By Steve Haner
Grapevines sequester carbon dioxide so Virginia’s climate alarmism activists are pulling corks without guilt today, after learning that a Virginia circuit court judge will order Virginia to rejoin the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI).
During the three years Virginia was part of the multi-state cap and tax compact, Virginia collected $828 million from electric power producers seeking permits to emit CO2. The largest of the payers in the state, Dominion Energy Virginia, simply passed its cost along to consumers dollar for dollar right on monthly bills.
The final order from the judge has not been produced so the details of any relief he will order are not settled. But on Monday Floyd County Judge C. Randall Lowe circulated an opinion letter stating he agreed with RGGI’s boosters that only the Virginia General Assembly could pull the state out of the compact, based on his reading of 2020 legislation.
It was the position of Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin and Republican Attorney General Jason Miyares that the statute was permissive but not mandatory. Both issued brief statements today disagreeing with the judge’s order and promising to pursue an appeal to the Supreme Court of Virginia. Presumably they will also ask the upper court to stay the order, but that motion could be denied.
The case resided in rural Floyd County because that is the home base for an association of energy efficiency renovation contractors, the only one of the original plaintiffs in the case granted standing.
It was always likely that whoever prevailed at the circuit court level would face an appeal. And it is still true that the real decision on RGGI’s future in Virginia will hinge on the 2025 election, the next governor and future General Assembly. If this ruling stands and Virginia is in RGGI when the new governor arrives, only a Republican trifecta would overturn it again.
Getting out of RGGI was a promise the Governor made at the beginning of his term in 2021, but it took two years to accomplish. At the Governor’s urging, the Air Pollution Control Board voted in the summer of 2023 to exit RGGI at the end of that current contract period in December 2023.
The judge has stated that the board vote to repeal was void, illegal, without effect. The regulation remains in force. That means it was illegal for the state not to force its electricity generators to buy and expend RGGI credits for this year. He asked lawyers for the plaintiffs in the case to draft the final order that outlines what happens next. Could that include some compensation for the lost 2024 RGGI revenue, probably about $400-500 million?
Why not? The case was brought by a group of energy conservation contractors who were being paid to renovate homes for energy efficiency. They argued (correctly) that the decision to exit RGGI ended their meal ticket and would reduce their activity and revenue. Loss of money is the damage they suffered, and money is a logical part of any relief. That RGGI was hardly the only source of revenue for their programs didn’t seem to matter. The judge ruled they were illegally deprived of that money.
On the other side of the RGGI ledger, localities and contractors doing work to prevent or mitigate flooding also lost work and money. They got the other half of the RGGI tax dollars collected between 2021 and 2023. They did not join the case, but if financial reparations are ordered, they will get in line.
RGGI’s agreement among the states runs on a three-year cycle, and Virginia missed the start of the 2024-2026 contract period. The other RGGI states will have a say in whether, when and under what conditions Virginia rejoins the confederation. Virginia getting back in will also have an impact on the price of allowances, the carbon tax.
RGGI has been a political yo-yo in Virginia for most of a decade. Governor Terry McAuliffe started the process by asking his Air Board to impose a RGGI membership regulation. There was no General Assembly action ordering Virginia into RGGI. On the contrary, Republican legislators at the time passed bills to require Assembly approval, and Democrat governors vetoed them. But Republicans were able to block RGGI by denying funds for its implementation.
The game flipped when Democrats obtained trifecta control of Virginia in 2020. Suddenly Assembly action was paramount after all. It was the 2020 legislation that also dictated the use of RGGI funds for weatherization and flood control, creating a powerful constituency for maintaining the revenue stream. It will soon be a revenue flood.
As reported by Bacon’s Rebellion before, in the months since Virginia exited the compact, the price for each ton of carbon emissions has risen dramatically. A new record could be set at the final 2024 auction in early December.
In 2023 Dominion was charging each of its customers, residential and business, the same $4.43 per 1,000 kilowatt hours. A good guess would be that had the tax stayed on bills for 2024, it would have risen to at least $5 or more per 1,000 kwh for this year. Dominion used that 1000 kwh example as a “typical” bill but many, many of its residential customers use far more than that per month, and thus would see far more than a $5-6 increase in their power bills. Often those large bills accrue to fairly small, but poorly insulated, dwellings with lousy heating systems.
