Democratic Virginia governor Abigail Spanberger’s decision to re-enter her state into a controversial green energy program is projected to cost Virginians nearly $1.2 billion over the next two years, due to higher electric bills, despite Spanberger’s claim that the move was about “cost savings” and “lowering bills for families who need help most,” according to state filings. [some emphasis, links added]
Spanberger’s Republican predecessor, Glenn Youngkin, had pulled Virginia out of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) in 2022, calling it a hidden and “regressive” tax that disproportionately impacted lower-income families.
The RGGI, which critics say functions like a carbon tax, forces utility companies in participating states—11 Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic states, all but one with a Democratic governor—to pay states for greenhouse gases they emit.
The states are then supposed to reinvest that money in green energy programs, including so-called environmental justice programs that make the homes of lower-income families more energy efficient. That would, the theory goes, eventually lower these families’ electric bills.
Spanberger, who ran as a moderate Democrat in 2024 but since entering the governor’s mansion has pulled the state sharply to the left, quickly rejoined the RGGI.
“For me, this is about cost savings,” Spanberger claimed in January. “RGGI generated hundreds of millions of dollars for Virginia—dollars that went directly to flood mitigation, energy efficiency programs, and lowering bills for families who need help most.”
Spanberger’s sunny language, if properly parsed, clearly states the “equitable” or “environmental justice” component of the RGGI: The cost savings are designated for low-income Virginians, who will supposedly benefit from state-funded energy-efficiency initiatives to bring down their power bills.
But those rosy predictions have so far not just been off, they’ve been flat-out wrong.
Dominion Energy, the state’s main electricity provider, calculated RGGI’s shocking $1.2 billion price tag for Virginians based on the number of “allowances” it would be forced to buy to account for the carbon emissions from its power plants, according to the filings it submitted this month with state regulators.
Typically, power companies subject to the RGGI simply pass down the costs to their customers.
Dominion said the $1.2 billion allowance cost would be applied to residential bills in the form of a surcharge, increasing the average Virginian household’s electric bill by roughly $13 per month, or 7.5 percent. Virginia’s State Corporation Commission must approve that surcharge before Dominion can implement it.
Dominion’s director of strategic planning, Lisa Crabtree, said in the filings that the surcharge was necessary to “recover projected and actual costs related to the purchase of allowances through the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.”
The company added in a separate document that it “recognizes that the … customer bill impact from these compliance costs is significant.“
The projected cost increase is a black eye for Spanberger, who made energy affordability a central pillar of her gubernatorial campaign last year. It also cuts against her promises that the RGGI would lower the amount that low-income Virginians pay.
Based on Dominion’s projects, all Virginians will pay more.
Spanberger formally reentered Virginia into the RGGI in late February. Virginia first joined the initiative in 2021, but in early 2022, Youngkin withdrew the commonwealth from the program. “The benefits of RGGI have not materialized, while the costs have skyrocketed,” he said at the time.
In fact, since Youngkin withdrew Virginia, the average cost of residential electricity in states participating in the RGGI has increased by 39.1 percent, while the average cost of residential electricity in Virginia has increased by 34.3 percent, according to federal data reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon.
The three states with the largest electricity price hikes nationwide since then—Maryland, Maine, and New Jersey—are all RGGI participants.
Read rest at Free Beacon
No surprise in this decision. She ran as a moderate but was always a progressive wolf in moderate sheep’s clothing. And is governing like the far-left radical that she always was.