From CFACT

By Kevin Mooney

Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative carbon taxes continue to explode.

Virginia residents have voted in favor of politicians who back policies that will raise their electricity costs by more than $500 million per year, according to an analysis of the carbon tax plan that elected officials are in the process of reinstating.

That works out to $1,100 per household per year in increased costs.

Gov. Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat, who was sworn into office this January, has taken the first initial steps toward having Virginia rejoin the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a multistate “cap and trade” climate change agreement. Virginia was part of RGGI from 2021 through 2023, but former Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin withdrew from RGGI citing rising energy costs.

Steve Haner, a senior fellow for environment and energy policy at the Thomas Jefferson Institute, estimates that if Virginia had remained in RGGI in 2024 and 2025, the state would have collected about another $1 billion in carbon taxes.

Power generators in RGGI states are required to purchase an allowance for every ton of carbon dioxide their plants emit from using coal, oil, or natural gas. Then they pass the cost of that allowance on to consumers in their electricity bills.

That’s where the carbon tax comes into play. RGGI sets quarterly auctions to determine what the allowances costs will be. The December 2025 auction price shot up to $26.73 per emitted ton: a significant jump of almost 20% from the September 2025 allowance cost of $22.25

Haner has pulled together some sobering stats that indicate Virginia residents can expect to take a big hit in their future energy costs. When Virginia’s RGGI bill was passed in 2020, the RGGI carbon tax was $5.65 per ton of emitted CO2. By the time Virigina reached its final auction in December 2023, that price rose to $14.88, which comes out to 163% increase. Haner’s research shows Virginia sold 22 million allowances in 2023 before exiting the program under Youngkin.

Some relevant bills for residents to consider when eyeballing higher energy costs are HB 895 and HB 920, which could pull in billions and billions of dollars in revenue from residents over time if they become law.

This article originally appeared at Restoration News