The Current State of PA Gov. Tom Wolf’s Obscene Carbon Tax
In 2021 Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf advanced his plan to force PA to join the obscene carbon tax euphemistically called the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). Of the current 11 member states of RGGI (one of which will be unjoining this year, Virginia), all of the states joined after their respective state legislatures approved joining. Not so in PA. Wolf can’t convince the Republican-controlled legislature to join. So he’s doing what all leftist dictators do–seizing power that isn’t his and attempting to force his will on the people.
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TC Energy Corp., the former TransCanada, held its annual investor day on Dec. 1. TC owns extensive liquids and natural gas pipelines across North America, including the Columbia Gas Transmission interstate pipeline network that blankets Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia. If anyone has its ear to the ground and watching for/discerning longer-term trends, it is big pipeline companies like TC Energy. During the investor day update, one of TC’s executives, Tracy Robinson, said she expects natural gas demand in North America to grow 25% by 2030. That’s a remarkable amount of growth!
The electrical system that powers the United States is made up of individual power grids that connect with each other. Different regions have their own “grid of grids” (called a regional transmission organization, or RTO) that operates to manage the flow of electricity across the entire grid to ensure reliability. In New England, the grid operator/RTO is ISO New England (ISO standing for Independent System Operator). Gordon van Welie, CEO of ISO New England, recently had some startling and stark words about the reliability for New England’s electric grid: Get ready for rolling blackouts.
MDN first told you about plans to build the Chickahominy Power Station, a 1,650 megawatt state-of-the-art natural gas-fired power plant in Charles City County, VA, in June 2018 (see 
Back in October Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, who is running for the Democrat nomination for governor in 2022, told trade union workers he didn’t like current Democrat Gov. Tom Wolf’s plan to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a huge tax on carbon dioxide assessed on coal and gas-fired power plants (see 
The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), lapdog of leftwing Gov. Tom Wolf, tried to bypass the state legislature and secretly push through and get adopted a proposed regulation on the state joining the highly controversial Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a multi-state compact to limit carbon emissions from power plant operators (a carbon tax). The DEP just got caught red-handed.
A group of anti-fossil fuel zealots, with support from a clueless reporter at the Boston Globe, are targeting a tiny “peaker” gas-fired electric power generating plant in Peabody, Massachusetts (a suburb of Boston). The small 55-megawatt peaker would provide electricity only on the heaviest demand days for short periods of time. It would be powered by clean-burning natural gas. Yet the crazies are out in force protesting this $85 million project. Why? Because it will contribute, so say the crazies, to global warming. What dunces.
FirstEnergy Corp. CEO Steve Strah has an impossible job–to revive the badly tarnished reputation of his company following the biggest bribery scandal in the history of Ohio. Ohio’s House Bill (HB) 6 law granted billions (plural) of dollars to FirstEnergy in an attempt to prop up the company’s economically failing nuclear power plants. FirstEnergy bribed state legislators to pass, and keep passed, HB 6 by paying out $61 million to a small group of insiders, including the now-former Speaker of the House (see 
Today, right now, the #1 source of electricity produced in the so-called Empire State is…(drum roll please)…natural gas. By 2040 the state says natural gas will produce zero electricity and the number one source to produce electricity will be huge, ugly, noisy, environmentally-damaging windmills–both onshore and offshore. We plan to be around in 20 years just to laugh and say “we told you so” that such a plan is a pure (and dangerous) fantasy. Yesterday the state’s power management grid, called NYISO (New York Independent System Operator, Inc.) held an Installed Capacity and Market Issues Working Group meeting. From a question asked about the state recently denying permits to upgrade natgas-fired power plants, it was obvious NYISO members don’t have a clue how they will generate enough electricity to keep the lights on in 20 years’ time.