The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) fights global warming and unlocks hundreds of millions of dollars for coastal resilience and energy efficiency. Youngkin’s scheme to withdraw from RGGI will take Virginia in the wrong direction.
Virginia’s General Assembly passed the Clean Energy and Community Flood Preparedness Act and joined the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) cap-and-trade program to cut carbon. It was a HUGE WIN for VA! Learn more>
RGGI unlocks hundreds of millions of dollars to save our coasts and lowers electricity bills. But, in his first year, Gov. Glenn Youngkin urged the VA General Assembly to repeal and defund RGGI. Lawmakers refused.
Youngkin’s two new members appointed to the Air Pollution Control Board shifted the tides, giving him an anti-climate majority. They voted on December 7, 2022 to unlawfully withdraw VA from RGGI. Public comments on this are now open.
Senator Stuart introduced SB 1001, which would repeal Virginia’s participation in RGGI. Thankfully, this Bill failed in the Senate, where a climate-fighting majority still reigns.
The Air Board has released a draft rule to unlawfully remove Virginia from RGGI. But so far, thousands of Virginians have commented on the process, with an overwhelming 87% in support of RGGI. In other words, Virginian lawmakers voted for us to join, and Virginian residents want us to stay.
We hope this unlawful process won’t hold up in court. But in the meantime, chaos will ensue in Virginia’s carbon cap-and-trade market and our state will lose vital funding to prevent floods. Virginia has already received more than $523 million from RGGI. We are working with allies to head off Youngkin’s scheme.
Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin is a Trump-style anti-climate radical who wants to withdraw the state from RGGI. We’re not going to let that happen!
The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) is a cooperative, market-based effort among the states of CT, DE, ME, MD, MA, NH, NJ, NY, RI, VT, and VA. The program caps and reduces CO2 emissions from the power sector. It represents the first regional cap-and-invest initiative in the United States.
Click on each talking point for our rebuttal.
Our rebuttal: Simply put, the VCEA mandates that Virginia reach a carbon-free power grid by 2050, and RGGI is the most cost-effective way to meet that goal. If the Air Board removed the state from RGGI, Virginia would still be beholden to its VCEA targets. RGGI is a market-based program that gives states flexibility to determine the best way to use proceeds to benefit their residents and gives utilities the flexibility to find the most cost-effective ways to meet emissions limits. Virginia is also already benefiting from the proceeds from the program: the state is projected to receive over $370 million in the first two years of participating in RGGI.
Our rebuttal: While true, this data does not suggest that Virginia can afford to leave RGGI. Much of those emissions reductions were accomplished by reducing Virginia’s reliance on coal for electricity and replacing coal with natural gas. However, most of those gains in emissions reductions have been achieved by this point; Virginia has only a handful of coal plants left in operation, and they run at limited capacity. So while progress was made from 2010 to 2020 in reducing emission rates per MWh, the fuel-switching that drove those reductions cannot deliver many more reductions. Instead, a program like RGGI is necessary to continue that progress in reducing emissions and accelerate it by encouraging more clean electricity.
Our rebuttal: First, one of the grant programs that RGGI funds is an energy efficiency program that helps reduce energy costs, especially for LMI residents. VCN has a breakdown here that illustrates the critical role RGGI plays in reducing costs for Virginians through efficiency and weatherization improvements. While Youngkin likes to emphasize that RGGI adds an additional few dollars to the average Virginian’s monthly electric bill, the average Virginia family could save nearly $1,000 in electricity costs by making weatherization improvements. As VCN points out, RGGI funding is essential to make this weatherization possible, especially for LMI families.
Additionally, if the concern with RGGI is that costs are passed on to consumers, Virginia doesn’t need to necessarily scrap the entire program. As noted in this Mercury article, Virginia originally designed its RGGI participation program as a “consignment auction” where some auction proceeds would be redistributed to ratepayers to reduce cost impacts. This is how Maryland and three other states handle their participation in RGGI. Virginia could shift to this style of participation in RGGI, still reap the benefits of reducing carbon emissions, and direct funding back to ratepayers instead of to grant programs.
Our rebuttal: First, if Youngkin (and Dominion) are concerned about high emissions allowance prices, and the impact those prices could have if they are passed on to ratepayers, the obvious solution is to procure more electricity from clean energy sources and avoid the allowance costs.
Second, Dominion includes the costs associated with RGGI participation when it bids to supply power to the PJM grid. This means that the additional RGGI costs cause pollution-emitting sources to be dispatched less for power generation.
Additionally, as stated earlier, if the problem Youngkin wants to raise with RGGI is that costs are passed on to ratepayers, the solution isn’t to scrap the program, but to examine whether a “consignment auction” would better meet the states’ goals to reduce impacts on Virginia residents than the efficiency and resilience grant programs the RGGI funding currently goes to.