As to what the tax would be for 2025, given the rising carbon price in the auctions, perhaps Dominion has an estimate if it wants to share that. Could it hit $7-8 per 1,000 kwh? In Virginia’s first auction in 2021 the carbon tax was $7.60 per ton and in the most recent auction – less than four years later – it had risen 240% to $25.75 per ton.
None of the price projections in Dominion’s most recent integrated resource plan assumed the imposition of RGGI carbon tax on its hydrocarbon generation fleet in the next 15 years. And in the case of that IRP, it would be its growing hydrocarbon generation fleet, given the plan adds 6 gigawatts of natural gas generation.
The old saying around Richmond is a statute means what a judge says it means. The first of what could be several judges has spoken.
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Given the messy history, I don’t think this ruling will stand on appeal. The actual wording of the 2020 VCEA legislation is key, and my read is that Youngkin got it right. Amusingly, all the original plaintiffs to Yoingkin’s decision were not deemed to have etanding—except one, a rural ‘clean energy’ solar installer’s association. Follow the money. RCGI requires Virginia to tax electricity generators using fossil fuels, which makes solar ‘more attractive’.
I still don’t “get it”. Was the tax on the product meant to be applied to the product manufacturers and not passed to product consumers?
I am no fan of RGGI. But given that it was a law passed by the General Assembly. I have always thought the Youngkin administration’s regulatory maneuverings would not stand.
And BTW, Dominion Energy no longer passes though RGGI costs.
I still don’t understand how the RGGI is constitutional at all. Article 1 Section 10 of the US Constitution prohibits states from entering into compacts with each other without permission from congress.
Was there some sort of law passed by congress that allows regional states to enter into agreements concerning CO2 emissions? If so, its news to me.
RGGI is energy socialism. Hopefully, Glenn Youngkin’s administration prevails in the courts. If not, it will be up to Winsome Sears and a Republican legislature to finally put the kibosh on this nonsense.
I might recommend that Virginia pay the $$$ into a n interest bearing holding fund to be distributed AFTER the appeals are completed (even if it goes to the Virginia Supreme Court) and if the final doesn’t hold in favor of the state. If the ultimate finding is in the states favor, funds need not be distributed to plaintiffs.
It’s no secret that Progressives bought most of the circuit courts. They thought they had the SCOTUS in the bag too but HRC let them down. Doesn’t look like they’ll stack SCOTUS soon so this depends on whether or not SCOTUS takes this up or leave it to the state. They’ve been wishy washy on some important issues.
Speaking of Federal judges, someone should tell the Republican Senators to get their butts back to DC. Schumer is reportedly rubber-stamping the Left’s latest batch notwithstanding that Kamala is vacationing in HI (no tie breaker) and Senators Sinema and Manchin are casting opposing votes.
Harold the Organic Chemist Says:
ATTN: Everyone
RE: CO2 Does Not Cause Heating Of Desert Air.
Show in the graphic (See below) are plots of the air temperatures at the Furnace Creek weather station from 1922 to 2001. In 1922 the concentration of CO2 in the dry desert air was 303 ppm (0.595 g of CO2/cu. m. of air), and by 2001, it had increased to 371 ppmv (0.729 g of CO2/cu. m. of air), but there was no corresponding increase in the temperature of the air. On the basis of the empirical data from this remote field site, it is concluded that CO2 does not cause warming of air at this desert site, and hence by extension does not cause any “global warming”. The reason is quite simple: There is too little CO2in the air.
The field data also falsifies the claim by the IPCC that CO2 cause global warming.
Since 1988, the IPCC has been perpetrating the greatest scientific fraud to provide the UN the justification for the distribution of funds, via the UNFCCC and the UN COP, from the rich donor countries to the poor countries to help them cope with global warming and climate change. At COP29, the poor counties are now clamoring for many, many billion of dollars. This what all this rhetoric about global warming and climate change is all about: The redistribution of wealth from the rich countries to the poor countries.
NB: The graphic was obtained from the late John Daily’s website:
“Still Waiting for Greenhouse” available at: http://www.John-Daly.com.
Charts are 25 years old.
(and also is that the same temperature station recently described unflatteringly on WUWT?)
Yes. Roy Spencer has posted here several articles about the claimed world high temperature record set at Furnace Creek.
You should go to John Daly’s website. From the home page, scroll down to the end and click on the tab “Station Temperature Data”. On the “World Map”, click on a continent or area to access temperature data from the many weather stations.
