Unions & Businesses Form Coalition to Fight PA Carbon Tax
Big time opposition continues to Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf’s plan to force the state to participate in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a tax on carbon aimed at coal and natural gas-fired electric power plants, with an eye to driving them out of business. We’ve written plenty about Wolf’s naked power grab, to force the state into RGGI without the legislature’s consent (see our RGGI stories here). In January we told you about a huge number of trade union members lining up to oppose the plan (see 130,000 PA Union Members Join Fight Against Wolf’s Carbon Tax). Those unionists have joined forces with the companies they work for in a coalition called Power PA Jobs Alliance with a mission to defeat RGGI in PA.
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Yesterday the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) released a draft of its proposed rules for PA’s participation in what is called the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). It’s a tax on carbon aimed at coal and natural gas-fired electric power plants, with an eye to driving them out of business. PA Gov. Tom Wolf is attempting to force PA to participate in RGGI, a collection of blue northeastern states (New England, NY and NJ) in an attempt to bolster his credibility with environmentalist wackos–to ingratiate himself with the wackos so he is more appealing as a Vice Presidential candidate.
While we’re sure he means well, Congressman David McKinley, a professional engineer (P.E.) from West Virginia (Republican) has thrown his support behind a “bipartisan” effort to create a new federal bureaucracy to oversee the decarbonization of the power generation sector. In other words, an effort that will end the use of natural gas to generate electricity–by 2050. We just can’t support something like that. It’s short-sighted, heavy-handed, and creating a new federal bureaucracy simply goes in the wrong direction. Period.
Pennsylvania State Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, Majority Chair of the House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee, doesn’t put up with the juvenile antics from the Democrats on his committee–like Danielle Friel Otten and Greg Vitali–from those who violate decorum by pretending they want to ask a question when in fact they want to pontificate like the gasbags they are. Wednesday at a hearing on the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), Metcalfe shut down Otten and Vitali when they attempted to violate rules and bloviate instead of asking relevant questions.
If there’s any silver lining to the ongoing low price for natural gas (NYMEX price closed at $1.86 yesterday), it is that gas-fired power generation kicks in with more demand, which will ultimately cause the price to rise–or at least not fall any further. Electric generation is a critically important market for natural gas. We spotted a couple of interesting articles. The first, from Platts, outlines the relationship of low gas prices to more switching from coal to gas. Platts says if gas stays under $2/Mcf, “power burn could see significant upside risk.” The other article, from Rigzone, says natgas will generate nearly 40% of all electricity in 2020–double what it generated just 10 years ago.
The Ohio Supreme Court, on Christmas Eve, threw a lifeline to an effort to overturn an Ohio law that provides corporate welfare in the form of $1 billion of ratepayer (taxpayer) money to FirstEnergy, which recently changed its name to Energy Harbor (see 
Earlier this week our favorite government agency, the U.S. Energy Information Administration, published an article chronicling the critical role of electric power generation in the supply and demand of natural gas. Natgas is the #1 source of fuel producing electricity in the U.S. today–and will be for the foreseeable future. We did some research on the PJM Interconnection–the largest grid operator in the U.S. covering 13 states and the District of Columbia. We located a list of the active gas-fired electric plants operating in PJM, and a list of planned gas-fired plants coming to PJM.
The regional transmission organization (RTO) that oversees the electric grid in New England states is called ISO New England. The organization has just published new data for 2019 which contains some interesting statistics. For example, in 2019, some 48.5% of all the electricity generated in the region (the #1 source) was generated by (yep)…natural gas. That number has been pretty consistent over the past five years. The #2 source of electric generation was nuclear, at 30%. The #3 source was hydro, which produced 9% of New England’s electricity. Wait, what about wind and solar? You know, the blessed renewables that will SAVE THE PLANET. How much did they produce last year?
The gloves are off in Harrisburg. We previously told you about Gov. Wolf’s plan to have PA join with northeastern states in the so-called Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a regional alliance to slap a carbon tax on natural gas-fired electric plants (see 
In September 2016, MDN reported that EmberClear has plans to fund and build a new $900 million electric generating plant in Harrison County, OH (see 
A new study conducted by the University of California San Diego and published this week in the journal Nature Sustainability says 26,610 U.S. lives were saved from 2005-2016 as a result of increasing reliance on natural gas in electric power generation. That’s right–a liberal university published a study in a liberal journal that says natural gas SAVES LIVES. You may have to pinch yourself to see if it’s a dream!
In September Longview Power filed an application with the West Virginia Public Service Commission to build and operate a Marcellus gas-fired electric generating facility in Monongalia County, WV, near Maidsville (see