By Steve Haner
The Transportation and Climate Initiative plan to tax and ration motor fuels suffered a major setback just before Christmas, when eight of the eleven states considering it decided not to move forward in 2021. Less than two weeks earlier, advocates had released polling that claimed to show overwhelming popularity for the idea. Continue reading
by Steve Haner
The organizers of the Transportation and Climate Initiative announced Monday that only four of the twelve jurisdictions involved have agreed to move forward and implement the carbon tax on motor fuels, and Virginia is not one of them. Not yet.
The 2021 Virginia General Assembly could consider legislation to join the interstate compact in 2022, but the memorandum of understanding as it stands now only includes Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, which are contiguous, and the District of Columbia.
New York, New Jersey, Maryland, and Pennsylvania were conspicuously absent along with Virginia. One surprise that emerged, however, is that North Carolina is now part of the planning group. The states that didn’t sign anything yet issued a statement of “next steps” that leaves the door open for the future. Even those that did sign pushed the implementation back one year to 2023, reducing the need to act now.
The Governor Ralph Northam Administration has been silent so far on its plans or reasoning. His apparent decision to at least delay a year on acting is prudent but leaves the issue alive for debate among 2021 candidates for statewide or legislative offices. Continue reading
Posted in Energy, Environment, General Assembly, Regulation
Tagged Stephen D. Haner, TCI
An abandoned gasoline station in North Carolina that failed after that state raised its fuel taxes substantially higher than Virginia’s.
By Steve Haner
Monday the organizers of the Transportation and Climate Initiative, a carbon tax and rationing regime for Virginia motor fuels, will be announcing details of the underlying interstate compact, according to media reports.
The media in Virginia has been disinterested in the issue, but the debate is raging in New England. The Boston Globe set the stage with a story last week. While 12 states and the District of Columbia have been involved in the planning, there remains some suspense over which states will press forward. New Hampshire is already out, and some other governors have expressed concerns. Continue reading
Posted in Energy, Environment, General Assembly, Poverty & income gap, Taxes
Tagged Stephen D. Haner, TCI
Source: EPA Website. Click to expand.
By Steve Haner
“Everything is a poison, nothing is a poison. It is the dose that makes the poison” – Paracelsus (1493-1541 AD)
A micron is a tiny thing. A grain of beach sand is about 90 microns, and a human hair 50 to 70 microns in diameter. In the coming session of the General Assembly, you are about to hear that micron-sized particles are sickening and killing you. Do not believe it. Continue reading
Posted in Energy, Environment, General Assembly, Regulation, Science & Technology, Taxes
Tagged Stephen D. Haner, TCI
by Steve Haner
The 2021 General Assembly is now six weeks away, with the holidays in between. We know no more about the coming Northam Administration proposal to impose a carbon tax and rationing scheme on our motor fuels than we did months ago. Keeping you uninformed may be part of the plan.
All we have is the Transportation and Climate Initiative organization’s own data and modeling, which are quite extensive.
The initial added tax per gallon of gasoline in Virginia could range from 17.5 cents to 28 cents per gallon, depending on which of the 25% reduction scenarios the still-unseen TCI memorandum of understanding uses. By 2032 the tax could range between 36 cents and 57 cents per gallon, TCI projects. Continue reading
Posted in Business and Economy, Energy, Environment, General Assembly, Taxes
Tagged Stephen D. Haner, TCI
From the Collins-Gideon contest in Maine this year, won by Senator Susan Collins.
Editor’s Note: A cautionary tale as the 2021 Virginia General Assembly prepares to debate another major carbon tax?
By Paul D. Craney
One of the most overlooked stories on Election Day was the defeat of pro-carbon tax politicians across the nation and here in New England.
The most notable carbon tax proponent to seek office in New England was Sara Gideon, the speaker of the Maine House who was challenging moderate incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Susan Collins. As speaker, Gideon in 2019 supported the imposition of a carbon tax that’s end effect on fuel prices bore a striking similarity to the Transportation and Climate Initiative, or TCI, a regional effort to place a price on the carbon in vehicle fuels. The carbon tax proposal went nowhere in Maine and Gideon did not embrace it during her run for U.S. Senate. Continue reading
Posted in Elections, Energy, Environment, General Assembly, Taxes
Tagged Stephen D. Haner, TCI
New Jersey environmental justice advocate Maria Lopez-Nunez, lower left, speaks with organizers of the Transportation and Climate Initiative on September 29. Hear her here.
By Steve Haner
“I think TCI is just taxing poor people so that we can subsidize rich people’s electric cars.”
