{"id":32579,"date":"2025-11-13T01:53:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-13T01:53:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/32579\/"},"modified":"2025-11-13T01:53:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-13T01:53:09","slug":"breaking-the-pennsylvania-budget-impasse-hinged-on-climate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/32579\/","title":{"rendered":"Breaking the Pennsylvania budget impasse hinged on climate"},"content":{"rendered":"

This story is part of the WHYY News Climate Desk<\/a>, bringing you news and solutions for our changing region.\n<\/p>\n

From the Poconos to the Jersey Shore to the mouth of the Delaware Bay, what do you want to know about climate change? What would you like us to cover? Get in touch<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n

Pennsylvania lawmakers traded a major climate initiative to break a more than four-month budget impasse<\/a>, freeing up funds for public schools and social services while angering environmentalists.\n<\/p>\n

Democratic state Rep. Greg Vitali, who represents parts of southeast Delaware County, criticized the backroom negotiations among leaders of both parties that led to ditching Pennsylvania\u2019s participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative<\/a> \u2014 or RGGI.\n <\/p>\n

\u201cFrankly, it\u2019s a typical annual budgetary dynamic where the Republicans insist on bad provisions for the environment and the Democrats are willing to exchange that for other things,\u201d Vitali said.\n<\/p>\n

RGGI, the cap-and-trade program that includes participation from a consortium of 11 mid-Atlantic and northeast states, would have forced Pennsylvania power plant operators to pay for climate-polluting emissions. Environmentalists and climate campaigners say it\u2019s one of the best ways for the state to start tackling climate change<\/a> and cut electricity prices by encouraging the use of cheaper clean energy. But Republicans called it a tax that would have forced utilities to pass on the costs to consumers, thereby raising electricity rates.\n<\/p>\n

Gov. Josh Shapiro signed the $50 billion spending package Wednesday afternoon, promising in his remarks to push for clean energy projects, despite ending the six-year effort to join RGGI.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cFor years, Senate Republicans have used RGGI as an excuse to stall substantive conversations about energy,\u201d Shapiro said. \u201cToday, that excuse is gone. It\u2019s time to look forward and I\u2019m going to be aggressive about pushing for policies that create more jobs in the energy sector, bring more clean energy onto the grid, and reduce the cost of energy for Pennsylvanians.\u201d\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This story is part of the WHYY News Climate Desk, bringing you news and solutions for our changing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32580,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29,9097,5206],"class_list":["post-32579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news","tag-rggi","tag-whyy-news-climate-desk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32579","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=32579"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32579\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}