Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Electrical Generation | Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania | Regulation | Statewide PA
Climate Crazies in PA Openly Admit RGGI Carbon Tax is Regressive
Politicians derive their power from touching *your* money. They love to take money out of one of your pockets, handle it (siphon some of it off for themselves and their favorite cronies), and then put some (not all) of it back into another of your pockets–all while telling you that you should enjoy the violation you’ve just received. This is the elaborate hoax Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf and those who want to slap an insane, regressive carbon tax on all Pennsylvanians are attempting with the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI)–a carbon tax aimed at eliminating coal-fired power plants and vastly reducing the number of Marcellus-fired power plants.
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Here’s an interesting concept. What if you were to replace the natural gas flowing through a pipeline, say an old, unused pipeline, with compressed air instead? And what if you retooled an existing gas- or coal-fired power plant so the compressed air itself spins the turbines in the compressor to produce electricity? That’s the concept being floated by the appropriately named company called Breeze.
Here’s a peer-reviewed, published research study you won’t read about in mainstream media. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), Penn State University, and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation recently published research in The Electricity Journal (full copy below) detailing how much money it cost New England electric ratepayers in 2014 when there was a cold-weather event that caused a shortage of natural gas used for power plants, due to lack of pipelines. New Englanders paid $1.8 BILLION for that one event in skyrocketed electric rates–due to the folly of their elected leaders in blocking new pipelines to the region.
Last week CenterPoint Energy filed a request with the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission (IURC) to replace portions of its coal-fired generation fleet with two natural gas combustion turbines. The two units would provide a combined 460 megawatts (MW) of electricity as a backup to CenterPoint’s wind, solar, and battery storage. The plants would not operate continuously (which is a shame). Where will the gas come from to feed these new gas-fired plants?
“A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury.” (See below for the full quote.) Yesterday Pennsylvania Democrats unveiled their latest “generous gifts” they’re promising to bestow on Pennsylvanians from the public treasury if Gov. Wolf gets his way and imposes a Marcellus-killing carbon tax on electric power generation. The Dems figure they can raise about $300 million a year via a carbon tax and they have a wish list bigger than your wildest dreams for where they’ll spend it. One tiny problem for the Dems…
The price of electricity and natural gas in New York State is through the roof. Average New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) power prices across major hubs increased by 50% year over year in May, and natural gas prices increased nearly 75% year over year. It’s a train wreck here in New York. And you can directly blame Andrew Cuomo and the Democrats in the NY legislature for blocking new natural gas pipelines. That’s the root cause. No pipelines = obscenely high prices for electricity and gas.
For years those who have supported natural gas have made the argument that carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions have been decreasing in the U.S. because of the increased use of natural gas. How can that be, given burning natural gas causes the release of CO2? Because natural gas has captured market share and largely replaced the use of coal in electric power generation. As more natgas is used, CO2 emissions go down. The U.S. Energy Information Administration has just released numbers proving, without a doubt, just how much natgas has helped to lower CO2 emissions over the past 17 years.
In January 2016, Invenergy announced its intention to build a natgas-powered electric plant in Elizabeth Township, in Allegheny County near Pittsburgh (see 
Each month our favorite government agency, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), issues a Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO) report. The STEO covers all of the major energy sources produced and consumed in the country. The latest edition, issued yesterday, finds the analysts at EIA revising up the expected marketed production and consumption of natural gas in 3Q21. Also up is the expected average price for natural gas at the benchmark Henry Hub–now up to a predicted $3.07/MMBtu for all of 2021. However, EIA says natural gas consumption for all of 2021 will sink by half of one percent from 2020. Why?
Can we get an amen! We have an evangelist in the house. Toby Rice, CEO of EQT (the largest natural gas producing company in the U.S.) is preaching the gospel of natural gas. No surprise there. But what may surprise you (it did us) is just how much Rice is pushing natgas as the alternative to coal in power generation. In an interview with Barron’s, Rice declared we need “every tool” to end energy poverty around the world, and “natural gas is the most evolved tool” to do it. Amen!
Last fall MDN told you that a Marcellus-fired power plant planned for Clinton County, PA called the Renovo Energy Center, had come back to life as an even bigger project that will produce 1,240 megawatts of electricity when it gets built (see 
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