IRRC Vote to Approve Insane RGGI Carbon Tax
Yesterday the Pennsylvania Independent Regulatory Review Commission (IRRC) voted to approve the final Environmental Quality Board regulation to slap an insanely high carbon tax, euphemistically called the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), on PA’s coal and natural gas-fired power plants. The partisan vote was 3-2 (Democrats voting for, Republicans against) in favor of hiking electric rates by an extra $2.36 billion over the next 10 years. Is there any way to stop Gov. Tom Wolf’s illegal entry into RGGI?
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Yesterday a group of ~30 protesters rallied at the Historic Courthouse in Chester County, PA, and marched, while chanting, to the County Justice Center. Their protest is against almost completed Mariner East 2 (ME2) pipeline construction and against a long-completed and flowing Mariner East 1 (ME1) pipeline. The protesters, some who were left wing nuts, others who were honest folks who have been duped by Big Green and scaremongers in the media, asked county commissioners to file a Petition for Emergency Relief with the state Public Utility Commission (PUC) to stop any further construction of ME2 and shut down the already-operating ME1 pipeline that runs through the county.
Having struck out at the state level, a group of Big Green radicals is now asking dementia Joe to cancel a tiny 6.8-mile natural gas pipeline stretching from Brownsville to North Brooklyn in New York City that’s already pretty much built. Their false claim? That pipeline is RACIST. That’s right folks. We bet you didn’t know a hunk of inanimate steel buried in the ground could be racist. The radicals claim it can be and is, and Uncle Joe should just wave his magic leftist wand and cancel it.
The constant drumbeat of lies fed to children from the time they are in pre-kindergarten through graduate school that the earth is catastrophically heating due to mankind (a completely false claim) is having an effect. Indeed, it has had a tragic effect–it has radicalized our kids to the point they are now willing to give up their freedoms and they are willing to engage in lawless acts of eco-terrorism, motivated by the belief that everyone on the planet will toast in the next ten years “if we don’t do something now.” It’s sick and it’s child abuse.
What’s happening with New Fortress Energy’s (NFE) proposed LNG liquefaction plant planned for Wyalusing, PA? We told you in March the company hasn’t given up on the plan, but for now is focused elsewhere (see 
Last October the Sisters of the Corn (our name for a group of leftist nuns in Lancaster County, PA) filed yet another frivolous lawsuit against Williams over a pipeline that crosses their land–a pipeline (Atlantic Sunrise) that has been up and running for years (see 
Have you ever noticed how politicians like to “study” things? Why is that? We suppose the results of all those studies gives them political cover to make unpopular votes on key issues. The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management is in the process of conducting a study on the prospects for a petrochemical industry in the Marcellus/Utica. As part of that study, DOE held an online/virtual hearing yesterday to elicit comments on the environmental, health and community impacts of the petrochemical industry from ethane crackers and pipelines. In what appears to be a put-up job, a dog and pony show, the hearing was packed with radical anti-fossil fuel nuts who bashed away at the shale industry.
When the executive branch of the federal government operates outside the law and nobody holds them to account, we have a lawless country. Under federal, established law, states have a maximum of one year to review applications for pipeline permits under Section 401 of the Clean Water Act. Yet now the Biden administration and its rogue EPA is telling states they can take all the time they want to review these permits, instructing “co-regulators” like the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) it’s OK if states go beyond one year. What a disaster. This is yet one more way Biden gets around the law in his mission to destroy the fossil fuel sector.
A far-left “environmental” group calling itself POWER pretends to be religious in nature. Perhaps it is religious–the religion of worshipping the creation instead of worshipping the Creator. The Pennsylvania-based group claims fossil fuels are racist, that fossil fuel companies intentionally target communities of color to install pipelines, compressor stations, and oil/gas wells. Yes, these people are wack in their views. But they have the ear of PA’s failed governor, Tom Wolf, and they intend to try and pack the state’s Public Utility Commission (PUC) with people who are as equally wack as they are.
Yesterday the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette published a puff piece praising Brian Anderson, director of the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) and now the head of the Biden administration’s Interagency Working Group on Coal and Power Plant Communities and Economic Revitalization, an effort to kill the use of fossil fuels (see 
A profoundly biased and inaccurate article published by Environmental Health News attempts to paint two proposed shale gas wells as an environmental disaster and existential health threat akin to a nuclear meltdown. The article is so over the top it’s laughable–but instructive nonetheless. Apex Energy has proposed drilling two wells on a pad in a rural part of Trafford, PA township, straddling Allegheny and Westmoreland counties. The location is “within one mile of Level Green Elementary School and within two miles of 12,733 residents in Penn Township and Trafford Borough (about 17 miles east of Pittsburgh).” Are the kiddies at nearby schools and residents of Trafford really in danger?
It’s been hard to miss the recent “the sky is falling” report issued by the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). Mainstream media has been in the throes of multiple orgasms over the 
The Pennsylvania House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee held a hearing on Tuesday that investigated the economic benefits of the state’s 1,000-plus miles of gas pipelines. The adults in the room all acknowledged even if there is a transition away from fossil fuels “someday,” pipelines hauling natural gas around the state will need to be kept up and running for *at least* the next 30 years (likely longer). Pipelines are here to stay. A band of radical anti-fossil fuel nutters behaved badly during the hearing, as they so often do, and had to be ejected.