Virginia Democrats push to rejoin RGGI, but face uphill battle when carbon emissions reduction program reaches Youngkin

Katie King, The Virginian-Pilot
Updated ·3 min read
  • Oops!
    Something went wrong.
    Please try again later.

RICHMOND — Two top Democratic legislators are pushing for Virginia to rejoin a multi-state effort intended to create cleaner air, even as the effort has no support from the Republican governor.

“(We) are proposing a budget amendment for the Commonwealth of Virginia to rejoin the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which targets carbon emissions from power plants,” House Majority Leader Charniele Herring, D-Alexandria, wrote Tuesday on social media. “RGGI must stay so that we can continue to protect our environment.”

The General Assembly passed a resolution to join RGGI in 2020. The program pushes a shift to renewable energy production by requiring energy producers to buy allowances for each metric ton of carbon they produce. Data indicated the initiative was working — the Environmental Protection Agency found emissions in Virginia declined 16.8% since joining.

At the behest of Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a state board voted in June to withdraw from the program. Youngkin has steadfastly supported the pullout, meaning any budget proposal that includes rejoining RGGI will face an uphill battle when it hits his desk. The governor can veto line items in budget proposals. A veto override would require a two-thirds vote by the legislature. While Democrats hold the House and Senate, they do not hold that majority in either.

Youngkin has argued that RGGI did nothing to incentivize clean energy and unfairly passed on additional costs to energy consumers.

RGGI caused average residential customers’ energy bills to increase by a couple of dollars per month, a spokesperson for the Virginia State Corporation Commission previously told The Virginian-Pilot.

Related Articles

Half of the money RGGI raised in Virginia went toward energy-saving projects for low-income families. The other half provided revenue to the Community Flood Preparedness Fund, which awards grants to localities to help prevent or mitigate climate change and flooding. RGGI raised about $413 million for energy efficiency and $372 million for flooding projects, according to the Virginia Conservation Network.

“Our caucus’s intention is to get the governor to put us back in RGGI so we can get those tens of millions of dollars that we were getting that are sitting there waiting to be spent and invested in remediating our flood problems,” Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax, said at a news conference this month in Richmond .

The preparedness fund has awarded millions in grants throughout Hampton Roads, including $3 million to Virginia Beach for wetland restoration along the Elizabeth River and $5 million to Newport News to develop a master plan on managing climate change.

Youngkin’s recently unveiled state budget proposal included funding to address flooding, including $100 million for the preparedness fund and about $73 million for Norfolk’s Coastal Storm Risk Management Project.

Some RGGI proponents, however, say one-time funding won’t be enough.

“The problem is just so large,” Skip Stiles, executive director of Wetlands Watch, a Norfolk-based environmental nonprofit, previously said. “While the $100 million is nice, and it shows the governor’s interest and awareness, it’s nowhere near enough to replace the RGGI funding or to meet the needs we have statewide.”

Katie King, katie.king@virginiamedia.com