Tag: “Cap And Trade” program

Rediscovering Thomas Jefferson’s revolutionary charge against abusive taxation

Thomas Jefferson would not be a fan of the energy tax plan his gubernatorial successor has coerced into place this year at the expense of ratepayers and without public input.

By contrast, Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D), who assumed office this past January, has implemented what some policy analysts aptly describe as a “backdoor carbon tax” that could add $1 billion in electricity costs over the next year. That process began this past summer when Spanberger had Virginia rejoin the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, widely known as RGGI, a multistate climate change plan advertised as a “cap and trade” regulatory scheme.

A historical depiction of Thomas Jefferson looking shocked at a tax bill titled 'Virginia Electricity Bill', featuring details about energy charges and a significant increase in carbon allowance pricing.
AI generated by ChatGPT

From CFACT

By Kevin Mooney

Virginia ratepayers smacked with 153 percent increase in auction prices used to determine carbon tax.

Thomas Jefferson would not be a fan of the energy tax plan his gubernatorial successor has coerced into place this year at the expense of ratepayers and without public input.

The second governor of Virginia and third president of the United States argued that small farmers who lived off their own land should pay little or no federal taxes. Jefferson also opposed the Excise Whiskey Tax of 1791 because, in his view, the tax provided the federal government with too much power. Moreover, this founding father, along with his fellow Virginians, took on the Stamp Act of 1765 that led to the American Revolution.

By contrast, Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D), who assumed office this past January, has implemented what some policy analysts aptly describe as a “backdoor carbon tax” that could add $1 billion in electricity costs over the next year. That process began this past summer when Spanberger had Virginia rejoin the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, widely known as RGGI, a multistate climate change plan advertised as a “cap and trade” regulatory scheme. Spanberger bypassed the traditional public comment period along the way toward cementing the climate initiative back into place. She also did not allow for a vote from the state’s Air Pollution Board, which would be the normal procedure.

The 153 Percent Increase in Auction Prices

Power generators in RGGI states must purchase an allowance for every ton of carbon dioxide their plants emit from using coal, oil, or natural gas. They then pass the cost of that allowance on to consumers in their electricity bills. That’s where the carbon tax comes into play.

RGGI holds quarterly auctions to determine what the allowance costs will be. The latest round came in with an enormous price hike, meaning Virginia ratepayers will need to hold onto their wallets. The September 9 auction came in at $37.65 per allowance in comparison to $14.88 in December 2023, which was the last auction Virginia participated in before Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin exited RGGI. That’s a 153 percent increase.

A carbon tax is a tax on every human activity imaginable since it ties a fee to greenhouse gas emissions that flow out of fuel production and consumption. Even the most mundane activities would involve carbon taxes. Anyone going out to the store to buy groceries, deliver mail, or pick up the kids at school will be paying carbon taxes. This is what Spanberger has unleashed in a state where Jeffersonian antipathy toward intrusive government policies once held sway, and she’s not done yet.

In September, the governor signed an executive order that could pull hundreds of artificial intelligence data centers into RGGI. If Spanberger succeeds, these data centers could soon be competing with Dominion Energy Virginia and other retail electricity producers in RGGI’s quarterly auctions. This added layer of participation would only serve to put upward pressure on consumer electricity bills.

But what should most unsettle Virginia ratepayers is the fact that the specter of higher costs associated with RGGI was evident even before the September auction. Back in June, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Chairman Mark Cristie noted that a filing from Dominion with the Virginia State Corporation Commission for the purpose of recovering RGGI costs tells a sobering story. The typical residential consumer is projected to pay $13 more per month, which adds up to $156 per year. Ouch!! That’s bad enough, but keep in mind this filing was made before the higher prices kicked in with the September auction.

The new clearing price of $37.65 per ton of carbon emissions RGGI announced on September 11 is 8 percent higher than the price set in June and 69 percent higher than it was a year ago in September 2025.

Where is All This Money Going? 

Stephen Haner, an energy and environmental policy analyst for the Jefferson Forum, has some answers. Virginia’s new sale of carbon allowances is expected to pull in $259 million from electricity producers along with allowance market speculators. As a matter of law, more than half of this amount is to be used for energy conservation projects benefiting low-income households. Some of the money may go into flood mitigation efforts.

