Pennsylvania must join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative

As Governor Shapiro convenes his working group on the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, Pennsylvania faces a critical decision. Will we continue to live in the past or forge ahead to a new energy future? Pennsylvania has always been an energy leader. In the 18th and 19th century, we fueled our economy by burning down Penn’s Woods to heat our homes and produce coke for our nascent iron and steel production. Our efforts neutered forests and only thanks to the New Deal’s Civilian Conservation Corps can we still claim our commonwealth as Penn’s Woods.

We then turned to coal that powered our industries and homes. That legacy, however, continues to haunt us in millions of acres of abandoned mines that still spew toxins in our once pristine waters. We have now turned to methane (aka natural gas). Reams of medical studies link methane to preterm birth, brain damage, other severe impacts, and potentially increased cancer rates for those living near production sites. Over 202,000 PA children and almost 1.5 million adults live within the 0.5-mile threat radius of methane production. But all Pennsylvanians breathe increased smog and soot inflaming asthma and other medical risks due to methane and its co-pollutants. Methane production in Pennsylvania also left the legacy of over 350,000 abandoned leaking wells that continued to puke methane, barium, chloride, volatile organic compounds, and benzene and arsenic (both known carcinogens) into our air and water.

While there are many factors that have driven up electric rates across Pennsylvania, regulation is not the cause as former State Representative Stephen Bloom claimed in the April 23, 2023, in the York Sunday News. The largest single reason for high energy prices remains Mr. Putin’s War on Ukraine that upended energy markets. Prices for methane soared over 200%, leaving Pennsylvania consumers to pay the high cost for Russia’s war while oil/gas companies more than doubled their profits to $219 Billion in an effort that can only be described as war profiteering. As industry made record-breaking profits, the rest of us paid through the nose to heat our homes and care for our children or grandchildren.

Adding insult to injury, Pennsylvania’s oil/gas industry received a $266 million giveaway for 2022 alone as in the July 2022 Pennsylvania’s Budget from Republican senators. It’s only common sense that companies should clean-up their mess when they’re done. But instead of requiring the $78,000 per well restoration cost, our Republican senators enshrined in law a maximum bond of only $2500 for conventional oil/gas, $10,000 for unconventional (fracked) wells, and $0 for wells drilled before 1985. These bond limits mean it’s much more profitable for companies to walk away and stick us, Pennsylvania taxpayers, the clean-up bill. Unfortunately, Pennsylvania doesn’t have the funds to pay for the nearly 3500 wells abandoned by the conventional industry from 2017-2022. But it’s our children who will pay the steepest costs with their health from toxic water, and air fouled with benzene and other known cancer causing chemicals, and land so contaminated, farmers have been warned to keep their livestock away.

There’s only one way to reduce electricity rates for Pennsylvania and the entire country. There’s only one way to provide energy security from world-wide energy commodity escalations from wars, unfriendly countries, extreme weather, or other geo-political concerns that is to switch to truly home “grown” energy sources such as wind, solar, or next generation nuclear.

New generation electric sources can stabilize energy prices, rid our skies, water and soil of pollution that kills up to 200,000 Americans each year, bring thousands of family sustaining jobs back to Pennsylvania and address climate change, the greatest health threat of our time. And the best way for Pennsylvania to move in the future requires joining the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI).

RGGI is a market driven emission program designed to lower carbon emissions and other pollutants like SO2, NOx, and soot (PM2.5) from the electric generation in the northeastern United States that would save Pennsylvanians up to $6.2 Billion in health costs by 2030. Pennsylvania ranks among the worst states for pollution according to the US News and World Report, so defending our children and grandchildren’s should be paramount to us all.

Contrary to the fearmongering, a Penn State working paper, published before Russia’s war, finds the average increase in home electrics costs would be minimal, approximately $45 per year or under $100 per year based on escalated energy costs. Health cost savings from RGGI easily offset electric costs increases, and if a portion of RGGI proceeds were allocated to families with low incomes and home energy efficiency improvements, there would be a net dollar benefit.

It's time to acknowledge that coal is dead. Methane and all fossil fuels have a limited future. It’s time for a new energy future that fuels our economy while defending our children’s health, ensures energy security with stable costs, and creates good paying jobs. By failing to join RGGI in July 2021, Pennsylvania lost out $1.045 billion in net proceeds. That’s a billion that could’ve helped rebuild families and retrain out-of-work fossil fuel workers, a billion dollars to defend the least of these as the Bible commands, and a billion dollars to keep Pennsylvania as an energy leader but without the health harms.

It's time for our Legislature and Governor to work together but instead of living in the past. Let’s use RGGI to defend our kids and wisely use RGGI to rebuild and restore Pennsylvania for all.

The Rev. Mitch Hescox is President/C.E.O. on the Evangelical Environmental Network and lives in New Freedom.