On Earth Day, fittingly, Pennsylvania joined the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. Year by year, the cap on CO2 emissions from power plants decreases and as a result utilities will have to decrease their carbon pollution or pay more to pollute the rest of us.

The state will then invest hundreds of millions of dollars in fees to improve air quality through measures like energy efficiency and clean energy promotion.

It’s about time for this, because for over a century our state’s power plants have been paying no compensation to emit pollutants that damage the environment and human health. Now, they stop or they pay!

Finally PA joins the northeastern states and the large embarrassing gap in the map of RGGI states from C2ES can be colored in!

Read more from the Sierra Club , the RGGI site, and on our own site.