Go to OZ and check the graphics for Alice Springs where the record starts in 1879 and shows no increase in annual average temperature. Also check out the graphic for Brisbane. From John Day’s work, we know there was no global warming prior to ca. 2002.
I would really like to get temperature data for the Furnace Creek weather station for the interval from 2002 to 2023. If the temperature plot stays flat,
we have additional empirical evidence that CO2 does not cause warming of air. However, I don’t know how access the various temperature data bases.
At the MLO, the concentration of CO2 is 422 ppmv in dry air. One cubic meter of this air has only 0.839 g of CO2 and a mass of 1.29 kg at STP. This small amount of CO2 can heat up such a large mass of air by only a very small amount if at all. This is how I know the the IPCC has been lying to us since 1988.
“I would really like to get temperature data for the Furnace Creek weather station”
Unfortunately you would probably find that GHCN data was nowhere near the same as John Daly’s data over the period up to 2000.
It will have been “adjusted™“
MLO also states that in the presence of H2O, the CO2 concentrations is 10 ppm less.
Makes since given the proportions of the molecules.
Trying to figure out how this will impact the RGGI market and the ongoing program review. Suffice to say an already messy situation just got worse.
When Trump becomes president on Jan. 20, he will probably issue on Jan. 21 an executive order rescinding the EPA the CO2 pollution and endangerment decree.
Would that he could, or that it would stick. I’m hoping for a high-level public review of the so-called ‘evidence’ that CO2 is the ‘control knob’ of the climate, pursuant to which the entire CAGW scam will collapse.
That’s possible. However, the envros will howl the Supreme Court decision in EPA vs. Massachusetts requires EPA to regulate CO2. But that is a wrong interpretation. The Supreme Court allowed regulation of CO2, but did not require it. It took the scientifically unsupported endangerment finding to implement it.
“They argued (correctly) that the decision to exit RGGI ended their meal ticket and would reduce their activity and revenue. Loss of money is the damage they suffered, and money is a logical part of any relief.”
The court should be more concerned about the loss of money by the electricity customers forced to fund this scam.
No matter what the cause giving government more money doesn’t solve a damn thing. Government is the problem, we need less of it.
A long time ago, studying the history of the Constitution and the various letters, etc., the founding fathers wrote, it became quite clear they were trying to come up with a system of government where the government’s priority would be to protect the citizens from the government.
I hope we can get back to that.
Despite the hype, there is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on our global climate system. The AGW hypothesis has been falsified by science. Mankind does not even know what the oprimal global climate astually is let alone how to achieve it. Hence sequestering CO2 will have no beneficial efect on humanity.
Adding to your very valid points is that Mankind does not have the capability of controlling the weather or the climate, despite the hubris shown in thinking we can.
Hmm, Just because the gov doesnt mandate something, doesnt mean folks cant proceed with it if they so chose. So dont understand how the group that claimed standing, loss of revenue. could win standing as anyone could still proceed with the changes and costs if they chose. Simply not forcing something on folks doesnt mean others can assume profits/revenue and then loss if folks decide not to comply.
Sort of like EV sales, eh?
RGGI is a dysfunctional, uneconomic pox inflicted by inexperienced, woke bureaucrats and woke political appointees, on the economies of states, such as Virginia.
Trump would do tens of millions of people a favor by ending it on day 1
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Wind/solar lulls may last 5 to 7 days, and occur throughout the year, according to weather data
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An accurate analysis should be performed on a 15 minute by 15 minute basis, for steadily growing wind and solar using at least 5 years of weather data.
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Then, each outcome is viewed regarding the traditional plants need to adequately meet demand 24/7/365, with federal-government mandated reserve capacity
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If that plant capacity is too much, then some plants may be set on standby to cover unusual situations
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Such analysis should be made throughout the year, year after year, for monitoring/planning purposes.
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Those periodic reports would be entirely computer generated by the grid operator, from data the operator is already monitoring on less than a minute by minute basis
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BATTERIES IN NEW ENGLAND TO COUNTERACT A ONE-DAY WIND/SOLAR LULL FOR A MERE $456 BILLION
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/batteries-in-new-england
The Constitution prohibits individual states from forming compacts or treaties with one another without the express approval of the federal government, yet here we have an “above the law” judge who is ordering a state to do just that.