{"id":258461,"date":"2026-08-03T17:58:06","date_gmt":"2026-08-03T17:58:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/258461\/"},"modified":"2026-08-03T17:58:06","modified_gmt":"2026-08-03T17:58:06","slug":"pennsylvania-faces-a-choice-on-energy-costs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/258461\/","title":{"rendered":"Pennsylvania Faces a Choice on Energy Costs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pennsylvania legislators have prioritized electricity affordability this year. First, they exited the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), the multistate carbon-tax compact. Then, with the newly passed state budget, they defeated Gov. Josh Shapiro\u2019s<\/a> Lightning Plan, which would have layered an\u00a0additional\u00a0in-state carbon tax and expanded Pennsylvania\u2019s clean-energy mandate.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But Pennsylvania\u2019s Alternative Energy Portfolio Standard (AEPS)\u00a0remains\u00a0on\u00a0the books, unexamined for\u00a020\u00a0years. AEPS requirements are modest compared to other states, which\u00a0makes\u00a0repealing\u00a0them\u00a0the real test of whether Harrisburg believes in affordability, or just got lucky twice. States, especially the\u202fblue ones,<\/a>\u202fendure expensive electricity\u202fthrough policy choices<\/a>, not geography\u2014and Pennsylvania<\/a> teeters on the verge of making the wrong choice.\u00a0<\/p>\n

AEPS requires that 18.29%\u00a0of electricity sold by Pennsylvania utilities come from a list of \u201calternative\u201d sources: a Tier I of solar, wind,<\/a> biomass, and, increasingly, coal-mine methane, as well as a Tier II built around waste-coal remediation. In 2025, AEPS\u202fcost<\/a>\u202fPennsylvania $5.14 per megawatt-hour of the electricity it covers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Fully phased in by 2021, its target hasn\u2019t been revisited since it was written in 2004; lawmakers have touched the law only twice, in 2017 and 2020, both times narrowing eligible\u00a0sources\u00a0but never questioning whether Pennsylvania\u2019s\u00a0consumers should be forced to pay for expensive, unreliable generation in the first place.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The cost has\u202fclimbed relentlessly<\/a>,\u202frising\u00a0from about $122 million in 2020 to $701.9 million in 2025, with a\u00a0cumulative\u00a0total of\u00a0$3.3 billion\u00a0as of the latest available data. For the electricity covered by AEPS, ratepayers pay 60%\u00a0to 85%\u00a0above wholesale. Spread across statewide utility\u00a0bills,\u00a0that\u2019s\u00a0about $49 a year per household, or 3%\u00a0of an average Pennsylvania bill.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Interestingly, statewide emissions have dropped, but\u00a0not\u00a0because of AEPS. The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection credits the state\u2019s real emissions progress\u2014a 38%\u00a0drop in power-sector CO2 from 1990 to 2021\u2014to the market-driven shift from coal to natural gas.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That\u2019s\u00a0because AEPS works backward from RGGI. RGGI charged power plants directly for their emissions, and the mere threat of it meant no new merchant gas plant was even proposed in Pennsylvania between 2019 and 2024. AEPS, instead,\u00a0obligates\u00a0utilities to pass the cost on to consumers. The utilities buy credits from generators\u2014some required to be in-state\u00a0but many\u00a0eligible\u00a0anywhere in the 13-state PJM grid.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The mandate\u2019s impact\u00a0is RGGI-sized.\u202fRGGI<\/a>, the compact Pennsylvania spent six years fighting off,\u00a0cost\u00a0participating\u00a0states $3.81 per megawatt-hour that same year. Pennsylvania\u2019s \u201cmodest\u201d mandate was already 35%\u00a0pricier per unit than the carbon tax it never paid,\u00a0and\u00a0it\u00a0scared away about\u202f$5.5 billion\u00a0in energy investment<\/a>\u202ffrom the commonwealth.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If RGGI can do this without being fully enacted, imagine what AEPS will cost Pennsylvanians if left unaddressed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Pennsylvania\u00a0doesn\u2019t\u00a0have to guess where strengthened renewable mandates lead. New York\u2019s residential rates hit\u202f21.62 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in 2025<\/a>, eighth-most expensive nationally and 59%\u00a0above the national average. New York\u00a0doesn\u2019t\u00a0have Pennsylvania\u2019s gas reserves. But the Empire State chose to subsidize offshore wind it\u00a0can\u2019t\u00a0build on schedule while closing reliable generation faster than it can replace.\u00a0<\/p>\n

New York is far from an\u00a0outlier. Virginia left RGGI in 2023 and rejoined this year. Dominion, the state\u2019s largest utility,\u202fprojected<\/a>\u202fthe move will add\u00a0roughly $13\u00a0a month to a typical residential bill. Dominion\u2019s own\u00a02025 resource plan update<\/a>\u00a0told regulators it\u00a0\u201cdoes not currently\u00a0see\u00a0a\u00a0viable path\u201d to retiring its carbon-emitting plants by the state\u2019s 2045 deadline.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Although safely avoiding other states\u2019 pitfalls, Pennsylvanians must remain vigilant. The Pennsylvania Reliable Energy Sustainability Standard (PRESS), the bill behind the Lightning Plan,<\/a>\u00a0wasn\u2019t\u00a0included in this year\u2019s state budget negotiations. However, PRESS is still alive in the legislature and would drastically increase AEPS to 50%\u00a0of retail sales by 2035,\u202fdoubling<\/a>\u202fPennsylvania energy bills over 10 years. West Virginia repealed its mandate in 2015. Ohio<\/a>\u2019s expires in 2026. Pennsylvania\u2019s runs in perpetuity unless lawmakers act.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The choice\u00a0isn\u2019t\u00a0between cheap power and clean power. Pennsylvania has taxed the first for 20 years to subsidize a program that never delivered the second. For Pennsylvania to achieve affordable,\u00a0reliable, and clean power, the commonwealth must repeal AEPS, reject PRESS, and let consumers, not mandates,\u00a0determine\u00a0which energy sources work for them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as\u00a0representing\u00a0the views of\u00a0the Daily Signal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pennsylvania legislators have prioritized electricity affordability this year. First, they exited the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":258462,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-258461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258461"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258461\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}