RGGI is very much needed because of the climate crisis, WV should join too!
From an Article by Rebecca R. Rubin, Virginia Mercury, July 3, 2023
RGGI’s track record clearly demonstrates we need not choose between clean air, affordable electricity and a strong economy.
In June, Virginians were inundated with smoke from wildfires that have been raging across Canada and could continue through the summer in the worst wildfire season in that nation’s history – a crisis that scientists agree is being driven by climate change.
Thousands of miles from the flames, we Virginians suffered levels of air quality ranging from unhealthy to hazardous, disproportionately impacting children, the elderly and those with preexisting respiratory conditions. Environmental agencies advised those of us who could to stay indoors. School and recreational youth athletics and other outdoor events were canceled.
And as smoke blotted out the sun, turning blue skies gray and orange, the Youngkin administration worked to dismantle one of our best tools to address climate change, protect clean air and secure a livable future for our children.
Wednesday, June 7, Youngkin’s majority of the State Air Pollution Control Board voted to end Virginia’s participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a multi-state cap-and-invest program that has been cutting pollution and driving the clean energy transition in Virginia, and throughout the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, while returning hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue to our state to fund vital resiliency and energy efficiency programs.
The repeal regulation is now under review by Gov. Youngkin, who will likely add it to the Virginia Register. It is widely expected that the repeal will face legal challenges from the public and environmental groups.
With no funding or policies — economic or otherwise — in place to replace this program, this short-sighted rollback leaves Virginia’s localities on their own to fund vital infrastructure, and takes cost-saving energy efficiency resources away from low-income Virginians. It also signals to energy producers that under Youngkin’s watch, they can continue pumping air pollution into communities unabated — which negatively impacts public health and significantly curtails our resiliency efforts — when we need to cut emissions and build a livable future. With this, and to put it charitably, we have indeed reached the pinnacle of mediocrity.
This repeal effort also flies in the face of the clear public support behind the RGGI program — two-thirds of Virginia voters polled support staying in the program, and those who submitted comments to the Board overwhelmingly opposed Youngkin’s rollbacks.
Most importantly, in 2020 the General Assembly legislated joining the RGGI program, making it the law of the Commonwealth. Youngkin has a constitutional mandate to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” His effort to single-handedly repeal a law passed by the General Assembly through his Air Board majority is inconsistent with this mandate.
Youngkin has used his hand-picked, polluter-friendly Air Board majority to attempt an end-run around the legislature to overturn a policy he personally dislikes — actions that may grab him some political headlines as he works to elevate his national profile but are unlikely to survive legal challenges.
To date, this program has generated $657 million for our Commonwealth, alongside steep reductions in power plant emissions. As one of the latest states to join RGGI, Virginia is just at the beginning of reaping the rewards of a proven program that’s a global model for how the cap-and-invest model to cut pollution works.
In their first decade of participation, the northeastern and mid-Atlantic states that were early members of RGGI back in 2009 saw nearly $6 billion of public health benefits and upwards of $3 billion of direct revenue alongside drastic reductions in air pollution, lower electricity costs and economic growth that has outpaced the rest of the nation.
Much transpired in the decade spanning 2009 and 2019: Power plant emissions fell by nearly 50% in the RGGI states, outpacing the rest of the country by more than 20%; the cost of electricity fell by nearly six percent as the rest of the country saw prices rise by nearly nine percent,savings driven by investments in renewable energy and energy efficiency; and RGGI states’ Gross Domestic Product increased by 50 percent, 11 points more than the rest of the country.
Youngkin’s claim that RGGI drives up costs for Virginians is false. RGGI’s track record clearly demonstrates we need not choose between clean air, affordable electricity and a strong economy.
Youngkin is doing more than robbing Virginians of these long-term benefits; we’d be going backwards on our climate goals and imperiling the economic investment and job creation that we’ve earned with our clean energy transition.
Time is not a luxury we have in addressing climate change. If we fail to act now, while we still can, wildfires, smoky skies and dangerous air quality will be our new normal. This isn’t the tomorrow that we want any child to inherit. We knew better. We had the opportunity to act all along.
