Virginia marches ahead with RGGI
July 1 marked Virginia’s official reentry into the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). Power plant owners will once again need to account for their harmful pollution and start reducing those impacts, while the state will start receiving critical funding to help Virginians throughout the Commonwealth.
To mark the occasion SELC, and all of those who have long advocated for the state’s participation in the carbon trading program, gathered in Richmond on June 30.
“This is a legal and legislative victory,” said Sarah Francisco, director of SELC’s Virginia office. “In a time when the larger landscape often looks bleak, states have no desire to be left behind and continue to move forward with solutions that have the power to greatly impact communities now and set them up for future success.”
Jessica Simms, Executive Director at Virginia Conservation Network, was on hand for the celebration as well.
“RGGI’s positive impact on Virginia is manyfold: reduced greenhouse gas emissions, funding for crucial flood resilience programs, and energy efficiency and home weatherization programs that decrease utility bills. RGGI invests in Virginia communities and our re-entry is a welcome opportunity to resume funding for the critically needed Community Flood Preparedness and Housing Innovations in Energy Efficiency funds,” Simms said.
How we got here
In 2020, Virginia became the first Southern state to join RGGI when the General Assembly passed the Clean Energy and Community Flood Preparedness Act, which allowed the program to get underway in Virginia.
Not soon after though, a new governor took the reins and immediately put RGGI in his crosshairs, promising to remove Virginia from the successful program and to more broadly rollback clean energy and transportation policies. In 2023 the state’s Air Pollution Control Board voted to leave the program, granting Governor Glenn Youngkin his wish. SELC filed a petition on behalf of four clients challenging the action in August 2023. Ultimately, three clients were dismissed and the case was transferred to Floyd County, where the remaining client, the Association of Energy Conservation Professionals, is headquartered.
In November 2024, the Circuit Court of Floyd County ruled that the regulatory action removing Virginia from RGGI was “unlawful and without effect.” The court explained that the “only body with the authority to repeal the RGGI Regulation would be the General Assembly . . . because a statute, the RGGI Act, requires the RGGI Regulation to exist.”
The Court also confirmed the Association of Energy Conservation Professionals’ standing to bring the case.
Fast forward to 2026, when newly elected Governor Abigail Spanberger and the General Assembly took swift action to get Virginia back into RGGI as quickly as possible, while the newly elected Attorney General, Jay Jones, withdrew the state’s pending appeal of the Floyd County court order striking down the Youngkin Administration’s removal of Virginia from RGGI.
What’s next?
Now that the Commonwealth has returned to RGGI, communities can once again reap its rewards. Foremost, carbon pollution from power plants will go down and air quality will improve. During the years Virginia was in RGGI, carbon pollution from power plants decreased 22% whereas that pollution increased by 31% during the unlawful withdrawal. In addition to improving air quality and public health, RGGI is a critical customer protection tool to help mitigate rising electricity bills and force utilities to make better decisions for their customers. Fossil fuels—and their volatile prices that we cannot control—have been one of the biggest drivers of bill increases, and RGGI helps ensure utilities steadily reducing reliance on fossil fuels. Virginia’s participation in RGGI also generated $827 million in critical funding for low-income energy efficiency and flood resilience projects across Virginia.
SELC Senior Attorney Nate Beforado led the case against the state.
“We knew from the start that the removal of the state from the program was unlawful. But this fight was also about defending a program that was already helping so many Virginians,” Benforado said. “What we’re building here in Virginia is a breakthrough for energy in the South. We have to put community needs first and ahead of what big tech and data centers, monopoly utilities, or those benefiting from the continued reliance on gas want. Their want for more profits can’t outweigh communities’ need for clean air, water, and land.”
As the state resumes participation, there will be those who say RGGI is adding costs to electric bills. This is not true.
“RGGI isn’t the problem, it’s a solution. Unfortunately, Dominion persists in scapegoating RGGI,” he said.
While new nuances to the RGGI story continue to pop up, most recently in the form of ratepayer rebates that were included in Virginia’s 2026 budget agreement, for now RGGI advocates and supporters are hopeful that the state’s participation in the program is secure and celebrating the journey it’s taken to get here.