In June, the Virginia General Assembly voted to create a refund for residential consumers, small businesses, and churches paying the carbon tax. Only about 45 percent of the tax is expected to go back into rebates.

Dominion’s largest customers (think in terms of large industrial centers, retailers, and possibly data centers) will not receive any rebates. So, who are the real winners in the RGGI scheme? It would seem government officials looking to pull in more tax dollars, alongside a few well-connected special interests, come out on top.

Haner told Restoration News that a genuine “cap and trade” system is not at work in Virginia and utilities can have incentives to hold onto their allowances rather than selling them. He said,

RGGI is not about carbon reduction. It is about revenue enhancement. The allowances are granted to the states, not to the utilities. The states sell the allowances either to a utility or a secondary investor. There is a cap, and that cap does go down with every contract year. There is trading, and, in theory, if a utility had a surplus of allowances, it could sell them on the secondary market, but it makes more sense to hold them and buy fewer next time. If you bought it at $25, the one you don’t have to buy might be $35, so better to hold it. But in the true cap-and-trade model, the allowance would have been issued to the utility based on its initial need, and then the shrinking cap would be giving it fewer and fewer allowances to use, forcing it to go bid to buy from someone else.

Virginia ratepayers appear to be stuck with carbon taxes for the time being. But it’s possible that demand from data centers could push RGGI to the breaking point. Spanberger’s ploy to avoid public comments could also lead to legal challenges. Other RGGI states might also balk at the rising prices coming out of Virginia. There’s also the possibility that these other states could exit the program. In Delaware, there’s a bill to do exactly that. The other problem Spanberger and crew have is that the one large energy-producing state that had briefly been in RGGI has already pulled out. That would be Pennsylvania, which never participated in any auctions to begin with because of legal complications. Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) pulled Pennsylvania out of RGGI last November. Apparently, it had become clear to the governor that the coalition of industry and labor groups opposed to the plan had the upper hand in court.

Another cautionary tale for Virginia comes from the Institute for Energy Research (IER), which has released an updated version of its report “Blue States, High Rates.” IER points to RGGI participation as one of the key factors behind rising energy prices in certain states.

Virginia had a reprieve from carbon taxes under Youngkin, whose resistance to RGGI offers a sharp Jeffersonian contrast to Spanberger. The good news is that it may not be too late for the state to turn back. The Virginia governor cannot run for consecutive terms, and the carbon tax plan could become very unpopular very fast.

As president, Jefferson eliminated the excise tax on whiskey in 1802. By then, the country had ripened toward his message. Jefferson believed the phrase “to provide for the general welfare” was meant as a strict limit, so taxation was constrained to funding enumerated constitutional powers.

That’s not what the carbon tax is about since it provides government officials with wide latitude to put a price on productive activity. Virginia residents who find they can’t move more than two inches without paying the carbon tax will hopefully come to understand the unfortunate reality they now face and vote to restore their earlier, prouder Jeffersonian traditions.

This article originally appeared at Restoration News

Conflicts of interest beset Delaware energy tax plan

Delaware political figures who back a costly anti-energy scheme appear to have no trouble telling residents to get lost, even as those same residents struggle with their utility bills.

New Jersey, USA – November 02, 2025: The image displays the approach to the Delaware Memorial Bridge toll plaza, which serves as a major crossing between New Jersey and Delaware.

From CFACT

By Kevin Mooney

Delaware political figures who back a costly anti-energy scheme appear to have no trouble telling residents to get lost, even as those same residents struggle with their utility bills.

That much became apparent during an April legislative hearing when State Sen. Stephanie Hansen, a Democrat representing the 10th district, cut off debate when another lawmaker attempted to describe how climate change regulations further exacerbate electricity costs for Delaware ratepayers.

They Want Compliance, not Debate

By dropping the mask and displaying the pitfalls of one-party rule, Hansen may be overreaching. She has also unwittingly called attention to conflicts of interest lurking behind a pricey climate change initiative.

“This is my committee,” Hansen told State Sen. Gerald Hocker during the hearing when it came time to discuss the costs associated with the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), which includes Delaware and nine other New England and Mid-Atlantic states. Hocker, a Republican who represents the 20th district, is the lead sponsor of a bill that would pull Delaware out of RGGI for the purpose of lowering energy costs. He has offered up several compelling arguments that deserve a fair hearing. As Hocker notes in his bill, Delaware has already exceeded its carbon dioxide reduction goals after cutting emissions by 45 percent. That’s quite an achievement since RGGI set out to cut Delaware’s CO2 emissions by just 10 percent.

