(Towanda, PA) – State Sen. Gene Yaw (Bradford/ Susquehanna), chairman of the Pennsylvania Senate Environmental Resources and Energy Committee, recently visited Flynn Energy in Towanda for a tour and roundtable discussion with business leaders to discuss how changes to the energy industry can have a local impact.
“Our region’s leading natural gas production has created thousands of jobs, including right here in Bradford and Susquehanna counties,” Yaw said. “It continues to deliver home energy savings for consumers and provides a clean energy source to better the environment. We must ensure that continues.”
Numerous actions at the state and federal level, however, threaten Pennsylvania’s energy independence, Yaw said, including the forced electrification of homes and businesses through stringent building codes that ban energy choice and costly government subsidies meant to suppress fossil fuel use.
Yaw said his legislation, Senate Bill 275, would prevent these policies from unfolding across Pennsylvania’s 2,500-plus municipalities.
Torpedoing the bill makes little sense, Yaw said, considering historic inflationary pressures and skyrocketing utility costs that have already pushed many families to a breaking point.
“Policies limiting the use of certain fuel sources only slows environmental progress and raises energy costs,” Yaw said. “This veto will hurt the most vulnerable among us the hardest at a time when they can least afford it.”
Yaw also provided an update on Pennsylvania’s impending entry into the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a program that uses carbon taxes to artificially limit emissions from the power sector. Eleven other states in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions participate already, though none joined without the permission of their respective legislatures – as would be the case for Pennsylvania.
“Commonwealth Court was prudent to press pause on RGGI, given the administration’s gross underestimations of how much it will inflate energy costs for all Pennsylvanians,” Yaw said. “We need to pursue climate solutions that encourage collaboration with our energy sector, not regressive and unconstitutional taxes meant to destroy it and leave us reliant on foreign oil and gas for decades to come.”
Last year, Pennsylvania produced one-fifth of the United States’ 32.5 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.
