Opinion: Shapiro’s energy plan not what Pennsylvania needs

Is Gov. Josh Shapiro an environmental advocate? Due to his pre-election promise to fight climate change with the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, we enthusiastically promoted his campaign for governor. RGGI is tragically a missed opportunity.

Shapiro professes an open-door policy. Recently 24 members of PA Action on Climate came to his office, after many attempts to schedule a meeting. They were harassed by police on the capitol building floor; three members were arrested including Doug Mason, chair of the Sierra Club Moshannon Group, representing 10-plus central Pa. counties. According to PennLive, these leaders were protesting Shapiro’s acceptance of bribes from PA’s fossil fuel industry.

Shapiro received our vote because he pledged to honor Gov. Tom Wolf’s efforts to join RGGI, a cap and trade program that places a cap on carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted and auctions credits to raise money for further mitigation. Established by nine Northeastern states in 2009, RGGI now boasts 11 members.

In spite of RGGI’s benefits, our legislature’s vested interest in fracking has long blocked RGGI membership. Wolf arranged implementation of RGGI though the PA Department of Environmental Protection. By the end of his run for governor, Shapiro quietly waffled on his campaign promise to approve RGGI. His alternate plan has the backing of Republican Sen. Gene Yaw and other natural gas profiteers.

RGGI states reduced their total CO2 emissions by 50% in 12 years. Their cap-and-trade system earned $60 billion, enabling consumer purchases of electric cars, more efficient furnaces, heat pumps, home insulation, also programs focusing on poor and climate-vulnerable areas. Proceeds also clean up pollution from coal mining, thus decreasing deaths and medical bills from asthma, lung and heart disease, etc.

Why does Shapiro want to avoid RGGI? According to recent news and a direct April 15 communication from Shapiro’s office, his RGGI alternative, Pennsylvania Climate Emissions Reduction Initiative, requires 11 years to reduce PA’s emissions by 35%, saving 12.8 million “ratepayers $252 million over the next 5 years:” a whopping $3.90 per person per year.

PACER caps carbon emissions from “large” power plants; Shapiro will continue to support “key energy industries that have helped Pennsylvania become a national leader” (i.e., natural gas), while creating “new markets for clean energy” (using natural gas to create hydrogen fuel?).

To achieve only a 35% decline in CO2 emissions, Shapiro could be depending on the quickly-declining use of coal in power plants as they switch to cheaper natural gas. Shapiro need not lift a finger or anger his friends in the PA Senate, and he will turn the natural gas industry into ecstatic political supporters.

Will an increased focus on natural gas (methane) to produce electricity, heat homes and fuel industry improve Pennsylvanian’s environment? Replacing coal with methane will in fact reduce CO2 emissions, as well as hazardous particulate pollution and surface environmental destruction.

However, producing and using natural gas releases huge quantities of methane to the atmosphere. Methane is 80 times more powerful than CO2 as a climate change gas during its first 20 years in the atmosphere. Leaks occur during drilling, compression, storage, pipeline delivery, even from furnaces and cooking ranges. An estimated 600,000 illegally abandoned wells contribute more.

People living near these ever-multiplying fracked wells will be exposed to gas and inevitable leaks and spills of toxic chemicals and radioactivity in fracking wastewater. Construction of access roads, well-pads and pipelines destroy our environment, causing tree loss and fragmentation of our state forest lands, and in turn, loss of animal habitat.

Equitrans paid a million-plus dollar penalty for a huge leak of methane from their gas storage field in Cambria County. In actuality this amount was only 10% of the DEP-estimated 300,000 tons of leakage of all sources of methane across Pennsylvania for 2022.

The consensus is that methane is now the second largest driver of climate change in the U.S., and growing. Why does Shapiro endorse a plan unleashing ever more of this powerful climate change gas into our atmosphere, while providing no effective means for mitigation?

Dorothy Blair is the president of the Nittany Valley Environmental Coalition; Daniel Alters is the former water programs manager, DEP and Douglas Mason is the chair of the Moshannon Group, Sierra Club.