RGGI Carbon Tax Super High, Latest Auction Averaged $13.45/Ton
The so-called Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a tax on carbon dioxide emissions from coal and natural gas-fired power plants aimed at killing off those two sources of energy, held its latest tax auction on Friday. The result was pricing close to an all-time high, although the average price came down just a smidgen from the previous auction. Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf is trying to force PA to join the RGGI cabal of 11 states (most of them in the northeast), a move endorsed by the man who wants to replace him in November, PA Attorney General Josh Shapiro (see PA AG Shapiro Signs Off on RGGI Carbon Tax…After Criticizing It). In the most recent RGGI “auction” of so-called carbon allowances, bidders paid an average of $13.45 per allowance–per short ton of CO2 emitted. That’s down from (but still close to) the previous all-time high of $13.90.
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What if we gave the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) a $2.5 million grant to study a link between peanut butter and childhood cancer? Researchers could only use the money to study any potential link between peanut butter and kids getting rare cancers. Sounds absurd, right? What if there is NO link between peanut butter and cancer in kids? What if there IS a link to some other environmental factor like, say, an old uranium dumpsite nearby? But the remit is to ONLY research peanut butter. Sound silly? Sound stupid? Substitute “shale drilling” for “peanut butter,” and you can see how absurd it is for Pitt to study a single potential cause for rare childhood cancers in southwestern PA. Yet they are. Pitt is studying a link solely between fracking and cancer in kids. They are now trying to recruit local families to participate in this sham they call science.
One step forward and two steps back. That country tune went through our head as we read about the progress being made by Williams with its Regional Energy Access Expansion Pipeline project in Pennsylvania. The project, aimed at competing with the now-dead PennEast Pipeline project by flowing gas from northeastern Pennsylvania to the Trenton, NJ area, will get a virtual public hearing by the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection on Wednesday, October 5.
Last week the three states with active Marcellus/Utica drilling, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia, issued a collective 40 new drilling permits, way up from the 19 permits issued the week before. But there was a shocker. PA only issued nine new permits, while OH issued 14 new permits and WV issued a record high 17 new permits.
Last week MDN told you that three radical environmental groups challenging an air permit issued by the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) for the Renovo Energy Center, a Marcellus-fired power plant in Clinton County, PA, won a partial summary judgment lowering the amount of sulfur dioxide (SO2) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) the new plant can emit (see 
The Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) recently held two public hearings about a plan by the Westmoreland Sanitary Landfill in Westmoreland County, PA (southwestern corner of the state, near Pittsburgh) to build a gas-fired leachate evaporator. Leftist anti-drillers showed up to bash the proposal citing the landfill accepts shale waste, claiming the leachate is radioactive because of the shale waste and will contaminate everything if it’s burned. DEP plans to approve the temporary operation of an evaporator for 180 days to process 45,000 gallons of leachate per day.
Every now and again, we come across someone who is willing to risk their career by openly admitting the truth. This time that brave soul is Russell Johns, the George E. Trimble Chair in Energy and Mineral Sciences at the John and Willie Leone Family Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering at Penn State University. In a letter to the editor published in the student-run Penn State Daily Collegian, Johns points out that when considering the intense mining operations needed to harvest materials used in solar and wind technology, and the shipping associated with those materials, etc., solar and wind actually have a *bigger* carbon dioxide footprint than does using natural gas. In other words, natural gas is greener than wind and solar!
In a small but important victory against Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf’s effort to force the state to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) carbon tax scheme, the PA Supreme Court on Wednesday opted not to overturn a Commonwealth Court decision that blocks the state from participating in RGGI until several lawsuits play out. The state Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP), under Wolf’s thumb, argued the state should be allowed to enforce the new tax in advance of a resolution to the lawsuits. Nope. Not gonna happen. It now appears it will be early next year before RGGI can go into effect–if ever.
The mighty Shell ethane cracker complex in Monaca (Beaver County), PA, is due to come online any day now. In fact, with such a large and complex facility, it is already “coming online” gradually and has been since August (see 
Epsilon Energy, one of the smaller Marcellus drillers that we track, issued an update this week to say the company has issued a dividend and has repurchased shares of the company’s stock in an effort to reward and increase value to investors. Epsilon also reports a new well in which they own a share recently came online to sales in Susquehanna County, PA.
In June, seemingly out of nowhere, a plan to build an LNG export facility on the banks of the Delaware River south of Philadelphia made big headlines in Philly. Penn LNG, headed by Franc James, a native of Philadelphia, has “quietly lined up support to build a $6.4 billion liquefied natural gas export terminal near Philly.” While acknowledging such a project will face stiff opposition, James is planning to pre-file with Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) by the end of this year, and reach a final investment decision (FID) by 2024. Full speed ahead!
We experienced déjà vu as we read about a hearing held Tuesday evening in Plum Boro (Allegheny County, PA) about a proposed shale wastewater injection well. Some 20 people made their way to the microphones to voice their objections to plans by Penneco Environmental Solutions to site a second injection well in the boro–right next to an existing injection well. We’ve heard it all before, almost four years ago, when some of the same people objected to Penneco’s plans to install the first injection well (see 
Get a Democrat nurse to repeat the talking points from two far-left, lying Democrat groups (the Conservation Voters of PA and the NRDC) bashing the Republican candidate for governor, Doug Mastriano, in a TV commercial, and it’s just another regurgitate-the-lies story from lamestream media. This time the lies are that Doug Mastriano loves to pollute–because he stands up for the Marcellus shale industry in the state. We hope PA residents (and U.S. residents across the country) are beginning to see through the lies spread by the Democrat left. The left can’t argue and debate the facts, so they resort to name-calling and lies. The good news is that the left is spending money on this kind of thing, meaning they don’t believe that hardened anti-driller Josh Shapiro (Democrat, currently Attorney General) has the race for governor locked up–as all the “polls” quoted by lamestream media indicate.
In May 2021, the radicals from PennFuture, the Philadelphia-based Clean Air Council, and the so-called Center for Biological Diversity (better named the Center for Leftwing Conformity) challenged an air permit issued by the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) for the Renovo Energy Center, a Marcellus-fired power plant in Clinton County (northcentral), PA (see