VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — A small, but passionate group of climate activists gathered at Mount Trashmore Wednesday night with a clear message: to keep Virginia in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.
If the state leaves, they say it could have longstanding consequences.
Charles Brown, with the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, said he wants his children to inherit a healthy planet.
"I don’t want them to come into this world and our world is a few degrees hotter, our sea levels are a few feet higher and our air is not the quality that we would like it to be," he told the crowd of about 20.
Brown, along with members of the Sierra Club and other climate activism groups joined together to say they want Virginia to do its part to fight climate change.
They held rallies all over Virginia today in Abingdon, Harrisonburg, Richmond, Roanoke, Virginia Beach and Woodbridge.
Virginia joined the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, or RGGI for short, in 2020. It’s a regional market that aims to cap and reduce carbon dioxide emissions from the power sector across 11 states.
If companies go over their cap, they can buy more allowances. That money goes towards improving energy efficiency and helps fund coastal flooding mitigation projects.
"Basically, polluters pay to pollute," said Hunter Noffsinger with the Sierra Club. "So, that money is coming back in communities and it’s helping us directly to combat climate change and lower our energy bills."
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Gov. Glenn Youngkin has made it clear—getting Virginia out is one of his top priorities.
He claims the program is a "financial burden” for Virginians.
"Virginia’s utilities have sold over $227 million in allowances in 2021 during the RGGI auctions, doubling the initial estimates. Those utilities are allowed to pass on the costs of purchasing allowances to their ratepayers. Under the initial bill “RGGI rider” created for Dominion Energy customers, typical residential customer bills were increased by $2.39 a month and the typical industrial customer bill by was raised by $1,554 per month. In a filling before the State Corporation Commission, Dominion Energy stated that RGGI will cost ratepayers between $1 billion and $1.2 billion over the next four years," he said.
Noffsinger disagrees.
"How can Gov. Youngkin be for Virginians when he’s taking these beneficial funds away from us?"
Nathan Goldin with Third Act said it’s everyone’s responsibility to leave this world a little better than we found it—and the RGGI is a good start.
"Is it enough? The jury is still out. But the fact that we don’t know how much it can impact the future is not a reason for doing nothing," he said.
The next step in this climate battle comes when, or if, the state’s Air Pollution Control Board takes a vote. After that, there will be a 30-day comment period.
Noffsinger said they want their message to get across before a vote even happens.
This isn’t the only climate action Gov. Youngkin wants Virginia out of.
He said he plans to untie the state from California’s Zero-Emission plan. The plan would prevent Virginians to buy a new gas-powered car in a little over a decade.
In 2021, former Gov. Ralph Northam signed a bill to have California’s standards as their own, joining 15 other states.