HARRISBURG, PA (February 5, 2026) – Today Clean Air Council and others demanded that Pennsylvania’s Environmental Quality Board (EQB) act decisively on a petition to develop the Stability and Affordability Via Emissions Reduction (SAVER) Regulation, which would promote a strong, sustainable economy while reducing Pennsylvania’s greenhouse gas emissions. Joining the Council in this demand are Citizens for Pennsylvania’s Future, Pennsylvania Environmental Defense Foundation, the Responsible Drilling Alliance, and 13 additional scientific, public health, legal, and economic experts.
The initial rulemaking petition, filed with EQB by 192 public interest groups and individuals, has languished for seven years while Pennsylvanians have suffered harm from climate change and watched the cost-of-living soar. The SAVER Regulation would help address these crises by creating a program that caps and gradually reduces greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions while generating revenue the Commonwealth needs to invest in public transportation and affordable clean energy. The regulation is a market-based method to reduce GHG emissions by 40% by 2030 and make Pennsylvania carbon neutral by 2052.
If GHG emissions are not reduced quickly, there is a broad scientific consensus that the harms we are already experiencing from climate change will increase dramatically and could be cataclysmic for our children and grandchildren. Pennsylvania is already experiencing more extreme weather events, including flooding, heat waves, periods of drought, and destructive storms, as well as increased insect-borne illnesses. The Center for Climate Integrity found that climate disruption will cost Pennsylvania over $1 billion annually. Most of these costs — a significant driver to today’s affordability crisis — are borne by local and state governments, water departments, electrical utilities, and their taxpayers and ratepayers.
The Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has clear authority to implement the SAVER Regulation under the Pennsylvania Air Pollution Control Act. Under the Pennsylvania Constitution, the state also has a duty to protect the state’s climate, and the people have the right to ensure it does.
Pennsylvania generates almost one percent of the world’s GHG emissions, more than most other states and nations. There is also a strong scientific consensus that immediate action is urgently needed to avoid the worst consequences of global warming.
“SAVER would promote economic development and make Pennsylvanians healthier, ending the free ride for polluting fossil fuel generators,” said Lawrence Hafetz, Clean Air Council’s Legal Director.”DEP has a duty to end the giveaways for fossil fuel generators foisting the cost of their pollution onto taxpayers. Clean energy is cheaper to produce, creates jobs, and, by combatting climate change, would increase the physical and economic wellbeing of all Pennsylvanians.”
“It is time for Pennsylvania’s Legislature and Executive Branch to take their obligations under the ERA seriously,” said Joseph Otis Minott, retired Executive Director and Chief Counsel of Clean Air Council.
“Clean energy is growing much cheaper while fossil fuel energy is becoming more expensive,” said John C. Dernbach, Professor Emeritus of Widener University Commonwealth Law School. “By making all energy sources compete on a level playing field, the SAVER regulation would speed up the use of cheaper clean energy, making life better for all Pennsylvanians.”
“I put together a conference on climate change at Penn State in 2002. I submitted this petition in 2018. Pennsylvania has fiddled, and now the world is catching fire,” said Robert B. McKinstry, Jr., an environmental lawyer for nearly 50 years.
SAVER’s approach has been used successfully in both the California-Washington-Quebec program and the RGGI states program to reduce emissions while causing greater economic growth and job creation than would have been seen without these programs. By contrast, allowing unabated climate change would cost Pennsylvania billions in necessary climate resilience costs, responses to climate-driven disasters, and heat-related healthcare cost increases in the coming decades.
The SAVER regulation would create a system to cap and reduce greenhouse gas emissions across all sectors of Pennsylvania’s economy. Emission allowances would be auctioned and traded among businesses, and the total amount of allowable emissions would decrease each year. This market-based approach would provide businesses with the predictability and flexibility they need while incentivizing technological innovation.
The SAVER regulation, with recommended provisions for allowance allocation and expenditures from the Clean Air Fund, would promote affordability and address budget challenges by providing a revenue stream from the auction of emission allowances. That revenue could be explicitly directed to securely support public transportation and reduce electricity costs through funds allocated to electric distribution utilities.
