Electrical Generation | Indiana County | Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania | Statewide PA | Taxation
Are Some PA Repubs Like Rep. Struzzi Warming Up to Carbon Tax?
Danger, Will Robinson! One of the leading lights in the Pennsylvania legislature against Democrat Gov. Tom Wolf’s idiotic (and dangerous) carbon tax plan, called RGGI (Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative), has been Republican House Rep. Jim Struzzi (from Indiana County). Struzzi sponsored House Bill (HB) 2025 last year giving PA residents a say in whether or not the state should join RGGI (see PA Senate Passes Bill Giving Legislators Say in RGGI Carbon Tax). Wolf subsequently vetoed the bill because he doesn’t want the general public to have a say.
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Our favorite government agency, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), is a sub-unit of the Dept. of Energy. The DOE, as you know, is now part of the Evil Empire (aka the Biden Administration). As you also know, old dementia Joe has been bashing away at fossil fuels since he took office, promising to “transition away” from fossil fuels during his tenure of occupying the White House. Yet the EIA is out with a projection that shows “renewables” (includes not just wind and solar but hydro and “other”) will still make up less than half (42%) of electric power production 30 years from now! Fossil fuels (natural gas and coal) will still have a larger share of electric production than renewables 30 years from now. How’s that for a “transition away” from fossil fuels?
On Friday, representatives of a “dark money” political action committee called Generation Now signed a guilty plea admitting their part in the biggest bribery scandal to ever hit Ohio. Generation Now was set up as a social welfare nonprofit but in reality was a shell organization that received “tens of millions of dollars” from FirstEnergy as part of a $61 million bribery scandal to pass and keep passed House Bill (HB) 6 which funnels over $1 billion from Ohio ratepayers to FirstEnergy in order to keep the company’s unprofitable nuclear power plants running.
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf is openly admitting that his cockamamie plan to force PA to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI)–a carbon tax scheme that will cost PA residents $2.36 billion over ten years–will in fact cause the closure of coal and gas-fired power plants throughout his state. Wolf’s brilliant plan to overcome the big negatives of power plant closings? A new government program, funded by taxpayers.
The Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) received some 13,000 public comments on its horrible plan to force PA residents to pay $2.36 billion in new energy taxes (a carbon tax) for electricity produced by coal and natural gas power plants–a scheme called the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). The plan would greatly reduce the number of gas-fired power plants operating in the state and create energy insecurity for the entire PJM portion of the national electricity grid.
The Trump administration worked for four long, hard years against the radicalism of leftist Democrats to overturn what was called Obama’s “Clean Power Plan” (CPP)–an odious and misnamed plan that assassinates coal and mortally wounds natural gas power generating plants (see 
Our favorite government agency, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), is forecasting less power generation from natural gas in 2021, largely as a result of rising fuel costs. EIA says electric power generation by gas-fired plants will decrease by 8% this year. The biggest winner in 2021? Coal-fired generation will expand and produce 14% more electricity this year than it did last year.
Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost continues to hammer FirstEnergy Corporation. In November Yost filed a lawsuit to block the collection of $150 million provided for under House Bill (HB) 6, aimed at propping up FirstEnergy’s unprofitable nuclear power plants in the state (see 
A member of the PA Senate, Sen. Wayne Langerholc (R), and a member of the PA House, Rep. Jim Rigby (R), together penned a response to an 
FirstEnergy is up to its metaphorical rear-end in alligators. Not only has the Ohio Supreme Court blocked (for now) the collection of annual $150 million payments from the residents of Ohio given to FirstEnergy to prop up its uneconomic nuclear power plants, but multiple (over a dozen) lawsuits have been filed against the company by some of FirstEnergy’s biggest investors alleging fraud that has caused the company’s stock price to plummet.
Anti-fossil fuelers have a new favorite lie to tell: Any kind of power plant or pipeline that uses natural gas is racist. It’s a sick and twisted lie, but that’s the line they now use. For example, the Virginia Air Pollution Control Board recently approved a permit for the construction of a new 17-megawatt natural gas power plant to power the Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth, Virginia. Environuts are hollering it’s racist.