PA Supreme Court Lib Dems Collecting Briefs on RGGI Carbon Tax
In July, MDN told you about a disappointing (but not surprising) decision from the Democrat leftists on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court (see PA Supreme Court Allows Big Green $$ in RGGI Carbon Tax Lawsuit). The so-called Supremes ruled in favor of allowing three well-financed Big Green groups, including the Sierra Club, PennFuture, and Clean Air Council, to join a lawsuit attempting to force PA to accept the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), an obscene carbon tax on coal- and gas-fired plants. With Big Green’s money and attorneys now supporting the state Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) in its quest to ram through RGGI, it’s time for the Supremes to solicit briefs in the case.
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AES Indiana, formerly known as Indianapolis Power & Light Company, is a utility company providing electric service to the city of Indianapolis. It is a subsidiary and largest utility of AES Corporation. AES Indiana said yesterday that it wants to invest $1.1 billion in Pike County, IN, to convert the company’s two remaining coal-fired power plants to run natural gas instead. Let the howls of protest begin!
The CEO of the Energy Association of PA who is also a former chairman of the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC) asks this question: What can Pennsylvania lawmakers do about a looming regional power shortage that they didn’t cause and can’t easily fix? He says this dilemma poses the most important energy issue facing the commonwealth today. He’s certainly not against renewable energy, but he points out in an op-ed appearing in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that coal and natural gas-fired power plants are “retiring prematurely” for several reasons, and renewables can’t handle the load. The predictable end result will be blackouts in the PJM region.
PJM Interconnection, the largest U.S. power grid operator, published the results of its latest electricity auction yesterday. PJM serves 65 million people in 13 states plus the District of Columbia (including PA, OH, and WV). The latest auction for delivery of electricity in PJM in 2025/26 produced a wholesale price of $269.92/MW-day. That is a massive 933% increase from the $28.92/MW per day cost for delivery in 2024/2025. Of great interest to us is the overall mix of how PJM’s electricity gets generated. The auction (for 2025/26) shows a diverse mix of resources, including 48% produced by gas, 21% by nuclear, 18% by coal, 1% by solar, 1% by wind, 4% by hydro, 5% by demand response and 2% from other resources. We hear the constant drumbeat by mainstream media pushing renewable energy, yet solar and wind are producing a minuscule 2% of PJM’s electricity. How does that square? We are fed whoppers every day from mainstream news about the so-called ascendance of renewable energy.
PJM, the grid manager for Pennsylvania, twelve other states, and the District of Columbia, is worried about future energy needs. As existing power plants come offline and lawmakers seek to replace them with woefully inadequate alternatives, PJM estimates electricity shortages as early as 2027. PA Gov. Josh Shapiro isn’t helping matters with his disastrous energy proposals (see 
Lansing (Michigan) Board of Water and Light (BWL) is committed to the false premise that humans are catastrophically warming the planet. BWL has a clean energy plan that includes building solar, wind, and battery storage. However, solar and wind — even with battery storage — are intermittent and unreliable. That’s just a fact. In order to use MORE solar and wind, BWL needs to install a small (very small) natural gas-fired peaker plant that will turn on during periods of high demand, periods when solar and wind and battery backup can’t meet the demand. In other words, natgas will make using more renewable power possible. And still, antis who irrationally hate fossil fuels are protesting the peaker.
As you may have noticed, a number of our posts today are stories about gas-fired power plants, which are vitally important (very big) customers for shale gas. According to an analysis by Reuters, natural gas use by power generators has expanded by around 3.5% a year over the past three years and is by far the largest single source of gas used in the U.S. However, natural gas consumption by the other major sectors, including industry, households, and commercial, is falling each year. The fall in usage by industry, etc., is more than the growth in powergen.
Hope Gas, West Virginia’s largest natural gas utility company, and Quantum Pleasants, which is working on a plan in Pleasants County, WV, to use natural gas to produce hydrogen for electricity generation at what is currently a coal-burning plant, are squabbling before the state Public Service Commission (PSC) over whether or not Quantum Pleasants has the right to buy its natural gas from a different vendor (with a different pipeline).
The Bidenistas at the EPA attacked coal and gas-fired power plants in April, threatening to destabilize the existing electric power grid with new regulations (see 
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is the sixth-largest power supplier and the largest public utility in the country. In 2021, MDN told you that TVA is spending over $1 billion to replace six coal-fired plants with natgas-fired turbines (see 
The Passaic Valley Sewerage Commission operates the largest sewage treatment plant in the state of New Jersey — in Newark. When Hurricane Sandy hit in 2012, the sewer plant lost power and dumped BILLIONS of gallons of raw sewage into the Passaic River. The Commission has a plan to prevent that from happening again: Build a tiny natural gas peaker plant to generate electricity. It would only be used to prevent such environmental damage again (i.e., rarely used, only for emergencies). We told you last week that the ultra-liberal Phil Murphy administration approved the project (see 
The Passaic Valley Sewerage Commission operates the largest sewage treatment plant in the entire state of New Jersey — in Newark. When Hurricane Sandy hit in 2012, the sewer plant lost power and dumped BILLIONS of gallons of raw sewage into the Passaic River. The Commission has a plan to prevent that from happening again: Build a tiny natural gas peaker plant to generate electricity. It would only be used to prevent such environmental damage again (i.e., rarely used, only for emergencies). Yet Earthjustice and other radicalized leftists accuse the plan to build the peaker plant of being racist, and they oppose it (see