Additionally, the cost of electricity, heating, and cooling would be reduced by auction revenues being invested to increase efficiency, improve electricity generation and transmission systems, and promote technological advances and energy conservation. Health benefits would also translate directly into lower costs for healthcare and insurance.
Trump and Zeldin’s Climate Chaos Plan will make climate denial official U.S. policy, claiming climate change and the pollution that causes it pose no threat to public health or the environment. Their plan would let polluters get richer while we pay the price – with our health, our wallets, and our lives.
Join Clean Air Council and partners in standing up to this disastrous plan that is a cornerstone of Trump’s Polluters First Agenda that will do nothing to bring down costs or improve health for American families.
Beat the Heat: Stand up to Trump’s Climate Chaos Plan
Press Event and Rally
Tuesday, September 9, 2025
12 noon
Love Park
Philadelphia, PA
Bring your best climate-related signs as we rally against climate denier policy and call for EPA policy that protects people from the pollution that causes climate change and its impacts, such as extreme weather and health harms that threaten the lives of everyone, particularly the most vulnerable.
August 15, 2025 – On July 29, 2025, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin announced a proposal to rescind the 2009 Greenhouse Gas Endangerment Finding. This finding specifically states that greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide and methane, that are produced by vehicles and polluters are critically dangerous to human health. These and other greenhouse gases are considered air pollutants under the Clean Air Act (CAA) by the Supreme Court in Massachusetts v. EPA (2007).
Simply put, the Supreme Court considered empirical scientific data on climate change when forming the Massachusetts opinion, not solely legal reasoning. This is a critical nuance as it considers the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases to be much more than a political ploy. As such, in 2007, the Court determined that the EPA has a legal duty to act because the emissions of greenhouse gases harm human health and fuel climate change. Today, Administrator Zeldin actively denies that climate change is an imminent danger to the American public. But, from disastrous floods to devastating wildfires, the immediate impacts of climate change pose a public health crisis right in front of our faces.
The “Climate Chaos Plan” to repeal the endangerment finding would not only give polluters a free pass, but would subject the general population to a significantly decreased quality of life. The proposed rescission is technically legal, but without the ability to formally recognize threatening pollutants for what they are, the EPA won’t have authority to regulate them under the CAA. This is an outright denial of critical scientific data compiled by esteemed scientists around the globe. Trump and Zeldin’s plan ignores basic pillars of human health and the ongoing climate crisis, all to ensure polluting facilities stay in business. If passed, this “Climate Chaos Plan” will ultimately allow the fossil fuel industry to emit greenhouse gases at mass rates, putting the general population at further risk. These risks include more respiratory illness (both chronic and acute), catastrophic wildfires, and disease-carrying insects, as well as less safe drinking water.
Trump and Zeldin’s plan drastically contradicts the EPA’s core purpose. Where the goal once was to protect the public from climate change, the current administration has manipulated the narrative. Stripping away cornerstone protections on public health and climate change to allegedly save a quick buck is not in the best interest of the population nor the environment. The plan will not provide the economic opportunity it alleges. Instead, it will drive up the costs of everyday goods, healthcare, and energy.
Your health should not be up for debate. Take action today to protect your family’s future from the “Climate Chaos Plan.” The EPA is holding mandatory public comment hearings on the proposed rule on August 19 and 20, 2025, and a potential additional session on August 21, 2025. To register, email EPA-MobileSource-Hearings@epa.gov. The public comment period for written comments ends on September 15, 2025.
The court decision paves the way for groups to contest harmful environmental decisions by invoking the constitutional rights of their members.
Thursday, July 18, 2024, Harrisburg, PA — Today, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania recognized the fundamental right of PennFuture, Clean Air Council, Sierra Club, and Environmental Defense Fund and their members to defend Pennsylvania’s participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), by overturning the Commonwealth Court’s June 28, 2022 denial of intervention.
Participation in RGGI would benefit Pennsylvanians and our economy by lowering carbon emissions, reducing air pollution, saving consumers money, and creating clean energy investment and family-sustaining jobs.
