\n<\/p>\n
Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro in August 2025.<\/span>Matthew Hatcher \/ AFP \/ Getty via Grist<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n This story was originally published by<\/em>\u00a0Grist<\/a>\u00a0and is reproduced here as part of the\u00a0<\/em>Climate Desk<\/a>\u00a0collaboration.<\/em><\/p>\n Last month, Pennsylvania<\/span> Governor Josh Shapiro withdrew from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, or RGGI (pronounced \u201cReggie\u201d), a cap-and-trade program that establishes a regional limit on carbon emissions from power plants located in the Northeast.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s how RGGI works: Each year, credits allowing the power plants to emit a certain amount of carbon dioxide, up to the cap, are auctioned off. The proceeds from these auctions go to RGGI member states, which can reinvest them into clean energy and consumer affordability programs. Crucially, the emissions cap gradually lowers over time, theoretically ensuring that total emissions continue on a downward trend.\u00a0<\/p>\n Pennsylvania is a giant within the program, because it has\u00a0higher power sector<\/a>\u00a0emissions than all of the other RGGI states\u2014Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and the District of Columbia\u2014combined, so Shapiro\u2019s exit sent shockwaves through the system. The Democrat withdrew from the program as part of a compromise to convince Republicans in the legislature to pass the state\u2019s budget, which has been delayed since June, forcing schools and public transportation to dip into rainy day funds or take on debt to support services.<\/p>\n \u201cTo add insult to injury here, we were about to have the answer from the [state Supreme Court]. And now we never will.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n As he signed the withdrawal bill, Shapiro said that state Republicans have used RGGI \u201cas an excuse to stall substantive conversations about energy.\u201d (Though Pennsylvania joined the regional pact in 2022, the move was immediately tied up in litigation, which was ongoing at the time of Shapiro\u2019s withdrawal, meaning the state had yet to actually participate in the auctions.)<\/p>\n \u201cToday, that excuse is gone,\u201d Shapiro added. \u201cIt\u2019s time to look forward\u2014and I\u2019m going to be aggressive about pushing for policies that create more jobs in the energy sector, bring more clean energy onto the grid, and reduce the cost of energy for Pennsylvanians.\u201d<\/p>\n But some other Democrats and environmental advocates argue that the governor has essentially given away the store.\u00a0\u201cI would describe it as Faustian, except Faust got so much more out of his bargain with the devil,\u201d Nikil Saval, a Democratic state senator,\u00a0told Spotlight PA<\/em><\/a>. Jackson Morris, senior state policy director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said that Shapiro lost a chance to claim credit for a substantial environmental victory during a potential presidential run, which he is\u00a0rumored<\/a>\u00a0to be considering.\u00a0<\/p>\n Democrats \u201cbasically got rolled,\u201d said Morris. \u201cThe political calculus of all this is baffling.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Pennsylvania first moved to join RGGI in 2019 through an executive action by then-governor Tom Wolf, a Democrat, but the program attracted pushback from Republicans immediately. A 2022 court order prevented the state from formally joining RGGI that year, and then the Commonwealth Court\u00a0ruled<\/a>\u00a0Wolf\u2019s executive action unconstitutional in 2023. That decision is currently being reconsidered by the state Supreme Court, where Democrats retained their majority in elections last month. But Shapiro\u2019s move renders that process moot.<\/p>\n \u201cTo add insult to injury here,\u201d said Morris, \u201cwe were about to have the answer from the court. And now we never will, because they gave up.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not just that we fumbled the ball on the 1-yard line, but then [we] picked it up and ran it into the other end zone,\u201d said Patrick McDonnell, president and CEO of the Pennsylvania environmental group PennFuture. (The governor\u2019s office declined to speak with Grist<\/em> on the record.)\u00a0<\/p>\n RGGI has produced about $8.6 billion thus far for participating states. Virginia, fresh off the heels of Democratic governor-elect Abigail Spanberger\u2019s victory, is poised to rejoin the program after being forced out by the current Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin. When Youngkin\u2019s withdrawal was\u00a0found<\/a>\u00a0to be unlawful in court, Spanberger campaigned on returning to the compact.<\/p>\n Some are more cautious in their criticism of Shapiro. \u201cThis decision [on RGGI] doesn\u2019t feel final to me,\u201d said Dallas Burtraw, a senior fellow at the research nonprofit Resources for the Future.<\/p>\n In early 2025, Shapiro unveiled his \u201cLightning Plan,\u201d a jobs-and-energy proposal that included something called the Pennsylvania Climate Emissions Reduction program. Known as PACER, it\u2019s essentially a Pennsylvania-specific version of RGGI\u2014a cap-and-trade program that gradually reduces emissions, creates tradable carbon credits that would (theoretically) be interchangeable with those of RGGI member states, and reinvests the profits toward lowering consumer electricity costs. \u201cPennsylvania is an elephant compared to the rest of RGGI,\u201d said Burtraw, explaining the reasons that the state would want to create its own program and later link it to RGGI.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u201cIt would have been amazing to see Pennsylvania join RGGI,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I think that we might be setting down a pathway that\u2019s turned out for the better.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Others are less convinced. Joining RGGI was feasible, they say, only because it was implemented through executive action. The odds of anything like PACER making it through the state\u2019s Republican-controlled senate are slim.<\/p>\n \u201cPennsylvanians need and deserve serious plans to curb greenhouse gas emissions, lower energy bills, and deliver revenue,\u201d said state Senator Saval in a statement to Grist<\/em>. \u201cSo far, senate Republicans have shown little interest in even meager efforts to do any of this. It\u2019s hard to imagine the abrogation of RGGI would help them, as it were, to find religion on this front.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n