Representative Daryl Metcalfe

12th District

Pennsylvania House of Representatives

Media Contact:  Ty McCauslin

717.772.9979

RepMetcalfe.com / Facebook.com/RepMetcalfe

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

September 1, 2021

Metcalfe, ERE Committee Stand Ready to Reject Wolf’s Job-Killing RGGI Scheme, Following ‘Independent’ Commission’s Rubberstamping

HARRISBURG — House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee (ERE) Majority Chairman Daryl Metcalfe (R-Butler) has confirmed that he is moving forward with Thursday’s previously scheduled voting meeting to advance a concurrent resolution to once again disapprove and reject Gov. Tom Wolf’s rogue executive actions to enter Pennsylvania into the multi-state Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI).

Metcalfe’s decision immediately followed today’s Independent Regulatory Review Commission (IRRC) rubberstamping of Environmental Quality Board (EQB) Regulation #7-559: CO2 Budget Trading program. If the concurrent resolution passes the PA General Assembly and goes into effect, the EQB would be prohibited from further promulgating RGGI. 

Metcalfe also issued the following statement regarding IRRC’s rubberstamping of the governor’s RGGI scheme:

“Resistance to the governor’s delusional and unlawful RGGI scheme must be absolute.

“As stated in our most recent RGGI disapproval letter to IRRC, members of the ERE Committee who will be voting to support this concurrent resolution are once again standing with our residents, businesses, schools, and local governments who will be harmed when RGGI permanently shutters countless industries and decimates local economies.

“We stand with hard-working Pennsylvania families and seniors living on fixed incomes who simply cannot endure an unaffordable increase in their electric bills.

“We stand with small business owners and employees whose livelihoods will be negatively and severely impacted by this extremely partisan, government-orchestrated takeover of the Commonwealth’s natural resources.

“We stand with the union community in Pennsylvania which has spoken up en-masse to protect their jobs and our great heritage as a leading energy-producing state.

“Casting aside the Left’s false climate science driven public policy narrative, RGGI’s massive revenue extracting, carbon emissions auction mechanism clearly represents a tax which only the General Assembly may lawfully enact under the Constitution of Pennsylvania.

“Maximizing Energy Independence or Pennsylvania’s Energy Enabled Economy (i.e. energy produced in Pennsylvania, dispensed here through the private sector, or exported elsewhere) is far better for the environment, job creation, consumer affordability and national security than being forced to purchase or import energy from other RGGI states, Russia, China and all other unstable terrorist nations.

“Make no mistake, the governor, EQB and now IRRC are all fully complicit in assaulting the Constitution, the law and the people of Pennsylvania!”