Vying for one of a handful of seats poised to set the balance of power in state government, candidates for Pennsylvania’s 37th Senate District aren’t highlighting climate and energy policy as they court swayable voters. Outside advocates, though, are targeting the district in hopes of securing ambitious climate policy gains.
Devlin Robinson, the Republican incumbent, has hewed to the party line on energy and climate issues since his election four years ago. He did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story. Robinson, who chairs the Senate Labor and Industry Subcommittee, does not include energy, environment or climate issues in his campaign priorities.
The challenger, Nicole Ruscitto, has a background that includes taking on fracking companies, but climate policy and environmental regulation are not at the forefront of her public-facing priorities, are absent from the pamphlets she stuffs in South Hills screen doors, and are nowhere to be found on her campaign website.
Sitting on the steps of the South Park Public Library on a Sunday morning in early September, Ruscitto addressed that omission.
“It hasn’t taken a backseat,” she said. “I have to win.”
Fred Kraybill, who lives outside the district and heads the political committee for the local chapter of the Pennsylvania Sierra Club, hosted a Sept. 17 fundraiser for Ruscitto, where he laid out the stakes of the coming election. Kraybill, of Point Breeze North, is door-knocking and fundraising for Ruscitto not because he stands to join her potential constituency, but because her victory could represent an opportunity for Democrats to achieve a trifecta of control in the state government — governor, House and Senate — and with it, a real possibility of passing meaningful climate policy.
“If we could get three [Senate] seats, and it’s very doable,” Kraybill said, “we could pass serious climate legislation in the state of Pennsylvania.”
He highlighted Gov. Josh Shapiro’s proposed initiatives for a cap-and-invest program aimed at reducing climate pollution, and an update to the state’s lagging renewable energy targets.
Senate Republicans, including Robinson, have opposed past efforts to rein in carbon emissions under the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, or RGGI, which former Gov. Tom Wolf attempted to implement through executive order, pinning it an unconstitutional energy tax. Now, Senate leadership considers Shapiro’s alternative, or any “cap and tax,” a detriment to in-state energy, arguing that the policy would increase the cost of energy production in the commonwealth.
“We run the risk of turning ourselves from an exporter of electricity to an importer of electricity. And I think that would be awful economic policy,” said Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman, R-Indiana, in a recent interview.
A mother of two and a public school teacher in the southern suburbs of Pittsburgh, Ruscitto began her political career as a councilwoman in Jefferson Hills, where the borough successfully challenged fracking expansion, taking a case against EQT to the state Supreme Court.
“We fought EQT and won,” Ruscitto said, adding: “Industry is important for Pennsylvania, but it can’t happen where it’s going to be a hazard.”
That victory doesn’t appear in her online biography. While definitive polling data on support for natural gas production is hard to come by, Republican campaigns are using Democrats’ past statements opposing fracking as a political cudgel.
Climate on the ballot?
In 2022, President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act [IRA] into law. “It’s climate dynamite,” said Kraybill of the landmark legislation that earmarked $370 billion in federal funding toward climate solutions and clean energy projects. (Kraybill threw a party at his uber-sustainable home when it passed.)
The IRA is “moving us to the clean energy future,” he said. “But it’s an uneven process.”
Some states are doing better than others, he said, and “we’re not doing that great in Pennsylvania.”
The state’s renewable energy target, for example, sits at 8% and lags behind neighbors. By 2030, Virginia will source 30% of its electricity from renewable sources. New Jersey aims for 50%. In New York, legislators passed a goal of 70%, and in Maryland, they’re planning to be 100% renewable by 2040.
In March, Shapiro announced his plan for Pennsylvania energy — a cap-and-invest program paired with heightened clean energy targets. He said it would bring a “new era” of energy policy to the commonwealth, at once lowering carbon emissions and reducing consumer utility bills, while also creating nearly 15,000 new energy jobs.
Initially, Shapiro sought GOP support. “Now is the time to keep people coming together, to hear Democrat and Republican voices at the table, and to get stuff done for our fellow Pennsylvanians,” he said, according to reporting by Spotlight PA. “Doing nothing is not an option.”
So far, Republican leadership has not endorsed either of the plans, and Pittman characterized “cap-and-tax” programs like RGGI as “policies that are of detriment.”
Renewing state energy policy?
Shapiro’s plan calls for a cap on carbon emissions from Pennsylvania’s power plants, and would compel energy producers to pay to emit climate-warming pollution, under the Pennsylvania Climate Emissions Reduction Act, or PACER. The concept is essentially an in-state version of RGGI, which Republicans panned and which now awaits a state Supreme Court ruling to determine its constitutionality. If PACER were to pass, the governor said the program would replace RGGI.
The governor’s energy plan also calls for an increase in the percentage of energy that power companies must source from renewables like solar and wind, to 35% by 2035, under the Pennsylvania Reliable Energy Sustainability Standards Act, or PRESS.
According to analysis by Robert Routh, Pennsylvania policy director for climate and energy at the Natural Resources Defense Council, the two policies in tandem would accelerate clean energy development in Pennsylvania and result in significantly higher energy generation and export in Pennsylvania. “So we are generating more power and we’re serving the regional grid to a greater extent than we are right now,” he said. In the next decade, from 2030 on, Pennsylvania would export twice as much energy as the next largest exporting state in the United States under the governor’s plan, his analysis showed.
Routh’s analysis also predicted nearly $6 billion in IRA tax credits for Pennsylvania as a result — “which makes sense,” he said. “If we’re building out more clean energy and more new clean power is coming online, those developers can take advantage of the tax credits.”
“There’s clearly a growing need to diversify Pennsylvania’s energy mix, which over the last decade has been dominated more and more by natural gas,” said Routh.
Republican leadership in the Senate doesn’t see it that way.
Pittman said Pennsylvania’s increase in energy production (it currently ranks third in the United States) and a reduction in emissions can be largely attributed to “the responsible use of the Marcellus Shale.” It’s an argument espoused by some of the largest gas producers in the country, including Pittsburgh’s EQT, which is pushing for a vast expansion of gas production and exports from the Marcellus Shale, while climate scientists raise alarm.
Pittman touted efforts in the Senate to pass a carbon capture bill, and GOP efforts to “do our part in putting Pennsylvania in a position to make the most effective use of our God-given natural resources.”
Pittman expressed openness to “any conversation that advances new technology” that could help the state attain updated clean energy targets, again pointing to carbon capture, but he stopped short of endorsing Shapiro’s plan to up renewable power goals.
With elections looming, climate-minded voters are hoping that a Democratic trifecta might mean these initiatives pass, with or without Republican buy-in.
“If we can just flip three seats, we can get something done,” Kraybill said.
Ruscitto said she is “100% on board with Gov. Shapiro,” including his energy plan, part of which seeks to raise Pennsylvania’s clean energy targets.
She’s just not 100% comfortable making that part of her campaign.
Quinn Glabicki is the environment and climate reporter at PublicSource and a Report for America corps member. He can be reached at
qu***@pu**********.org
and on Instagram and X @quinnglabicki.
This story was fact-checked by Jamie Wiggan.
This article first appeared on PublicSource and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
