Vitali brings heated climate change debate to Haverford
of Environment secretary, gave a passionate speech at a House Democratic policy committee hearing on climate change that state Rep. Greg Vitali brought to the Haverford Township Building
Friday.
The purpose of the hearing was to discuss Gov. Tom Wolf’s October executive order to take the state into the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI).
“Coal and natural gas power plants in Pennsylvania currently pay nothing for their carbon dioxide pollution,” said Hanger, who is now a consultant. “They use the atmosphere as a free dump to get rid of their carbon pollution. The failure to make coal and natural gas plants pay something, anything for the massive costs of their carbon pollution is an enormous subsidy to coal and gas plants.”
Temperatures rising by
1 degree a decade is a “calamitous rate of warming,” Hanger warned. “It will cause massive economic damages and public health costs from longer, more intense, more frequent heatwaves, flooding, disease brought by mosquitoes and other vectors and other climate disruptions and disasters.”
By joining RGGI, Pennsylvania will be able to make “coal and gas power plants pay a modest fee for their carbon pollution,” he said.
“In my hometown, Hershey, we had the Swatara Creek, went well out of its banks and it was probably a
500-year flood and certainly at least a 100-year flood,” said Hanger. “It flooded Zoo America and animals died at the zoo. That’s within the last five years.”
The RGGI compact, which
10 regional states are already part of,is a regional cap-andtrade program involving
CO2 emitting electric power plants, according to the governor’s office. These states set a cap on total CO2 emissions from electric power generators in their states. In order to show compliance with the cap, power plants must purchase a credit or “allowance,” for each ton of CO2, they emit. These purchases are made at quarterly auctions conducted by RGGI. The most recent RGGI auction held September 4th resulted in an allowance price of $5.20 per ton. The proceeds from the auctions are allocated back to the participating states in proportion to the amount of carbon subject to regulation in each state.
Patrick McDonnell, the current DEP secretary, said in
2018 the state saw its wettest year on record and “extreme storms” caused $144 million in damage to residents’ homes and $125 million to state roads and bridges. While greenhouse gasses are decreasing at present because of a switch from coal powered to natural gas powered plants, those gasses are expected to increase in the future, he said.
Vitali, D-166 of Haverford, asked about the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Harrisburg that generated
800 megawatts of carbon free electricity closing and asked if RGGI will help the state’s other nuclear plants to continue to operate.
McDonnell said he believed they would and Hanger said they likely would.
Rep. Steve McCarter,
D-154, asked about the impact on consumers and whether this will increase their electricity costs.
Tonya McCloskey, the acting consumer advocate who was also on the panel said, “If we utilize proceeds correctly the total bill or a ratepayer could decline.” The RGGI program returns proceeds from the auctions to the states and that money can be used to help ratepayers, she said.
Another panelist Chris Hoagland, program manager for the Maryland Department of Environment, said his state, which is part of RGGI, helps to low income households and communities.
Rep. Danielle Friel Otten, D-155 of Chester County, said she was concerned about job loss and also about “environmental justice.”
Panelist Mark Szybist, a lawyer with the National Resources Defense Council, said there are many inequities in society that have nothing to do with environmental policy but “we have to make sure when we do environmental policy we make as equitable as we can.”
He noted that people in fossil fuel industries in good paying, “family sustaining jobs” are unlikely to welcome the loss of those jobs and steps should be taken to mitigate those losses.
He also said that it was important to distinguish between rates and bills that consumers pay. If consumers are more energy efficient their bills will be lower despite higher rates, he said.
After the hearing, Vitali said the DEP will develop regulations to create RGGI for Pennsylvania and present those to the Environmental Quality Board next June for approval. There will also be a process for public comment.
“Joining RGGI is the single most important thing Pennsylvania can do to combat climate change,” added Vitali, who is the Democratic chairman of the Environmental Resources and Energy Committee.