‘The anvil of RGGI’

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro. Photo: PA Internet News Service

Reported opinion

By David Loomis

INDIANA — The reductive debate about Pennsylvania’s participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative depicts RGGI advocates as indifferent to displaced workers at coal-burning power plants and intransigent on energy and environmental policy.

For example, consider reactions of Indiana County lawmakers to Gov. Josh Shapiro’s Nov. 21 appeal of a court ruling against Pennsylvania’s participation in the model, market-based environmental compact.

“Gov. Shapiro’s action further places family-sustaining jobs at risk and stymies the ability for any meaningful conversations on energy and environmental policy in the Pennsylvania legislature,” projected Joe Pittman, R-Indiana, state Senate majority leader. “We will not negotiate environmental and energy policy with the anvil of RGGI hanging over the heads of Pennsylvanians.”

“Meaningful conversation” to Mr. Pittman means “responsible development of our God-given natural resources,” he added, employing a favorite Pittman phrase. Translation: Fossil fuels. End of conversation.

Of course, Mr. Pittman has conversed about carbon capture technologies. But talk about an unproven, impractical and expensive effort to clean up pollution to which his Southwestern Pennsylvania district has contributed heavily is not meaningful conversation, especially for displaced coal-industry workers.

 

ON NOV. 22, the day after the governor announced his court appeal, Rep. Jim Struzzi, R-Indiana, Mr. Pittman’s legislative partner in Harrisburg, had a conversation with a constituent. The constituent wanted to know: If not RGGI, then what? What is Mr. Struzzi’s plan to address climate change and global warming?

State Rep. Jim Struzzi, R-Indiana, at a June 2023 hearing on closure of the Homer City coal-fired power plant. Photo: Indiana Gazette

The constituent shared Rep. Struzzi’s response:

“There are many alternatives to RGGI that are being studied and proposed in Pennsylvania,” Mr. Struzzi replied by email. “These ideas come with sustainable alternatives that do not leave Pennsylvanians unemployed and unable to get a job.”

He concluded: “I understand the concern about carbon emissions in Pennsylvania and in our country; however, RGGI does not directly impact climate change, it creates a tax on manufacturing and energy producers and consumers, attempting to discourage them from producing and consuming carbon. I do not support taxing an already overburdened industry that creates family sustaining jobs particularly in our local area.”

The constituent’s reaction: “He still didn’t answer my question.”

 

HOWEVER, an action did provide an answer of sorts, which the lawmaker mentioned in his email:

Seward Power Plant, New Florence, Indiana County, Pa. Photo: Robindale Energy

“Yesterday, I had an opportunity to tour the Seward Power Plant in the southern part of our county,” Mr. Struzzi’s email added. “Because they use reclaimed coal, they are cleaning and removing many refuse piles  in the region returning these areas to their nature states as well as restoring streams and water sources.”

The Seward plant is, in fact, the nation’s largest waste-coal-fired power plant. It burns boney piles, the mountainous toxic refuse that is the region’s fossil fuel legacy. Coal is the dirtiest fossil fuel. Waste coal is even dirtier. Power plants that burn it survive on subsidies.

 

CLOSING coal-fired power plants and reducing their pollution can make a meaningful difference to the climate as well as to public health.

Last month, researchers from six universities released a study in the journal Science that tracked emissions from 480 U.S. coal-fired power plants between 1999 and 2020, then examined millions of Medicare patient deaths by ZIP code. They found dramatic declines in coal-linked deaths, thanks to pollution-control scrubbers and coal-plant closures.

Homer City, Pa., coal-fired power plant prior to its closure in 2023. Photo: Reid Frazier, State Impact PA

For example, before scrubbers were installed at the Keystone power plant in Homer City, deaths attributable to coal pollution in the immediate area averaged more than 600 per year, researchers reported. Following installation of the scrubbers, those deaths dropped below 100. Nationwide, deaths linked to coal-plant emissions plunged to 1,600 in 2020 from about 50,000 in 1999, a decrease of more than 95 percent.

The study also published an online tool to show deaths linked to coal-fired power plants in all 50 states and deaths linked to specific power plants. Pennsylvania topped the list.

Moreover, researchers found coal pollution may be twice as deadly as previously thought.

 

COLORFUL RHETORIC about the “anvil of RGGI” may appeal to fossil-fuel interests that spend more on lobbying the legislature in Pennsylvania than in any other state. And the spending coincides with billions in tax breaks.

But the governor underscored climate urgency in his offer to sign a non-RGGI, carbon-pricing alternative plan.

“Should legislative leaders choose to engage in constructive dialogue, the governor is confident we can agree on a stronger alternative to RGGI,” Shapiro’s office said in a Nov. 21 statement accompanying his court appeal. “If they take their ball and go home, they will be making a choice not to advance common-sense energy policy that protects jobs, the environment and consumers in Pennsylvania.”

Time already is a-wasted. Legislative leaders should get to work hammering out an actual compromise on their rhetorical anvil.

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David Loomis, Ph.D., emeritus professor of journalism at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, is editor of The HawkEye.

The HawkEye invites comments on this and other issues of community interest. Email doloomis@live.iup.edu or click on the “contact us” drop-down menu, above.