The Commonwealth’s budget, signed into law by Shapiro, removed Pennsylvania from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.
Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro recently signed the Commonwealth’s budget into law, and with it removed Pennsylvania from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.
The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative is a program with a power plant cap-and-trade system among Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states.
As an alternative, Shapiro has been pushing his own state energy plan. The plan is focused on renewables, nuclear, and fossil fuels. It includes a state-based cap-and-trade program, rather than the regional one Shapiro pulled Pennsylvania from.
Shapiro’s energy plan aims to lower utility costs and “secure the future of Pennsylvania energy” during an unprecedented demand.
The move to remove Pennsylvania from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative has garnered the attention of environmental groups, who saw the program as a way to decrease electric bills for Pennsylvanians by promoting clean energy sources.
“Governor Shapiro and legislative leaders have needlessly sacrificed Pennsylvania’s most promising tool for lowering household electricity bills and reducing pollution. Pennsylvanians are calling for cleaner air, lower energy bills and a responsible state budget – not for their Governor to lock the state into dirty, expensive energy sources of the past,” said a statement from Amanda Leland, Managing Director at Environmental Defense Action Fund.
With the governor eyeing a potential 2028 run for president, the decision to remove Pennsylvania from a climate regulations-based program has raised speculation.
Christopher Borick, a political scientist at Muhlenberg College, called Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative membership an “uncomfortable fit for Shapiro,” with Pennsylvania being a major gas producer.
“I think the budget crisis may have given Shapiro an out on RGGI that makes both his reelection in 2026 and a possible presidential run less encumbered by this particular matter,” said Borick in a recent email.
Daniel Mallinson, a political scientist at Penn State Harrisburg, said the decision was made to solve the budget impasse Shapiro faced in the Commonwealth’s Capitol.
“There is also good political cover at the moment due to consumers [who are] already feeling the effects of inflation across the economy,” said Mallinson in an email.
“The political trick down the road, however, will be how to explain this to the progressive wing of the party in a presidential primary, but I would expect Shapiro to run more in the moderate lane, so it won’t hurt him there,” he added.
