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Anthony Campisi
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Governor Shapiro’s Budget Offers the Right Vision on Energy Prices, But Pennsylvanians Need Action, Not Talk
In response to Governor Josh Shapiro’s annual budget address on Tuesday, Conservation Voters of Pennsylvania Executive Director Molly Parzen issued the following statement:
Governor Shapiro has laid out a vision to lower skyrocketing energy costs and invest in local environmental protections at a time when Washington is rolling back environmental policy.
We applaud the Governor for renewing calls for critical investments in the Department of Environmental Protection and the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources to help them continue to protect and cultivate our natural resources for all Pennsylvanians. At the same time, the Governor reiterated his support for the Solar for Schools program, his Lightning Plan to modernize our energy grid and boost clean electricity to lower rates, and for sustainable transit funding.
And at a time of skyrocketing energy prices, the Governor laid out a set of principles designed to hold our utility companies and our dysfunctional grid operator, PJM, accountable. He also acknowledged the need to better manage the explosion of data centers in our commonwealth. His proposed data center principles seek to require new data centers to bring more of their own energy to the grid to keep costs low for working families, while ensuring local workers are hired and host communities are protected with enforceable community benefit agreements and stepped-up environmental protections.
However, these ideas will not benefit Pennsylvanians unless they are signed into law. For too long, most of these common-sense initiatives have languished in Harrisburg while working families pay the price.
We need action, not more talk.
Our elected officials must get clean energy and affordability solutions over the finish line this budget cycle to provide desperately needed relief to Pennsylvania’s families and local businesses – particularly as Donald Trump is jacking up energy prices and rolling back federal rules that keep our water clean and our air breathable.
Pennsylvania must lead the counter-offensive on energy and the environment, yet we currently lack the tools to do so — particularly after the state budget Governor Shapiro signed last year traded away the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, our most powerful tool to keep energy costs down.
Governor Shapiro promised to ‘get stuff done’ for our commonwealth. But for the working families struggling to pay their electric bills and facing increased pollution thanks to the anti-environment federal government, the time for waiting has passed. We can no longer afford the status quo of legislative gridlock. We need the Governor and the legislature to deliver the clean, affordable energy future our citizens deserve. Pennsylvanians will judge their leaders on their results — not their promises.
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