What then, he asks, is the rationale now for staying in RGGI? The Delaware Republican makes a strong point that states outside of RGGI have maintained lower energy prices while also lowering emissions.

With the General Assembly back in session in June, Hocker may get another bite at the apple. On the surface, his proposal seems like a clean hit that would only benefit Delaware energy consumers. Over on the House side, State Rep. Bryan Shupe, a Republican representing District 36, is sponsoring a companion bill, and he’s hardly alone. In fact, the minority party is nearly unanimous in its opposition to RGGI. But therein lies the problem. Democrats who have a personal stake in the climate change movement do not seem motivated to operate in the public interest.

As chair of the Environment, Energy, and Transportation Committee, Sen. Hansen has the authority to limit debate and prevent legislation from moving forward. She did exactly that during the April hearing. Sen. Hocker recalled how Hansen gave almost 90 minutes to RGGI supporters while only providing opponents with a few minutes to make their case.

Why? Hansen is not just the chair of the Delaware Senate energy committee — she just happens to sit on the board of a nonprofit called Energize Delaware that implements the spending of RGGI programs. That’s not where the conflicts of interest end. State Sen. Trey Paradee, a Democrat representing the 17th district, also serves on the Environment Committee as well as on the board of Energize Delaware.

Could this be why the opponents of RGGI keep running into headwinds? Katie Ladzinski, a conservative commentator known widely as “First State Katie,” put it very well in a Facebook post:

When the same network is shaping policy, managing the money, and controlling the hearings where that policy is debated, it stops feeling like an open process. Delaware families deserve transparency, accountability, and a real conversation about WHYYYY [why] their bills keep going up! Not a system that feels insulated from the people paying for it.

Delaware ratepayers should start asking questions now about what the climate change agreement does and how it relates to the imposition of new energy taxes — which the left euphemistically calls “carbon taxes.”

What Is RGGI and What Makes It Tick?

RGGI is a multistate compact regarding climate change, built around “cap and trade” regulations designed to limit carbon dioxide emissions. In participating states, government agents require electric utilities to purchase carbon allowances at quarterly auctions whenever the utilities surpass the “cap” on emissions that the compact establishes.

On the flip side, companies that meet or exceed emissions targets may sell any excess allowances to companies that have not done so. The idea behind RGGI is to provide energy companies with financial incentives to reduce emissions. Carbon taxes become part of the RGGI equation as utilities pass along the costs of purchasing carbon allowances to their ratepayers. So, the critical question ratepayers must now ask heading further into 2026 is — how much are those allowances? And how much more will they get taxed on their use of energy?

During the most recent RGGI auction held on June 3, 2026, the auction price was $35.00 per CO2 allowance. This represents a 40 percent increase from the nearly $25.00 price set during the March 11, 2026, auction and a more than 78 percent increase from the auction price set one year ago. The next RGGI auction will be held Sep. 9, 2026. Current trendlines suggest that ratepayers should hold onto their wallets.

In a press release, Hocker warned Delmarva Power customers that they will see anywhere from an 18 percent to 20 percent supply rate increase. This translates into about $14.64 more per month for the average household and about $175 per year. RGGI will add yet another layer of costs in an already challenging economic environment.

Dave Stevenson, former Director of the Caesar Rodney Institute’s Center for Energy & Environmental Policy in Delaware and now with the Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Michigan, had only had two minutes to critique RGGI during the April hearing. But he made the most of his time. Stevenson explained to lawmakers how RGGI has added hundreds of millions of dollars to Delaware electric bills over the last 17 years.

“What’s happening is RGGI is hurting electricity affordability, it’s not reducing emissions, and it really isn’t needed anymore,” Stevenson told lawmakers. During his testimony, Stevenson also said a RGGI Inc. consultant acknowledged RGGI is increasing electricity bills. “Over the last 17 years, RGGI has added $400 million dollars to Delaware electricity bills, with the latest year totaling $67 million,” he added.

