By Brent Addleman | The Center Square
As Vermont’s push toward net zero emissions in the coming decades goes full steam ahead, the cost of making the transition feasible for the state’s low- and moderate-income residents has become a growing concern.
To that end, members of the House Committee on Environment and Energy are looking at ways of offering benefits to residents in both income brackets.
The committee on Friday continued its review of Senate Bill 5, which outlines a series of steps toward meeting Vermont’s climate plan that aims to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 across all energy sectors.
In recent weeks, the committee has been taking testimony from a variety of groups on the legislation. Ellen Czajkowski with the state Office of Legislative Counsel was on hand on Friday to go through the committee’s latest revisions to SB5.
Czajkowski’s review touched on a timeline for the full rollout of SB5, including the role the state Public Utility Commission will have in the implementation and oversight of the specific standards that will be put in place.
The complexity of the different pieces of the puzzle that need to come together in the years ahead prompted a question on what exactly the state House of Representatives is voting on in the bill. The Senate has already approved the legislation.
“You are voting on the full substance of what is in S5, which would authorize the PUC and the Department of Public Service to begin the work on this,” Czajkowski said, in response. “However, they will not be able to enact final rules, establishing the full details of the clean heat program, until at least two years from now, in 2025.”
If SB5 is enacted toward the midpoint of 2023, as projected, multiple state agencies will be tasked with a variety of reviews and analyses to establish standards. The PUC, for example, will bring forward a recommendation of how clean heat credits should be implemented and establish a list of rules for clean heat standards.
The process is expected to culminate in two years, after a series of public hearings and analyses, when the General Assembly adopts a final set of rules for clean heat standards.
As the House panel continues its review of SB5, the low- and moderate-income standards were loosely discussed at Friday’s session and will be dug into deeper in the coming weeks.
Several committee members indicated a desire to have clearer language in place within the bill.
“It sounds to me like this language is going to confuse many different groups of people, whether they’re low-income or moderate-income,” said Rep. Brian Smith, R-Derby. “I don’t think there’s real good clarification of who’s going to get what.”
The size and scope of clean heat credits and benefits also was discussed and will continue to be reviewed at upcoming committee meetings.
“I do think it’s fine to be explicit that commercial and industrial customers surely should benefit from this, but make it equitable,” said state Rep. Amy Sheldon, D-Middlebury, who chairs the committee. “Is there anything left for single families? I don’t know how this affects others.”
Czajkowski said similar questions were raised in the Senate before that branch of the General Assembly adopted SB5.
“I do think there was equity concern, but they also didn’t necessarily have a ton of time to flesh out what these kinds of programs could be,” Czajkowski said.
I just read as much as I could in the link provided to the statute. Can the committee do something in addition to the meandering long worded statute to make this more easily understood by the regular folks? Can this committee possibly provide the public with the following:
Concrete examples of how this will work, financially and with a home, physical heating for the following financial groups;
1) Low income folks who own a trailer or home, have oil as their only source of heat, or kerosene for space heaters, how are they going to meet these standards if they already have no money to improve their heating situation? What if someone in the home is disabled and cannot carry wood or bags of pellets? And they have no family members close by?
2) Moderate income family or individuals, possibly retired, living on small incomes even if working, heating with oil, or propane for heat and hot water, possibly may have a small wood stove. Maybe they just bought a new oil furnace two years ago at $4000-$5000 dollars, so brand new to them, but their income is limited to change out to a new heating standard. Are they going to have to get rid of the new furnace? And if they keep it will they be paying more for heating each year because they are not using a green fuel?
3) Those just above the moderate income threshold, who may not be able to get much state assistance but need to upgrade their heating systems to meet your guidelines or pay more? Someone I know has a cold climate heat pump and this winter it stopped putting out warm air for some reason when it was below zero, Luckily they had a gas furnace. So what will people do if these newer systems cannot deal with -20 temperatures for a week straight? I also imagine electric costs will go up, but will they offset any savings by switching over to green energy! Electric companies are businesses and they are there to make money as most businesses do.
So what I am asking is take these three families and show with numbers, costs, actions they will need to take to meet the 2030 and 2050 standards, and how their suppliers of Oil, Natural gas, propane costs will be affected. Is the person who just put in a new oil furnace three years ago going to have to change it even though it is much more efficient than his/her old furnace of 25 years? Even if they can keep it they will probably pay more for fuel due to your new tax credits on oil, gas providers they buy from, so then they are penalized.
Give concrete examples of how this will look to the basic families here in print ( above examples 1-3) in Vermont of the actual costs to them, what if any state assistance they can count on or not. and break it all down on paper/print so it is easy to understand than just reading a statute full of words only. We need numbers.
Instead of using 60 % of the median income as mentioned in the statute put in the actual $$ numbers for helping folks understand easier. So for each of my 3 examples above show just how this will work in those individual homes, for those folks, for their fuel providers and types of fuel etc. You should be able to give somewhat close estimations of how this will actually play out for our Vermont families. We should be able to see on paper the cost breakdown that is possible. It seems like you are trying to move forward with this knowing things are not fully figured out yet but will do so as we move forward, so a cart before the horse type of system. In this economy that does not make sense.
I am not against moving to clean energy, but we have to do this sensibly, with real numbers, examples we can look at and what people can expect in this state. Vermont is hard enough to live in, costs here are high, and I want a clean environment too, but it cannot be a light switch answer. Thank you!!
I know that our elected officials don’t really care what we the people think as evidenced by the 100’s of letters that Ruth Hardy of Addison County received and acknowledged so but insisted that S5 would “force fossil fuel providers to change how they do business.” Obviously, she listened to her party but not her constituents. Her party has never met a tax increase that they didn’t like and see this as a way to take more money off of us people.
Thank you, Montpelier, for making it harder for my family to live.
Exactly!! Because voters keep sending the same people back, they feel they can do whatever they want.
They are pretending to be concerned about the costs. Pretending, because the entire premise will solve nothing on the global scale, and they know this, but continue to think its necessary in their imaginary world.
People who are actually intelligent, would be looking for proof of the premise that people made CO2 is a causing a problem, and that removing people made CO2 will actually fix the problem, while also proving that its not just natural warming — that incidentally has stopped since 2015.