Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Electrical Generation | Industrywide Issues | Litigation | Pennsylvania | Statewide PA
PA Gov. Shapiro Ponders Appealing RGGI Carbon Tax Case
The next few weeks will tell the story of whether or not the final nail has been driven into the coffin of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) carbon tax in Pennsylvania. Yesterday, we brought you the really big news that PA’s Commonwealth Court voted 4-1 to block the state from joining RGGI (see Near-Fatal Blow for PA Carbon Tax – Commonwealth Court Blocks 4-1). We termed it a “near-fatal” blow to the horrible RGGI carbon tax in PA because the current leftist Governor, Josh Shapiro, can appeal the decision to the PA Supreme Court (loaded with lefty Democrats). Will he appeal it? He was asked that question yesterday at a PR spectacle held in southwestern PA.
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In the end, Pennsylvania’s Commonwealth Court was not fooled by the Democrat left’s attempt to rename a tax as a fee to circumvent the necessary approval needed by the state legislature in approving taxes as provided for by the state constitution. We’re referring to the illegal attempt by former PA Gov. Tom Wolf in 2019 to force the state into a carbon tax scheme called the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), which would slap a new (very high) tax (i.e., “fee”) on electricity produced by coal- and gas-fired power plants, forcing them out of business in favor of unreliable “renewable” energy sources (see 
The mental gymnastics leftists go through to justify their anti-freedom, anti-capitalist views is truly a marvel to behold. Take the so-called Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a carbon tax scheme aimed at shutting down coal- and natural gas-fired power plants. Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf could not get the Republican legislature to agree to enroll the state in RGGI, so he seized dictatorial powers and tried to do it himself. Which hasn’t worked out (Republicans sued to block it, still tied up in court). Joseph Otis Minott, President of the Clean Air Action Fund (far-left Big Green group in Philadelphia), is trying to justify RGGI with a new argument: It reduces racism (otherwise called “environmental justice”).
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is a federally-owned electric utility corporation in the U.S. TVA’s service area covers all of Tennessee, portions of Alabama, Mississippi, and Kentucky, and small areas of Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia. TVA is the sixth-largest power supplier and the largest public utility in the U.S. Two years ago, MDN told you that TVA is spending over $1 billion to replace six coal-fired plants with natgas-fired turbines (see 
The United States will add 8.6 gigawatts (GW) of natural gas-fired electric generating capacity in 2023, more than the gas-fired additions in 2022 and 2021, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said on Monday. So far, in 2023, 10 natural gas-fired power plants have come online with 6.8 GW of new capacity. Another six plants are due to come online by the end of this year, adding another 1.8 GW of new capacity. The EIA expects 20 new natural gas-fired power plants to come online in the next two years, in 2024 and 2025, with another 7.7 GW of new capacity.
Amid the good news today of court and legislative victories for pipeline projects that will flow more Marcellus/Utica molecules, we have the sad news that Competitive Power Ventures (CPV) has, after more than five years of trying, pulled the plug on a project to build a second power plant next door to an existing power plant in Woodbridge, NJ. Eco-narcissists are rejoicing that NJ residents will go without power during extreme weather events and on the hottest and coldest days of the year. Nice folks, those people who “care” so much about the climate (but don’t give a fig about people).
We remember (years ago) hearing Rush Limbaugh postulate this observation about liberals: “Liberalism is spreading misery equally.” Instead of cutting taxes, which boosts economic prosperity for everyone, including those at the bottom of the economic ladder, liberals seek to make more people pay more taxes. Spread the misery. Instead of allowing people to choose their form of energy, force them to use only certain (very expensive) forms, or force them to cut back on the energy they use (Jimmy Carter’s “throw a sweater on in the winter” comment in the late 1970s). Spread the misery. We now see this truism playing out with liberal Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro concerning the so-called Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) — a clever name for an obscene carbon tax.
U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) forecasters are predicting a sharp drop in natural gas demand in the power sector in the coming decades based on an expectation that unreliable renewables will add tremendous new capacity build-out and will accelerate and displace other sources. However, EIA’s forecasts over the past decade have “consistently and severely” underestimated gas burn for power. The sharp analysts at RBN Energy have done a deep dive into the pitfalls of forecasting gas consumption in a world often focused on pushing a renewables-heavy generation stack.
New York State has become the North Korea of the United States. It is narrow and parochial and devoid of freedom. If you operate a business in New York and you are not in a protected or favored class, or if your business does not bribe someone in the Democrat Party, you are in danger of losing that business. New York is aggressively hostile to any business remotely connected to fossil fuels. A “bitcoin miner” operating in beautiful Upstate NY, near the shore of Seneca Lake, uses a small natural gas power plant to provide power for its 15,300 computer servers. The radical Democrats running the state, including Gov. Kathy Hochul, want it shut down and gone. They are close to achieving their objective. How did we fall this far?
Yesterday, Ameren Missouri, a subsidiary of Ameren Corporation, a regional electric utility, announced its updated 20-year plan to provide reliable, affordable, and resilient energy to its customers. The plan calls for investment in new on-demand energy sources (two new gas-fired power plants) to ensure the long-term stability of the energy grid and accelerated deployment of renewable energy generation. Even though the plan is loaded with all sorts of so-called new renewable electric generation, anti-fossil fuel zealots have latched onto the two new gas-fired power plants and are stroking out. By the way, those two gas-fired plants will get their molecules from the Marcellus/Utica.
In May, the Bidenistas at the EPA released a hellscape of new regulations (681 pages) aimed at forcing coal- and natural gas-fired power plants to close (see 
Less than a year ago, the Northeast experienced a major winter storm at Christmastime (Winter Storm Elliott). Do you remember it? On Dec. 23, temps in places like the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania hit 60 degrees! Within 12 hours, the bottom dropped out, with temps plunging into the single digits—a more than 50-degree change. Dec. 24’s high temp in the Lehigh Valley (Allentown) was 13 degrees. The massive temperature change caused problems with power generation by natural gas plants, some of which went offline due to freeze-ups in the pipelines that feed them. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) issued a final report yesterday on Winter Storm Elliott, complete with recommendations for sweeping new regulations to prevent future blackouts from storms like Elliott.