At issue was whether the environmental nonprofit organizations could intervene and become parties to defend the RGGI Regulation in several challenges before the Commonwealth Court. The nonprofits sought, among other things, to protect their members constitutional rights to a clean and healthy environment under Article I, section 27 of Pennsylvania’s constitution, often called the “Environmental Rights Amendment.” The Commonwealth Court had believedfound that Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) “adequately represented” the nonprofit organizations’ interests in this case and denied the organizations’ application to participate as parties in the RGGI litigation.
The Supreme Court disagreed. The Supreme Court wrote that environmental groups’ “significant evidentiary presentation demonstrating environmental, health, and quality-of-life harms to their individual members established [a substantial, direct, and immediate] interest.” The majority noted: “At stake for these individuals is not just fidelity to the law but the quality of their lives.”
As they had previewed at oral argument in May 2023, the Court was critical of DEP’s failure to raise the Environmental Rights Amendment, and its obligations as a trustee of public natural resources: “The lower court’s analysis of the adequate representation question unreasonably omits the fact DEP has never once invoked the ERA in support of the RGGI Regulation . . . Although DEP raised other arguments in support of the RGGI Regulation, it made none whatsoever premised upon the ERA. Nonprofits sought intervention, inter alia, to fill this void and defend the RGGI Regulation under the ERA…Nonprofits’ ERA defense is hardly “irrelevant” to this case.”
“Today’s decision shows that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court not only recognizes Pennsylvanians’ constitutional right to clean air and a healthy, stable environment, but respects their right to fight for it. The significance of this recognition cannot be overstated,” said Jessica O’Neill, PennFuture’s Managing Attorney for Litigation. “The RGGI Regulation is a critical step for Pennsylvania to protect the air and environment for Pennsylvanians today and for our future generations. PennFuture looks forward to continuing our defense of RGGI and enforcing our members’ constitutional rights.”
“The RGGI Regulation is the most important step Pennsylvania has taken to-date to fight the deepening climate crisis, which makes the Court’s decision to allow public interest voices to defend the Regulation all the more important,” said Alex Bomstein, Executive Director of Clean Air Council. “As we live through more deadly heat waves, polluted air, and extreme weather, our need for the climate and health benefits of the RGGI Regulation couldn’t be starker.”
“We are very pleased with the Court’s decision, which affirms that our members have a keen interest in defending their constitutional right to a clean and healthy environment,” said Tom Schuster, Director of the Sierra Club Pennsylvania Chapter. “This ruling underscores the importance of our Environmental Rights Amendment, particularly as it relates to protections against climate disruption, the defining environmental issue of our time.”
“Today, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court rightly recognized what is at stake for Pennsylvanians and the importance of their constitutional right to clean air and a healthy environment,” says Edwin LaMair, Attorney, Environmental Defense Fund. “We look forward to continuing to provide a robust defense of Pennsylvania’s program, which will substantially cut pollution from power plants and protect communities.”
The decision also dismissed as moot the environmental groups’ appeal of the preliminary injunction of the RGGI rule, since a permanent injunction stopping the RGGI Regulation from going into effect was granted by the Commonwealth Court on November 1, 2023. The appeals of the permanent injunction are presently before the PA Supreme Court, with briefs to be filed this summer. The Supreme Court is expected to rule on the merits of this challenge after briefing has been completed.
Opinions in full:
PENNSYLVANIA (July 9, 2024) – Today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit blocked the attempt by several states, along with oil and gas trade associations, to stay, or block, the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) methane standards for the oil and gas industry. Methane, more than 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide over the short term, is a critical target for climate pollution emissions reduction efforts. Human-caused methane emissions currently account for about 30 percent of global warming, with the oil and gas industry being one of the largest sources of methane emissions. The EPA standards would prevent millions of tons of climate warming methane from being emitted. In Pennsylvania, nearly 2 million residents live in proximity to oil and gas operations.
Matt Walker, Clean Air Council Advocacy Director, issued the following statement:
“The court’s decision ensures that EPA’s much-needed methane standards can continue to move forward, better protecting the health of Pennsylvania residents living close to oil and gas operations, and cutting methane at a time when our country is experiencing the dire effects of climate change.”
