Incoming Gov. Youngkin in January tasked his Particular Advisor and former coal lobbyist Andrew Wheeler with producing an evaluation of Virginia’s overwhelmingly common local weather legislation – the Regional Greenhouse Fuel Initiative, often known as RGGI.
However a humorous factor occurred to Wheeler’s RGGI “report,” launched yesterday, on its strategy to Gov. Youngkin’s desk.
This key reality bought minimize: In its first yr, RGGI helped the Commonwealth slash harmful, climate-disrupting carbon air pollution from outdated coal and fossil fuel crops by over 13%, at the same time as Virginia’s economic system got here again to life and grew past its pre-pandemic ranges.
Massive Polluters Cannot Disguise That Virginia’s Fashionable RGGI Program Is Already Slashing Air pollution & Funded Invoice-lowering Power Effectivity Applications
RGGI additionally helped ship clear, zero-pollution power progress, with photo voltaic and wind energy up 130%, decreasing our dependence on mostly-imported coal and fossil fuel by 15%.
RGGI’s efficiency is sweet information for Virginians’ well being: decreasing use of fossil fuels additionally means much less smokestack air pollution like sulfur dioxide (SO2), which causes acid raid, and nitrous oxides (NOx), which trigger bronchial asthma assaults and different respiratory illnesses, significantly amongst youngsters and the aged. In RGGI’s first yr of implementation, Virginia’s energy plant SO2 emissions final yr dropped by 13% and NOx by practically a fifth. The cleaner air from RGGI will assist ship as much as $34 million in well being advantages for Virginians yearly transferring ahead.
Virginia’s yr 1 RGGI advantages are spectacular—and no shock. Different states which were implementing this program for over a decade have minimize their carbon air pollution in half and secured billions of {dollars} in public well being advantages from cleaner air, whereas additionally offering billions of {dollars} in cost-of-living reductions by means of RGGI-funded power effectivity upgrades in houses and companies.
(And all that whereas electrical energy costs in these different RGGI states have fallen over time.)
That is precisely what occurs while you put money into power effectivity and 0 fuel-cost renewable power moderately than pricey fossil fuels, and that’s why we’re already seeing RGGI’s success in Virginia.
And but, you wouldn’t know any of this from the governor’s fact-challenged, polluter patronage RGGI report, which is a part of Gov. Youngkin’s misguided try and take Virginia backward on the subject of our local weather, our well being, and our economic system.
RGGI Is Delivering Price-of-Residing Reductions and Safety from Sea-level Rise to On a regular basis Virginians
In the actual world, RGGI delivers investments that instantly decrease Virginians’ price of residing, by serving to decrease electrical energy payments. Virginia’s electrical energy charges – from earlier than RGGI kicked in – are among the many highest within the south, with federal information exhibiting our charges in 2020 had been larger than each single southern state, besides two (South Carolina and Alabama).
To deal with that cost-of-living expense, RGGI helps decrease utility payments by offering funds for Virginians to put money into energy- and money-saving effectivity upgrades to make use of power smarter and waste much less. In its first yr alone, RGGI supplied thousands and thousands of {dollars} for effectivity upgrades in hundreds of houses throughout Virginia the place these investments are wanted most, from down in South Boston and over to Wytheville.
RGGI has additionally already delivered a whole lot of thousands and thousands of {dollars} in funding to Hampton Roads to take care of sea-level rise, an encroaching slow-motion pure catastrophe that’s flooding properties alongside our coast, with one other foot of water coming in simply the subsequent few a long time. RGGI investments will assist avert the $5 billion in annual sea-level rise damages anticipated alongside the financial engine of our coast.
Wheeler’s RGGI “Report” is Doomed to Fail
Bizarrely – or maybe overtly – RGGI’s confirmed pollution-slashing and cost-of-living advantages are lacking from the Wheeler/Youngkin RGGI “report.”
In opposition to Virginians’ pursuits and desires, Gov. Youngkin has vowed to repeal our state local weather legislation, bowing to the deep pockets and cynical self-interests of former-coal-lobbyist Wheeler and different fossil gasoline proponents.
Slightly than recognizing, celebrating, and reporting on RGGI’s actual world efficiency, Wheeler’s “report” to Youngkin reads like an prolonged press launch, with speaking factors about inflation, taxes, and the “emergency” of our excessive electrical charges. The actual fact-challenged screed is the cynical, flimsy fig leaf by which the frosh governor would possibly – would possibly — fecklessly try and strike a legislation by fiat, on behalf of the Massive Polluter foyer that’s taken up residence within the Governor’s Mansion.
Electrical energy Costs Are Certainly Too Excessive in Virginia, and RGGI Will Assist
If Youngkin has a real curiosity within the particulars of Virginia’s excessive electrical charges, which sure, as of 2020 based on federal information are method too excessive, he’d be clever to think about that that’s exactly why RGGI reinvests allowance proceeds instantly in power effectivity and zero-fuel-cost clear power. These untapped power independence sources are precisely what we have to cut back Virginian’s costs-of-living and our publicity to geopolitical vulnerability and value shocks from imported fossil fuels.
After a long time of overinvestment in fossil fuels, Virginia’s electrical charges have climbed to be larger than each neighboring regulated state. Over the identical interval, electrical charges in states that joined RGGI years in the past declined, as RGGI’s investments in effectivity and zero-fuel-cost clear power reduces prices saved prospects billions of {dollars} on their payments.
Now that Virginia has adopted RGGI, the Commonwealth too stands to share in these advantages.
If Youngkin had been truly serious about reducing power costs, he would thus embrace and speed up, moderately than mindlessly assault, RGGI’s shift towards better power effectivity and zero-fuel prices. Youngkin may additionally take motion by supporting the elimination of state electrical utilities’ manipulation of RGGI to pad their income by way of “RAC” accounting gimmicks.
On this new geopolitical period of elevated fossil gasoline costs, Virginians want insurance policies like RGGI that can decrease payments and, not empty rhetoric from the governor and his polluter friends.
What’s Actually Going On Right here, and What’s Subsequent?
Hopefully there’s somebody within the Governor’s workplace to softly remind him that while you’re in a gap, the primary rule is to cease digging.
Certainly, Gov. Youngkin’s underwater favorability — contrasted in opposition to Virginian’s overwhelming assist, by greater than a 2 to 1 margin, for RGGI — exhibits Youngkin’s senseless assaults on our historic local weather progress is simply not what Virginians wished.
Hyper-partisans from outdoors Virginia could egg on Youngkin’s inflated political ambition, however aside from the Massive Polluters that particular advisor Wheeler represents contained in the Governor’s Mansion, nobody in Virginia requested to depart the favored RGGI program.
It’s a dead-end right here in Virginia to attempt to make partisan red-meat out of our common, commonsense local weather progress like RGGI.
The Governor could have thought it clever to generate a press hit together with his pre-inaugural salvo at RGGI, on the behest of his then transition advisor Wheeler. However earlier than Youngkin jumps off the cliff into treacherous authorized waters, he would possibly take a more in-depth have a look at Particular Advisor Wheeler’s dropping file in illegally rolling again American’s elementary well being safeguards for his final boss in DC.
As a result of Governor, it’s time to cease digging.