HARRISBURG – State Sen. Gene Yaw (R-23), chairman of the Senate Environmental Resources and Energy Committee, issued the following statement after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) this week repealed the Biden administration’s 2024 Carbon Pollution Standards for fossil fuel-fired power plants and proposed a related action under Section 111 of the Clean Air Act:
“In April 2024, I warned that Washington’s so-called Clean Power Plan 2.0 would force premature retirements of coal and natural gas generation, drive up rates and put the PJM grid in a worse position than it was already in. That is exactly what the rule was built to do.
“The EPA has now acknowledged the requirements it imposed were not proven to work and could have forced power plants to shut down rather than meet standards they could realistically achieve. The federal mandate, hanging over every coal unit and every new gas plant, told capital to stay home. You cannot ask a company to put billions of dollars into a plant with a 30-year life and then reserve the right to outlaw it.
“The result is the mess our committee has been documenting all year. Demand is rising because of data centers, manufacturing and ordinary household use. Dispatchable generation is not keeping up. PJM has been sounding the alarm. Ratepayers are already paying for scarcity. Neighboring states that retired plants and joined carbon compacts have been happy to lean on Pennsylvania when the wind dies. That is not an environmental program. That is cost shifting.
“Repealing the 2024 rule removes a $310 billion federal threat and gives operators a chance to keep running the units that actually show up and produce power no matter the weather.
“Pennsylvania’s job does not change with a press conference in Houston. We still have to permit plants, pause any expansion of renewable mandates and insist that PJM assign costs to the states whose policies created the shortage. Pennsylvania families should not be asked to sit in the dark so someone else’s climate timeline can be met on paper.
“I call on Pennsylvania’s congressional delegation to defend this repeal and the Section 111 finding, and I call on the Shapiro Administration to stop treating reliable generation as a problem to be managed away. The demand is here. The fuel is here. The only missing piece has been permission to build.”
CONTACT: Elizabeth Weitzel
717-787-3280