Please reverse your intention to withdraw from the RGGI.  The argument that the participation is costing homeowners money is short-sighted an ill informed.

Participation in RGGI has brought investment to Virginia to the benefit of many

• Over $265 million to the Community Flood Preparedness Fund – Virginia’s only source of proactive flood prevention. 
• Over $294 million to fund energy efficiency retrofits for low and moderate-income homes and new, energy-efficient affordable housing.

  Participation signals Virgnian's continued commitment to our community well-being and economic potential by focusing efforts on investments in sustainable and resilient technologies.  Should Virginia seek to withdraw it reduces the eligibility for our energy service providers to seek investment from federally available funds via the DOE IIJA GRIP and CHIPS grant mechanisms.

These federal dollar programs are targeted at supporting communities in building reliable and resilient energy infrastructure that supports low income communities and allows more diverse power generation capabilities be brought into the energy distribution system.  Rejecting a commitment  to carbon reduction technologies and carbon reduction goals is opposition to these federal program goals and therefore minimizes the eligibility of Virginia entities (municiple and rural electric power providers) from obtaining available federal dollars.  

Stepping by from RGGI signals to those that there is not economic value in reducing carbon emissions, when empirically there is - when people and our environment at healthy and our energy network is resilient we can maximize the economic productivity of our state.