Virginia governor-elect Glenn Youngkin is ready to pull the plug on the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). Speaking at the annual Hampton Roads Chamber of Commerce meeting, the Republican said he was tired of the so-called carbon tax being passed on to Virginians. “Unfortunately it’s making the cost of living in Virginia, which has already been on a meteoric rise, even harder for Virginians to deal with,” Youngkin said in his keynote address. “So we are going to withdraw from it and no longer be part of it and allow Virginians to maintain that money.” The RGGI was created in 2009 and adopted by 11 states to reduce and steadily decrease emissions from power plants. As part of the initiative, regulated plants must acquire an allowance for carbon dioxide fro the RGGI per every short ton of CO2 emitted. Those allowances are released quarterly and, in Virginia’s case, are made available through an auction. Profits from those sales are then invested in climate change mitigation and initiatives that provide energy-efficient solutions to communities. For all his complaining about costs coming down to taxpayers, Youngkin’s own office determined consumers would only save around $52 on their energy bills per year were the state to leave the RGGI. Leaving the RGGI is not that simple, however. An executive order from Youngkin does not magically remove Virginia from the initiative. According to a fellow Republican, Lee Francis of the Virginia League of Conservation Voters, the State Air Pollution Control Board has the final say. “Youngkin’s proposal is grounded in neither fact or law,” Francis told the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Put even more eloquently by a University of Virginia School of Law associate professor who spoke with the Washington Post, “leaving the trading program just seems like cutting off your nose to spite your face.”  Read more