Money on that scale buys influence. The dollars electricity customers surrender through RGGI do not simply vanish into the state treasury; much of the money gets doled back out as grants, and someone decides who receives it. By law, 65 percent of Delaware’s RGGI proceeds — nearly $240 million since 2009 — flow to a single nonprofit, Energize Delaware. Since two of the lawmakers who sit on the nonprofit’s board also sit on the board that governs RGGI’s future, it’s fair to ask about potential conflicts of interest.

Phantom Benefits

Hansen insists that RGGI provides Delaware residents with environmental and economic benefits. She went into some detail about her views in a Facebook post that coincided with the April hearing. “RGGI is a proven program that improves energy efficiency, cuts harmful emissions, and supports cleaner and more reliable energy,” Hansen said. “Walking away from RGGI does not just stall progress, but instead moves us backwards in our environmental efforts.”

She is entitled to that view. But Hansen is also among the few positioned to act on it by chairing the committee and helping steer the money the program collects. The officials and ordinary citizens who question RGGI hold no such advantage.

Delaware was once an economic dynamo that attracted corporations with tax incentives. But it now ranks 46th in GDP growth nationally. Pulling out of RGGI would begin the process of a long-overdue U-turn. But that process will be difficult to start under one-party rule.

This article originally appeared at Restoration News

Scammers Are Gonna Scam, Regardless

Here’s one example among hundreds. California’s CO2 “Cap And Trade” program, recently renamed the “Cap-And-Invest” program, is now primarily a multi‑billion‑dollar revenue machine whose costs land squarely on consumers while delivering meaningless reductions in greenhouse gases. Politicians, not the planet, are the clear winners.

A digital illustration depicting a confident man in a suit gesturing with one hand, alongside an image of a modern high-speed train on railway tracks, set against a blue sky with clouds.

From Watts Up With That?

Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach (@weschenbach on X, my own blog at Skating Under The Ice)

Folks ask why I describe climate alarmism as a “grift”, a lovely English word meaning a swindle. I describe it that way because it’s making people rich while accomplishing nothing.

Here’s one example among hundreds. California’s CO2 “Cap And Trade” program, recently renamed the “Cap-And-Invest” program, is now primarily a multi‑billion‑dollar revenue machine whose costs land squarely on consumers while delivering meaningless reductions in greenhouse gases. Politicians, not the planet, are the clear winners.

Let’s start with the sticker price that no one voted on. The program is pulling in about $5 billion a year in auction revenue, with roughly $33 billion raised since inception. That money does not appear out of thin air; it is baked into the price of everything covered entities sell, with gasoline being the most obvious example.

It’s estimated that about 30 cents per gallon in cap‑and‑trade costs is embedded in California gasoline pump prices, roughly consistent with the California Air Resources Board’s own estimate of about 27 cents per gallon for the cap‑and‑trade component. California consumes on the order of 13–14 billion gallons of gasoline per year, so that 30‑cent skim works out to something like $4 billion per year transferred from motorists’ pockets to Sacramento without a line item on the tax bill. That is before counting similar pass‑through costs in diesel, electricity, concrete, and industrial products.

So what does all that pain at the pump buy in terms of carbon dioxide? The governor’s office and CARB boast that the ~ $33 billion in cap‑and‑trade proceeds have funded projects claimed to cut emissions equivalent to taking 1.3 million gasoline cars off the road. Using a standard figure of about 4.6 metric tons of CO₂ per year per typical passenger vehicle, that “cars off the road” metric translates to on the order of 6 million metric tons of CO₂ avoided per year if those reductions are durable and additional.

However, California’s cap‑and‑trade program covers roughly three‑quarters of state greenhouse gas emissions, and total state emissions have fallen about 14 percent since the program began, largely due to other policies like the renewable portfolio standard and vehicle efficiency rules. A federal review estimates that projects funded by cap-and-trade auction proceeds account for roughly 110 million metric tonnes of CO₂‑equivalent reductions cumulatively.

WOW! Over a hundred million tonnes of CO2, that must be a lot, right? So, how much difference has that made in the real world?

For that, we need a few facts. First, current CO2 levels are about 420 ppmv (parts per million by volume).