>>> Rebecca R. Rubin is an independent environmental consultant who served on the Virginia Air Pollution Control Board 2014-2018. She is a board member at Virginia League of Conservation Voters. ~ Rebecca.R.Rubin. PreservingNature@gmail.com
#######+++++++#######+++++++########
SEE ALSO: Everything you need to know about the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) ~ Southern Environmental Law Center
Point Your RSS Reader to FrackCheckWV.net/feed/
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Climate change, like the coronavirus, requires hard choices and leadership
From the Washington Post, April 23, 2020
PHOTO ~ The Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s Fox Island Environmental Education Program at the Lodge on Fox Island, Va., closed for good because of rising sea levels and erosion. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)
>>> Essay by Rebecca R. Rubin and Sam Bleicher, former members of the State Air Pollution Control Board, are members of the Virginia League of Conservation Voters Board of Directors.
We find ourselves in unprecedented times. The novel coronavirus pandemic has upended daily life here in Virginia, across the country and the world.
Pandemics pose complex threats that affect all of us and demonstrate just how interconnected we are, along with the actions we choose to take or ignore.
The climate crisis, too, is a complex, global problem, one that affects us all, and one that will take widespread, coordinated action to fully address. It will require citizens to make behavioral changes and elected leaders at all levels of government to make hard choices — similar to what is required to address the coronavirus here in Virginia, and elsewhere. One expert has described the crisis as a “dress rehearsal” for the climate disruptions ahead.
Though we still have much work in the commonwealth to comprehensively address climate change, this year the legislature took significant first steps.
Most notable, we moved our state from the back of the pack to one of the states at the forefront of cutting harmful power plant emissions. In passing the Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA), a bold plan to decarbonize the electricity sector by 2045, lawmakers put the commonwealth on a clear and aggressive trajectory away from carbon and toward a stronger economy and a cleaner environment.
We recognize that the VCEA, as just one piece of legislation, does not address many of the complex problems that come with electricity generation and distribution, especially a regulatory scheme that still favors big monopolies such as Dominion Energy. More work remains to be done before progress can be made in addressing these systemic issues. Similarly, renewable energy is not a silver bullet; from development to emplacement to disposal, renewables have issues of their own for humans and wildlife. The VCEA does, however, commit the commonwealth to cleaner energy and a healthier environment in a way that’s never happened in Virginia.
The VCEA implements Virginia’s first-ever mandatory standards for renewable energy deployment and utility-led investments in energy efficiency, which ensures build-out of solar and wind energy and a cleaner, more efficient grid, instead of costly and dirty fossil fuel infrastructure that we pay for twice: in our monthly electric bills and in health effects.
The VCEA also includes provisions that require regulators to take into account the social cost of carbon when making decisions about our energy future, breaking the model that ignored the very real consequences that fossil fuel pollution has for Virginians’ health, our climate and our vulnerable communities.
The legislature also voted to finalize Virginia’s membership in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a multistate cap-and-invest program, which, since 2009, has generated billions of dollars of public health benefits and investments that drive down pollution, decrease energy bills and accelerate the transition to clean energy.
Under the RGGI, which puts a price on carbon pollution, Virginia will see $100 million per year of estimated revenue, which will be divided between protections along our coast and in flood-prone communities and energy-efficiency programs for low-income Virginians — efforts that will protect public safety and our most vulnerable populations.
While we’ve made substantial progress, the General Assembly’s work is not done.
The transportation sector remains Virginia’s and our nation’s largest source of carbon pollution. In the commonwealth, tailpipes emit almost half of our state’s carbon emissions, and cutting this source of pollution is paramount to making lasting progress in the climate fight. This means incentivizing alternative-fuel and electric vehicles, along with charging infrastructure, while getting more Virginians off the road by investing in mass transit, especially in high-growth areas.
Virginia must also do more to ensure a fair and balanced regulatory model that puts people ahead of industry profits as we make the clean energy transition over the coming years. No one should be left behind or overburdened.
The pandemic stage of the coronavirus, as awful, threatening and disruptive as it is, is unlikely to last forever. We’ll get through it, learn from it. We’ll remember to listen to scientists and experts. Hopefully, our health-care infrastructure will be stronger as a result and our medical experts will develop a treatment or cure for this terrible virus.
There is not and never will be a vaccine for climate change. It will last forever. We cannot wait until we suffer more widespread catastrophes to act. It will take years of leadership, hard choices and transformative change in Virginia, across the United States and in countries around the globe.