First Casualty Of Power Bill Crisis? Pennsylvania Abandons Regional Carbon-Trading Market

The worsening power bill crisis across the Mid-Atlantic region, a combination of nation-killing climate change policies colliding with surging load growth from data centers, has forced Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro to sign legislation allowing the state to abandon the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI).

The Pennsylvania legislature ended the state’s RGGI participation in the new state budget, which also cut funding tied to the climate initiative, effectively reversing the state’s 2019 entry under former Governor Tom Wolf.

Senate Republicans have opposed RGGI for years, which, through its carbon-pricing structure, effectively penalizes the state’s energy sector, increasing costs for the very plants that anchor the state’s power grid and industrial economy. In return, power plants pay for CO₂ allowances that only send wholesale electricity prices higher, and result in higher power bills for businesses and families.

It’s straightforward: climate taxes = higher power bills. 

Independent reports (from grid operator PJM and state regulators) have warned RGGI would:

• pressure to close gas and coal plants early

• loss of grid resilience

• higher risk of capacity shortages

Given surging load growth from data centers, RGGI was a disaster waiting to happen that would’ve stripped the grid of spare capacity, destabilized regional power supply, and effectively paralyzed the state into a power crisis, as its neighbors just south, in Maryland, have done through failed globalist climate crisis policies.

“For years, the Republicans who’ve led the Senate have used RGGI as an excuse to stall substantive conversations about energy production; today that excuse is gone,” Shapiro told reporters during a press conference minutes before signing the budget.

Shapiro noted, “I am looking forward to aggressively pushing for policies that create more jobs in the energy sector, bring more clean energy onto our grid and reduce the cost of energy for all Pennsylvanians.”

The question becomes whether other surrounding states, many of which are experiencing power bill crises, thanks to horrible green policies that strip stable spare capacity from grids and replace it with unreliable solar and wind, which collide with expanding load growth from data centers, quietly exit RGGI.

It’s time to bring common sense back to Mid-Atlantic politics after decades of failed Democratic policies that have sparked a cost-of-living crisis. And for those leftist-controlled states still pushing the climate-crisis narrative, remember this: even Bill Gates has acknowledged that many of the extreme claims around climate policy have been overstated.

By the way, the whole climate crisis hoax delayed America’s ability to add new reliable spare capacity on the grid – now it must play catch up (all detailed in this epic report).