Next, for each 17,355 million metric tonnes of CO2 emitted, the atmospheric CO2 goes up by 1 ppmv (part per million by volume). This means that for the $33 billion dollars taken out of my and other California taxpayers’ wallets, the atmospheric CO2 level is lower by 110/17,400 = 0.006 ppmv … six thousandths of one part per million of CO2.

Be still, my beating heart …

And IF the IPCC is correct (which is a very big if), that would have reduced the current temperature by log2(420.006 / 420) * 3 = 0.00006°C …

Seriously. Californians have spent $33 billion dollars to reduce the temperature by not a tenth of a degree, not by a hundredth or a thousandth of a degree, not even by a ten-thousandth of a degree, but by less than a ten-thousandth of a degree.

And before you claim that we are “leading by example” and that the world will follow, most countries are not that stupid. At that rate, to reduce the world’s temperature by 1°C (again, IF the IPCC is correct) would cost $533 TRILLION dollars, a number so large it defies comprehension. It’s more than a hundred years of all the annual US Federal Tax revenue.

For. One. Degree. Of. Cooling.

So clearly, this has NOTHING to do with the climate.

Meanwhile, the spending priorities tell you what the real game is. The renamed “cap‑and‑invest” scheme locks in a billion dollars a year for the “railroad to nowhere”, Governor Newsom’s doomed high‑speed rail project, regardless of how many years it stays an expensive hole in the Central Valley.

Even the High‑Speed Rail Authority’s own projections concede that, if the system were ever fully completed, it would shave automobile emissions by only about 1 percent, while construction itself adds emissions up front. In other words, no emissions gain at all.

This insane boondoggle was sold as a San Francisco to LA high-speed train costing $33 billion. Now it’s been cut back to a Modesto to Bakersfield line for $40 billion or so. Despite billions spent already, there hasn’t been a full mile of track laid.

Aerial view comparing two sections of an unfinished high-speed rail project, showing extensive concrete structures and surrounding agricultural land.

And if you don’t know where Modesto is … neither do most Californians. However, like nearly all the cities in Democrat-destroyed California, Modesto and Bakersfield need lots of things.

Sadly … a high-speed rail link connecting the two is not one of them.

Add to that, $1.25 billion shifted to wildfire suppression to ease pressure on a deficit‑ridden general fund, plus another $1 billion put into a legislative “discretionary” pot—that is, money that our corrupt Democrat leadership can steer to whatever pet projects or political deals they fancy. Those three buckets alone consume most of the annual auction take while having no measurable effect on atmospheric CO2 levels.

The Legislative Analyst’s Office, not exactly a bomb‑throwing outfit, dryly notes that cap‑and‑trade (now cap‑and‑invest) revenues “can continue to be viewed as akin to tax revenues and be legally available to expend for any purpose.” Translate the bureaucratese and you get this:

Cap‑and‑trade has become a backdoor tax on energy, largely invisible to voters, that can be spent on any damn thing the governor and legislative leadership wish, no matter how useless or corrupt.

Politically, that is a dream scam—billions per year off‑budget in the colloquial sense, routed to high‑profile projects, deficit patches, and discretionary slush, all defended under the halo of “climate action.” From the standpoint of the average Californian buying gasoline, electricity, or manufactured goods, it is a classic heads‑they‑win, tails‑you‑pay arrangement: higher prices now, no meaningful change in emissions, and a guaranteed windfall of flexible cash for the political class in Sacramento.

And tragically, the people getting hit the hardest by this backdoor tax on energy are the poor. It’s a regressive tax that hits the poor the hardest of all.

The Cruelest Tax Of All

And that, dear friends, is just one of the multitude of ways that politicians and alarmist scientists are lining their pockets by scaring you about the climate, and all the while shafting the poor.

The good news? People are coming to their senses and noticing that of the trillions spent on “climate”, the overwhelming majority goes to politicians and their friends, NGOs, meaningless feel-good “green” initiatives, and alarmist scientists.

The bad news? The scammers are going to scam until they’ve pried the very last possible dollar out of your wallet.

I repeat my proposal that ANY climate-related expenses by the government should be forced to reveal to the public how much they will theoretically reduce the temperature. If you asked California taxpayers, “Should we spend $33 billion to reduce global temperatures by 0.00006°C?”, I can tell you what the answer would be …

My very best to all on a foggy December morning,

w.

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