
With the March 8 RGGI results, Virginia power producers have now paid $590 million in carbon taxes. Click for larger view.
by Steve Haner
Since Virginia joined the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) compact at the start of 2021, according to data reported by the U.S. Energy Information Agency, the amount of carbon dioxide emitted to provide electricity to customers in the state has grown. Despite two years of RGGI caps and taxes, total CO2 emissions did not shrink, but grew by 3.7 million tons.
That is because the emissions total includes tracking all power producers providing electrons to the state, which is not the same as emissions from power producers located within the state. Virginia’s membership in RGGI is having the exact opposite effect from what its adherents claim it does because, as many predicted, it has forced Virginia to import far more electricity than it used to.
During the two-year period, electricity consumption within the state grew to 130 million megawatt hours, up 11%. Electricity imports grew from 14 million megawatt hours in 2020 to more than 39 million MWH in 2022, up 280%. RGGI has simply driven power production from fossil fuels used by Virginia to other states. As it has for the other RGGI member states.
These conclusions come from EIA data compiled by David Stevenson, director of the Caesar Rodney Institute in Delaware, and long a skeptic on the benefits of RGGI in this region. He added them to the growing list of public comments on the Virginia Air Pollution Control Board’s pending proposal to take Virginia out of RGGI at the end of 2023. More details and citations from Stevenson are contained in a longer discussion which you can read here; and in a table he created, which is reproduced below. Continue reading