Argall: Shapiro energy plan bad for co-gen plants
KAYLEE LINDENMUTH / SHENANDOAH SENTINEL FILE - The Schuylkill Energy Resources plant near Yatesville.
SHENANDOAH – What Governor Josh Shapiro calls a “commonsense energy plan,” a local legislator says could be a death knell to local co-generation plants he says have been vital to abandoned mine reclamation.
Co-gen plants were built in our area — at Morea and Yatesville — in the late 1980s and early 1990s, burning waste coal, or culm, which accumulated in massive piles over decades of mining activity.
Last week, Shapiro unveiled several energy initiatives he claimed would “protect and create nearly 15,000 energy jobs, lower utility bills for Pennsylvania households, and take real action to address carbon pollution.”
One of those is a Pennsylvania-specific cap-and-invest program, similar to the RGGI program, that allows the state to determine its own cap on carbon and invest directly in lowering consumers’ electricity bills.
The benefits of PACER, Shapiro says, will be passed on directly to Pennsylvania consumers, as 70% of the revenue will be directed back to Pennsylvania residents as a rebate on their electric bill – more than any other cap-and-invest program in the nation – resulting in long-term, price relief on energy costs. If passed, PACER would take Pennsylvania out of RGGI, give the Commonwealth control over its own energy future, and pass benefits on directly to Pennsylvania consumers as a rebate on their electric bill.
Not explicitly mentioned anywhere in the public-facing webpages for Shapiro’s initiatives is where the PACER revenue will come from. Like RGGI, power plants like local co-gen plants will pay a fee based on its carbon output.
“It’s stunning to me that we were able to work with Gov. Wolf, despite our differences, to help our local coal refuse plants survive in a difficult environment, and now Gov. Shapiro is telling them to ‘Drop Dead!’” Senator David G. Argall (R-Schuylkill) said in a media release. “Anyone who has lived, worked, or traveled through our area is very familiar with the mountains of waste coal that once littered the landscape. These black mountains have been steadily disappearing for three decades, thanks to these plants. Sites that were choked with coal waste for a century have been transformed into green hills and forests.”
Argall was one of several Republicans decrying Shapiro’s plan.
House Republican Whip Tim O’Neal (R-Washington) said the energy plan laid out by Shapiro is a continuation of his left-wing environmental agenda that is not rooted in Pennsylvania’s best interests.
“The governor’s energy plan is anything but common sense,” said House Republican Policy Committee Chairman Josh Kail (R-Beaver/Washington). “It will hurt jobs, wallets and the environment.”
“Simply put, the governor is proposing a tax on your utility bills,” said House Republican Whip Tim O’Neal (R-Washington). “It seems like the governor is more interested in appealing to voters in California than making life better for the people of Pennsylvania.”
Co-gen plants have enabled some abandoned mine reclamation activities in northern Schuylkill County while the state itself has neglected to take on critical, life-saving projects.
The Department of Environmental Protection said that, statewide, co-gen plants have reclaimed over 7,200 acres of abandoned mine land and restored more than 1,200 miles of polluted streams.
Locally, the co-gen plants reclaimed and used a coal bank south of the Columbia Hose firehouse in Shenandoah, colloquially known as the AC/DC.
“This decades-long effort is now at risk. By proposing this new carbon tax, Shapiro is also putting good, local family-sustaining jobs at risk, straining the stability and reliability of our power grid, and putting Pennsylvania’s status as a leading energy producer in question.
“If the governor’s new plan becomes law, it could undo years of bipartisan work to support our ‘cogens,’ and many of the black and grey wastelands left behind by past mining operations will remain for hundreds of more years.”
Argall said that bipartisan legislation passed in 2019 and 2020 helped save the plants, which otherwise would have closed, and that Shapiro’s plan would “undo much of this progress.”
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