PA pollutes more than some countries. Without RGGI, frontline communities face the worse impacts.

In an attempt to reach a new state budget, Pennsylvania has been pulled from RGGI, raising concerns among climate activists about the state’s environmental commitments.

Pennsylvania lawmakers and Governor Josh Shapiro voted to withdraw Pennsylvania from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) as part of the new state budget on November 12, 2025. As the state is responsible for nearly 1% of global emissions, the decision has left many climate advocates concerned that climate efforts are being pushed to the back burner yet again.

RGGI is a market-based program to cap and reduce CO₂ emissions from the power sector—companies and facilities involved in generating and supplying electricity. This effort included Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut, and several other states contributing to carbon emissions in the Northeast region.

Climate activist Avery Schuyler Nunn, whose work appears in National Geographic, Scientific American, and Grist, urges policymakers to take reconsider what “cost” truly means.

“It [pulling out of RGGI] also ignores the claims of hidden costs like we think of cost as the money, but if you think about the health cost of majority low-income communities’ chronic health issues and medical bills that are a result of air that’s not clean, that sign increases exponentially,” she says.

Exiting the initiative might reduce expenses in the short term, but the long-term financial, environmental, and health costs are likely to be far greater.

Vulnerable, low-income communities both bear the brunt of pollution and often depend economically on fossil-fuel industries, making renewable energy transitions essential. “North Philly, West Philly, and frontline neighborhoods and similar ones in Pittsburgh, valley towns, and Appalachian counties – those communities are going to be the ones that suffer the most walking away from RGGI,” said Schuyler Nunn.

Shortly before RGGI was axed, Governor Shapiro argued that Republican leaders in the state Senate had “used RGGI as an excuse to stall substantive conversations about energy and energy production.” With that excuse gone, he said he now anticipates movement on policies that will “create more jobs,” bring “more clean energy onto our grid,” and lower “the cost of energy for all Pennsylvanians.”

The Governor introduced his new energy plan, the “Lightning Plan,” in January, 2025, sayingg it will do exactly that as well as “lead to billions in new investment in power plants and energy infrastructure.” Many Pennsylvania environmentalists are skeptical of this effort, which relies heavily on fossil fuels generated by power plants that contribute to climate change.

“Given that Pennsylvania is the second-largest fracked-gas-producing state and has the fourth-highest carbon footprint in the nation, pulling out of RGGI sends the wrong message statewide and nationally,” said David Masur, PennEnvironment Research & Policy Center’s Executive Director in a statement.

How does RGGI, as a market-based program, work?

The states set a cap, or limit, on carbon emissions that power plants and electricity utilities must adhere to. Carbon-emitting facilities then buy allowances that equal the amount of CO₂ that they emit.

A CO₂ allowance represents a state-issued authorization for a regulated source to emit one short ton of CO₂. Regulated power plants cannot legally emit CO₂ without purchasing allowances. Facilities that reduce their emissions may sell their unused allowances, creating a financial incentive to cut carbon pollution. Similar to a stock market, unused allowances can be bought, sold, or traded across state lines.

Over time, the cap lowers and regional carbon emissions reduce significantly. From 2009-2011, the RGGI cap was 188 million allowances; by 2024 the cap had dropped to 84 million and the adjusted cap, equal to the actual amount of released emissions, was a little over 69 million.

The program began in 2009 and included 10 states in the Northeast. Since the launch, collective carbon emissions have reduced from 125 to 80 million short tons. While pollution has gone down, the regional economy has continued to grow with thousands of job creations, and air quality and public health have improved with lower incidences of asthma. RGGI has also led to reduced levels of other dangerous pollutants that pour out of power plants like mercury, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen oxides, which are all linked to heart attacks, respiratory diseases, and cancer.

As Pennsylvania steps back from a regional emissions reduction program, many other countries are moving in the opposite direction. Denmark, Germany, and France are enforcing stricter pollution regulations, tightening emission targets, and expanding renewable energy. These countries were once significant oil and gas producers, but are now committed to ending the fossil fuel era.

Schuyler Nunn stresses how pollution is not geographically contained, and air pollution crosses state and national boundaries: “It’s a big world, but it’s a small world as well, and the same carbon molecules can drift and mix in a shared sky, and the same pollution drifts and mixes in a shared ocean.”

Cover photo: Photo of drilling rig in Pulaski, PA,by Brad Weaver on Unsplash