So said New Jersey’s Maria Lopez-Nuñez, Deputy Director, Organizing and Advocacy for the Ironbound Community Corporation. She was speaking during an online seminar September 29 organized by Transportation and Climate Initiative advocates.
That particular comment can be heard at about 3:10 into this recording of her speech. The full meeting is recorded here, and her remarks start at about 1hour and 43 minutes in. Listen to her whole speech if you can. Listen to those that follow and you will learn she was not alone.
Lopez-Nunez is dead on correct that TCI imposes a major and very regressive tax to deliver minor reductions in CO2 emissions, and that moving people into electric cars merely moves the source of CO2 emissions from the roads to the power plants.
Run the projected CO2 emissions savings from TCI through the climate change models at the heart of this whole worldwide debate and the result is infinitesimal changes in the feared future temperature increases. Selling this as saving the planet is not credible, so the push is on to find a new rationale. The effort to make that “environmental justice” by targeting the tax money to their causes is not being well received.
Posted in Energy, Environment, General Assembly, Taxes, Transportation
Tagged Stephen D. Haner, TCI
By Steve Haner
The governor of Massachusetts stated yesterday that he and other unnamed governors in Transportation and Climate Initiative states are reconsidering the new carbon tax. Is our Governor Ralph Northam among them? He has a news conference this afternoon and somebody should ask.
From a post late yesterday at the Boston Herald:
“Gov. Charlie Baker said governors are re-evaluating support of a controversial carbon tax designed to limit greenhouse gas emissions as advocates renew calls for its passage.
“We’re living at a point in time right now that’s dramatically different than the point in time we were living in when people’s expectations about miles traveled and all the rest were a lot different,” Baker said Tuesday during a press conference at the State House.
First published this morning by the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy.
By Steve Haner
Having imposed a carbon tax on Virginia electricity generation in 2020, the General Assembly starting in January 2021 will consider adding a similar tax on every gallon of gasoline and diesel sold for vehicle use. The Transportation and Climate Initiative, an environmentalist dream for a decade, is finally ready for its close up.
Advocates in the 12-state region that would make up the proposed interstate compact held two webinars in September, one focused on additional modeling on the project and the other discussing all the racially and environmentally just ways they believe states can spend the billions in new taxes.
The new modeling results did not change the basics of the program. TCI is a cap, tax and trade system that imposes a dollars-per-ton cost on the carbon dioxide emissions released by burning the fuels. The tax rate is set by an interstate auction, and the tax itself is imposed on the fuel wholesalers. The amount of fossil fuel emission credits that wholesalers may bid for will be capped and then will shrink a certain percentage every year. Continue reading
Posted in Energy, Environment, General Assembly, Regulation, Taxes, Transportation
Tagged Stephen D. Haner, TCI
Source: Energy Information Agency. Click for larger view. LCOE, LACE and Value-Cost Ratio explained below.
By Steve Haner
If all else fails in achieving your green energy dreams, you can always hope for a depression.
In Italy, the COVID-19 depression has already dropped electricity demand by about 18-21%, as reported recently by Utility Dive. The regional transmission organizations around the United States are seeing declines, as well, and I’ve been told (no data, but a reliable source) that PJM’s load is approaching a 10% drop. Past recessions have included electricity usage declines. Continue reading
Posted in Energy, Environment, General Assembly, Regulation
Tagged Dominion. RGGI, Stephen D. Haner, TCI
Delegate Poindexter
By Steve Haner
Thanks to the persistence of Del. Charles Poindexter, two members of Governor Ralph Northam’s cabinet are now on record stating the General Assembly will decide whether Virginia joins the carbon tax regime called the Transportation and Climate Initiative. In 2018 both of them had signed a letter endorsing the interstate compact to reduce the use of gasoline and diesel fuel for transportation.
The Franklin County Republican was addressed by Secretary of Natural Resources Matt Strickler in a meeting of a House Labor and Commerce Committee subcommittee January 30, and Strickler dismissed Poindexter’s use of the word rationing to describe TCI. “I’m not sure where the idea of rationing comes from. I think that’s pretty hyperbolic language,” he scoffed. Continue reading
The benches along this sidewalk are still missing, having been removed for the gun rights rally. Can we have them back for next week’s February Thaw? Please.
