At DEP Budget Hearing, Some Legislators Focus On PA s Effort To Rejoin RGGI wesa.fm - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from wesa.fm Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
State Rep. Pam Snyder, D-Jefferson Township, has applauded a decision by the Independent Regulatory Review Commission to delay Pennsylvania’s enrollment in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, or RGGI.
by Christen Smith, The Center Square | February 19, 2021 03:00 PM Print this article
Pennsylvania’s Independent Regulatory Review Commission asked the state on Tuesday to delay its entry into the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative slated for next year.
The nonpartisan review board said too many questions remain about the program’s purported environmental and health benefits, as well as its impact on the economy and the overall cost it would impose on electricity consumers.
It also expressed skepticism that bypassing legislative approval to enter the program made sense, given that 10 of the 11 states participating in RGGI did so with the blessing of their respective legislatures.
Pennsylvania’s Independent Regulatory Review Commission (IRRC) has just thrown up a huge roadblock to Democrat/autocrat PA Gov. Tom Wolf's attempt to railroad through a proposal to force PA to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a $2.6 billion carbon tax aimed at killing coal and gas-fired power plants. The IRRC told the rule-adopting Environmental Quality Board (EQB) it should delay adoption of the proposed RGGI regulation by one year, from 2022 to 2023. The IRRC sent nine pages of comments summarized from the comments it received from legislators, environmental groups, the public and other interested stakeholders both those supporting and those opposing the regulation. The IRRC asked the EQB to respond to those comments. Among the proposals made by IRRC is to slow down the process and give it more time. Note the IRRC did not say EQB should stop the process or end the pursuit of adopting RGGI (which we think should happen), but instead delay it. Still, slowing i
Indiana, PA WCCS AM1160 & 101.1FM
Feb 17, 2021 4:38 AM
Pennsylvania’s Independent Regulatory Review Commission yesterday called for a one-year moratorium on the implementation of Governor Tom Wolf’s order for the state to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, and questioned whether the governor has the right to unilaterally join the compact without the approval of the state legislature.
A joint news release by Senate Environmental Resources and Energy Committee chair Gene Yaw and vice chair Joe Pittman outlines the IRRC’s nine-page comment document, which asks the DEP’s Environmental Quality Board to delay the RGGI implementation by a year, directs it to provide details on Wolf’s unilateral decision, and explain point-by-point how it was empowered to develop the regulation despite the rejection of RGGI by the Air Quality Technical Advisory Committee, the Citizens Advisory Council, and the Small Business Compliance Advisory Committee.