By Steve Haner,

Abigail Spanberger Administration told an energy industry magazine that they plan to rejoin Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative in July in order to participate in September and December 2026 carbon allowance auctions.

The Department of Environmental Quality has a shortened timetable and will not be publishing a draft rule or taking public comments prior to acting. This was the message given to the reporter from Argus Media. Bacon’s Rebellion received an email copy from the Argus, which could have been a confidential notice for subscribers only. The public website did not have it.

It is not known and possibly not decided how many allowances Virginia can offer at these auctions. Argus reported:

The agency is also working with RGGI members states to work out finer details, like Virginia’s allocation, for its return to the program. DEQ called its discussions with members states “positive” and said Virginia’s allocation would be “consistent with the prior regulation”, when it first joined RGGI 2021.

The two final auctions in 2026 will also be the last two auctions for the current three-year RGGI period. Virginia will receive a smaller and different amount of allowances for the years 2027-2028 than what is granted in 2026. The completion of Dominion Energy’s offshore wind facility will also reduce the number of allowances.

RGGI is designed to reduce the number of allowances gradually to discourage the use coal, oil, and natural gas to produce electricity. This shrinking supply forces generation firms to pay more for allowances. They then pass this cost on to their customers. Argus forecast that the 25 per ton price paid at the March 2026 Auction could surpass $28 in the December 2026 Auction.

The Argus reported also noted Virginia’s soaring demand for electricity due to the explosion of data centers and said that the state is a considerable source of demands for RGGI allocations.

During the three years Virginia participated in RGGI (from 2021 to 2023), the number of allowances Virginia needed to sell was slightly higher than the demand of Virginia’s generation plants. This meant that some of Virginia’s RGGI tax revenues were paid by plants from other states. The situation could reverse depending on the new allocation and Virginia generators might be paying other states (or the same speculators, who also buy allowances) for them.

The various electric generator units in Virginia that use hydrocarbons have reported CO2 emissions of more than 29 millions tons, which is far higher than the allocation. Dominion Energy was responsible for just under 70% of the emissions.

An industry analyst, who shares data compiled by public sources, has tracked how Virginia’s generation plants slowed their operations during the RGGI years and then increased their use again after Governor Glenn Younkgin pulled Virginia out of compact. The chart is too big to fit in a single post. However, you can view it here. This post has included portions of the chart.

Advocates of RGGI ignore the fact that Virginia is a major electricity importer. Many of the biggest states in the PJM interconnection are not members of RGGI and many RGGI member states are also in other regional transmission organizations. Virginia’s hydrocarbon plant runs less frequently, while hydrocarbon plants within PJM that are not bound by RGGI operate more frequently. This is technically called “leakage”.

If you can convince yourself that a map with a 10-1 Congressional ratio is “fair”, then it’s easy to think that Virginia emissions are the only ones that matter in “the battle to save the world”. RGGI doesn’t actually mean that. RGGI really is about money. Virginia will start to reap the extra revenues in September. Your power bill will be affected at some point.