By Steve Haner
Catching up on several issues previously discussed, with links to the original posts:
Virginia’s 2020 Electoral Votes Still Ours to Award. Pending legislation to enact the National Popular Vote regime has now failed in both House and Senate committees, although nothing is really dead in this process until final adjournment in March. The House bill died in House Privileges and Elections Friday, with three Democrats joining nine Republicans to reject. The Senate version was stricken at the request of the patron a few days earlier. The National Popular Vote is an interstate compact of states agreeing to grant their electoral votes to the presidential candidate with the highest national total vote, but it only kicks in once enough states to control the outcome have joined. Perhaps the idea of Virginia’s electoral votes going to Donald J. Trump, without regard to Virginia’s vote, finally occurred to some Democrats. But complaints about the Electoral College persist and so will this idea.
Secretary of Natural Resources on Transportation and Climate Initiative. Twice last week Secretary of Natural Resources Matt Strickler faced questions from Republican legislators about the state’s plans with regard to the proposed interstate compact on fossil fuels used in cars and trucks. Continue reading
By Steve Haner
It is illegal in Virginia for a petroleum wholesaler to arbitrarily reduce the amount of product it provides to retailers. The General Assembly has intervened in that marketplace, probably for the reasonable public purpose of preventing price gouging. Regulating the sale of fuel for some other purpose should also require action by the General Assembly.
The “other purpose” under scrutiny at this time would be reducing carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere. David Schnare of the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy was researching whether the governor could impose the Transportation and Climate Initiative on Virginia without General Assembly action. He found and cites the existing state law against rationing gasoline and other legislative oversight of that market in an analysis published today.
Schnare holds both environmental and law doctorates and served 34 years with the federal Environmental Protection Agency. His conclusion is the Governor lacks the authority to act arbitrarily through an executive order or agency decision. t was the same conclusion reached recently by the Supreme Court in Washington state in reviewing and rejecting a cap-and-trade effort from that state’s governor, Jay Inslee.
Here’s the take on that from the Wall Street Journal editorial board:
Good news: The political panic over climate change doesn’t justify one-man rule. That’s the message the Washington Supreme Court delivered this week to Governor Jay Inslee, who tried to impose his command-and-control agenda by fiat.
Perhaps you heard Mr. Inslee for a millisecond in the presidential race last year declaring that climate change is “the most urgent challenge of our time.” He failed to galvanize the masses, much as he failed to persuade the Washington Legislature in 2015 when it rejected his cap-and-trade proposal.
Posted in Environment, General Assembly, Regulation, Taxes
Tagged Carbon Taxes, Stephen D. Haner, TCI
By Steve Haner
It now seems unlikely the 2020 General Assembly will act directly on Virginia’s membership in the proposed Transportation and Climate Initiative, an interstate compact to cap, tax and then start to ration fossil fuels that add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Virginia would be the southernmost member.
While six pieces of pending legislation (so far) mention the similar Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which caps, taxes and rations CO2 from power plants, the silence continues on TCI. It has been conspicuously absent from gubernatorial pronouncements on these issues. A Virginia Mercury story this week on various environmental proposals cited a December statement from him that “no decisions have been made,” although it wasn’t clear on what.
When organizers of the TCI compact released their draft memorandum of understanding last month, they clearly were pointing to action in the various states in the near future. But the MOU itself is only an outline, with many blanks to fill in. An argument that the issue is not ripe for the legislature could be valid. What is the actual goal or schedule for forced supply reductions?
An argument that it doesn’t need legislative blessing at all, however, would not be valid. Virginians should not be subjected to this tax, cap and ration regime without a recorded vote by their elected representatives.
What people can do now, if they care, is register an opinion with the TCI organizers on their public input portal. Their last round of comments included many who dislike this idea, so they are asking again now that more details are out.
Posted in Environment, General Assembly, Taxes, Transportation
Tagged Stephen D. Haner, TCI
by Steve Haner
If Bacon’s Rebellion at times has been “Dominion Pravda,” providing a window into that corporate giant’s C suite, our friends at the Virginia Mercury sometimes take the opposite role of “Environmental People’s Daily.”
Its story today is a good example, for what it includes and what it does not. The long, detailed and worthwhile summary of energy and environment issues coming to the 2020 General Assembly has a glaring omission. It makes no reference to the Transportation and Climate Initiative. If anybody could get a straight answer out of the Northam Administration, you’d think it would be Virginia Mercury. The silence is deafening and perhaps significant.
At some point soon somebody has to say something, wouldn’t you think? In others states in the proposed interstate compact, governors are being pinned down, actual TCI bills are pending, legislators are taking positions, coalitions are forming. This will have to happen in Virginia soon if the organizers of TCI want their proposed memorandum of understanding signed by enough states to actually impose the carbon caps and taxes by 2022. Continue reading
Posted in Energy, Environment, General Assembly, Taxes
Tagged Dominion, RGGI, Stephen D. Haner, TCI
The untold story of the greatest Virginia coal baron of them all.