As global corporations and governments increasingly shed ideologically driven policies that raise energy prices and undermine supply, governors in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic cling to counterproductive agendas of contradiction and equivocation.
Programs that prioritize dubious environmental goals over economic growth and basic human needs have been losing support. In the U.S., the Trump administration promotes fossil fuels and nuclear power over so-called green energy, suspending leases for five offshore wind projects Christmas week while offering loan guarantees to nuclear operators and promoting coal as a “clean” stocking stuffer.
Half a globe away, Japan has ended its financial support for large-scale solar projects. Meanwhile, the island nation plans to restart the world’s largest nuclear power plant, which was shuttered a decade ago as an overreaction to a tsunami-induced disaster at another plant.
Private enterprises that had invested billions of dollars into green energy initiatives are returning their focus to core businesses.
ExxonMobil reduced “low carbon” investments by $10 billion even as it announced that oil and gas production would fuel $25 billion in earnings growth over the next few years.
Shell, Aker BP, and Enbridge—companies based in the U.K., Norway, and Canada, respectively—have withdrawn from the Science Based Targets initiative, which was supposed to address the purported threat of climate change.
“The trend toward a carbon-neutral society appears to be slowing,” says Tomohide Miyata, the CEO of Eneos. The Japanese refiner abandoned plans to produce hydrogen (an overhyped “alternative” energy source that still relies on fossil fuels) to expand its liquefied natural gas business.
Meanwhile, Pennsylvania’s Democrat Gov. Josh Shapiro is unaware—or unconcerned—that his confused policies stymie the development of affordable energy in the most densely populated region of the United States.
The Pennsylvania governor’s record has been, at best, mercurial.
Shapiro recently surprised many when he agreed to withdraw Pennsylvania from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, the multistate compact that imposes carbon taxes on member states. But just months earlier, Shapiro sued to stay in RGGI. The reversal drew positive reactions from Republican lawmakers and labor union leaders, who predicted increased investments in the state’s natural gas and coal industries with the abandonment of RGGI’s tax on fossil fuels.
“The war’s over,” said Shawn Steffee of Pittsburgh Boilermakers Local 154, who had been among those blaming RGGI for discouraging fossil fuel projects in Pennsylvania since the commonwealth flirted with joining in 2019. “It is time to … rebuild right here in Pennsylvania.”
However, within weeks, the Environmental Quality Board of Shapiro’s Department of Environmental Protection recommended increasing setbacks for natural gas wells by as much as tenfold. The restrictions—up to a mile in distance—would shut down gas drilling and increase energy prices, according to industry sources.
Jim Welty, president of the Marcellus Shale Coalition, calls the setbacks “a ban on future natural gas development” that “is extremely concerning, especially considering that [the Shapiro administration] claims they’re doing everything possible to protect Pennsylvania consumers from rising electricity prices.”
Exceeding its “legal authority,” the Environmental Quality Board sent “a chilling message to consumers, landowners, and economic investors by threatening access to Pennsylvania’s reliable and affordable energy resources,” said Welty.
In addition to the Environmental Quality Board recommendation, Pennsylvania’s Democrat-controlled House of Representatives is considering its own setback restrictions. “Make no mistake, this proposal is a de facto ban on natural gas development in Pennsylvania,” said Stephanie Catarino Wissman of the American Petroleum Institute. Numerous regulations already govern the industry, notes the institute.
So, Pennsylvania has at least two propositions to kill natural gas development, in addition to Shapiro’s own proposals to reduce fossil fuel generation and increase wind and solar energy use. The governor’s programs would double household electricity bills, but Shapiro blames the power grid’s market policies for already elevated costs.
However, Republican state Sen. Gene Yaw disputes the blame shifting, saying grid operators do not drive energy costs. “The real reason electricity prices are rising is because we’re not producing enough of it,” says Yaw. “Over the past decade, aggressive renewable mandates have forced the premature retirement of dependable baseload generation without replacing it with sufficient new baseload generation capacity. … That’s a policy failure.”
Other governors in the region exhibit Shapiro’s pattern of awkwardly balancing between championing low energy costs and backing more costly policies.
In Gov. Kathy Hochul’s New York, regulators approved a pipeline to move Pennsylvania natural gas to New York City and Long Island. But they also refused to approve another to serve New England, even though Connecticut’s Democrat governor and New Hampshire’s Republican governor supported it.
Seeking reelection this year, Hochul has become concerned about “the need to govern in reality,” as she continues a ban on natural gas drilling that keeps billions of dollars from upstate New York. The state’s drilling ban “has unjustly denied New York landowners their property rights and lucrative natural gas royalties and has been for purely political reasons,” says the Institute for Energy Research.
Both Hochul’s and Shapiro’s lapses into commonsense have drawn the ire of the environmental Left, which may explain the caution of 2025 gubernatorial candidates.
In New Jersey and Virginia, incoming governors campaigned for lower energy prices while remaining loyal to costly green policies. The Garden State’s membership in RGGI is included in the energy policy of Democrat Gov. Mikie Sherrill. In Virginia, Democrat Gov. Abigail Spanberger will reverse Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s withdrawal from RGGI.
Although supporters of largely Democrat environmental policies claim that their favored green technologies lower energy prices, the evidence says otherwise. An Institute for Energy Research study reports that “86% of states with electricity prices above the national average in the continental U.S. are reliably blue.” Those states include New England and most of the Mid-Atlantic, including New York, New Jersey, and “purple” Pennsylvania.
Vijay Jayaraj, a science and research associate who regularly comments on Asia’s growing use of coal to reverse generational poverty, sees a global split emerging between the practical and the ideological.
“Very likely, there will be a bifurcation,” he writes. “On the one hand, western bureaucracies, particularly in Europe, continuing an economic decline under mandates and taxes, and on the other, pragmatic governments, many of them in Asia, pursuing prosperity with fuels and technologies that work.”
But this divide appears to be happening even within the United States, with blue states on one side and red states on the other. And considering the rising cost of electricity, states like Pennsylvania and its neighbors may want to prioritize energy affordability and reliability—free of ideological baggage.
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