When Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger ran for Governor, she ran as a moderate. She has not governed as a moderate, and Virginia voters who supported her are being hit in the pocketbook.
On Tuesday, The Daily Signal reported:
As July begins, Virginians brace for higher gas taxes, hoping that the $68 price of a barrel of crude oil will start to bring the price at the pump back down. However, they will very soon be hit with a 7% increase in their electric bills.
Iran? No. Trump tariffs? No.
This is because, as Gov. Abigail Spanberger promised the lords of the Green Energy Cabal, Virginia has reentered the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. This is the classic cap-and-trade scheme with a cool new, hip name.
Not a week passed after she announced the reentry into the initiative before Dominion filed with the State Corporation Commission for rate increases to cover the fees they will have to pay to the overseeing body for the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.
You have to pay for credits if you use more than your allotment of carbon credits to generate your electricity. You buy them from members who don’t, and if there aren’t any to buy, the money just goes into the initiative’s bank account for when someone does have credits to sell.
Under the heading of “win-win” for Spanberger, she can blame all that electric use on data centers, not former Gov. Ralph Northam’s economic suicide pact with California called “Green Virginia 2030,” which already had Dominion take two power plants offline and turn Virginia into the largest importer of electricity in the USA. (Thus, that controversial “Valley Link” power line project.)
The article notes:
However, there is a commonwealth not far away that—to the surprise of many—pulled itself out of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. That commonwealth is Pennsylvania. Similarities?
Sure, they have a Democrat governor; they even have a Democrat governor who fancies himself a contender for the presidential nomination in 2028. That’s where the similarities start to fade.
The article notes:
For good measure, Spanberger signed a law this year making it illegal to do what Youngkin did when he pulled out of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. Now there has to be legislation passed and signed by the governor to rescue us.
Elections have consequences.