If S.5 becomes law, low-income Vermonters will be subsidizing the transition of wealthier Vermonters who can afford to pay the upfront costs of weatherizing, installing heat pumps, and similar systems.
By Rob Roper
The House Committee on Environment and Energy continued to take testimony on S.5, the bill that would establish a clean heat standard for Vermont’s home heating fuels.
The committee heard from several different perspectives, among them a fuel dealer specializing in clean heat options, a home renovation and construction contractor, and a finance expert. They all shared a common thread — this bill will hurt low-income Vermonters.
Brian Gray, general manager for the Energy Co-op of Vermont, noted, “While the cost of a credit is currently unknown, whether it is $0.05 or $1.50 per gallon, those costs will be passed on to our members and customers. … As more and more members and customers move to clean heat solutions, the increased costs of deliver will be born by the remaining fossil fuel users.”
He warned that all of his customers will be faced with a choice if S.5 passes: “Pay more for fossil fuel or pay the upfront cost of transitioning to other fuels. Either choice will hit our customers’ wallets.”
But, as other witnesses testified, transitioning may not even be an option.
While the cost impact on a gallon of oil, propane, natural gas, or kerosene is estimated anywhere between $0.70 and $4.00, Gray testified that we do know what the cost to transition to heat pumps is. Gray shared a chart showing the cost of heat pumps between $5,000 and $20,000 and the necessary weatherization that installing a heat pump often requires as being between $6,500 and $15,000. Gray also noted that rebates and incentives only cover a small portion of those upfront costs, and the payback periods on these investments exceeds 10 years. Most low- and middle-income Vermonters cannot afford to have this conversation.
Perry Parker of Northeast Craftsman highlighted the work force realities that will leave most low- and middle-income Vermonters stuck paying higher fossil fuel prices, even if they were able to scrape together the money from various sources to pay for an alternative system. There are simply not enough workers available to do the work.
Parker’s family has been in the construction business in Vermont for over 128 years and Perry Parker was a high school science teacher for 31 years, before going full time at his remodeling and construction company. His concern for poor Vermonters motivated him to travel to Montpelier to testify on S.5, and he showed up with a pile of research to back up his concerns.
“In 1989 we had about 18,000 people in Vermont in the construction trades,” Parker told the committee. “Pre-pandemic: 15,000. 2021: 11,300. … I think you see where this trend is going.
“The average age of the worker in these trades is 45. Thirty percent will be retiring in the next three years, and that includes me. We have 900 HVAC Vermont certified installers in this state. One hundred thirty-eight are certified to install heat pumps. That’s all. We have about 1,000 licensed electricians.”
Parker used the the Weatherization Assistance Program as just one example highlighting the problem.
“In the last eight years, from 2015 to 2023, a little over 1,000 homes have been weatherized [under the program],” he said. “The average since 2010 is about 176 homes a year to address 19,000 homes that need to be weatherized. The average that goes into those weatherizations is $10,000 for a family of four. That doesn’t even come close to achieving an energy standard for a heat pump to work, by the way. If you apply the current work force that’s available to do all of just this sector, you’re talking about a very long time. You can do the math; it’s over 100 years with the current work force. Yeah.”
Parker added: “We don’t have the workforce to meet our current climate goals, and the problem is getting worse, not better. Workforce losses are not going to be replaced with entry level people at a rate to meet the losses in the profession.”
Challenging a fantasy that many proponents of S.5 have pushed — that the workforce development aspects of the bill will attract new and more labor — Parker asserted, “We’re not going to get much immigration from outside in because Vermont costs too much to live — eighth highest [cost of living in the country]. Why would they come from another state where it’s cheaper for them to work and they can retain more of their money?”
Parker concluded his thesis that if poor Vermonters aren’t going to be able to transition to the politically desired methods of heating their homes due to labor issues and the retrofitting challenges posed by generally older housing most low-income people live in, they’re going to be stuck paying more for their fossil fuels.
“This bill will increase their costs beyond the normal market fluctuations. They aren’t going to be seeing the weatherization or the benefits. They are going to be subsidizing others,” he said.
This was the same point made by Myers Mermel of the Ethan Allen Institute. Low-income Vermonters won’t be able to participate in the transition to non-fossil fuel heating due to their inability to pay for the upfront costs themselves, lack of adequate funding to subsidize their transition, and, even if that money could be found, the lack of labor necessary to do the work.
Frustrated by these realities, S.5 proponent Rep. Laura Sibilia, I-Dover, challenged Mermel saying, “This bill is actually targeted directly at our moderate income folks.”
“I agree,” said Mermel. “It is targeting the low income folks and it’s forcing them to pay thousands of dollars they don’t have on conversion costs that they don’t have. … Our poorest are going to suffer because they can’t pay for the conversion and they can’t pay the ongoing costs [of continuing to heat with artificially inflated costs of fossil fuels].”
And, as such, they will be subsidizing the transition of wealthier Vermonters who can afford to pay the upfront costs of weatherizing, installing heat pumps, and similar systems today.
Rob Roper is a freelance writer who has been involved with Vermont politics and policy for over 20 years. © Copyright True North Reports 2023. All rights reserved.
If this is so darn wonderful – Why can’t it SELL ITSELF ??
SPEND EXTRA MONEY – and/OR GO COLD !!
Extra taxes will be levied on what is left of the middle class to pay bennies to poor, dysfunctional people, who are attracted to Vermont like flies to a dung pile
Your elected officials, just don’t care………. it’s all about their agenda,
you voted these clowns in, you reap what you sow………………………
There’s cancer in Montpelier, the liberals !!
How about those of us that live in areas where electricity is not readily available? Where I live, there are quite a few and I’m sure that there are elsewhere. I don’t know and don’t care what the cost would be to put up solar panels to run an inefficient heat pump, I will NOT be participating. I will always heat with wood and from now on I’ll fill the propane tanks that run my stove and refrigerator in New Hampshire. I will be buying everything possible there so as not to contribute any tax dollars to these insane liberals. They do love spenother people’s money!!!
It remains doubtful that logic can change a liberal’s or elitist’s mind- perhaps explaining it in a more basic way that our “legislators” can understand:
Enact S.5 and the services sector of Vermont will evaporate. From the Hairstylist to the Florist, manicurist to postal worker and everything in between- these people will not be able to provide the services you depend on, because you as legislators decided that the fallacy of climate change overrules the reality of the cost of living in Vermont. The folks you depend on at the grocery store and auto repair shop, landscaper and store clerk, dental hygienist and LPN at the adult care facility all cannot afford to stay, because you value your virtue-signaling above your constituents.
Whether ms. sibilia shops in Wilmington or Brattleboro, Bennington or Keene NH, there is a pool of Vermont residents that work in those stores whom will be negatively affected by her support of this legislation- and rightfully may just decide Vermont isn’t going to be home anymore- taking away their skills, work ethic and tax dollars to another state where they can do better than eke out an existence.
The poor in Vermont? Enviros could care less. They expect “collateral damage” along the way to “Save the World”. As Hillary Clinton famously says :”What difference does it make now”?
Screw the poor…Let them eat Cake…..The Cult Of Enviro Progressive Socialists must save the world – from Climate Extinction…and only THEY can do it.
Sad. Very sad. But the truth be known, everybody will be hurt by these incredibly stupid clean heat standards. So… I don’ feel sorry for the poor….most are illegals, anyway. I DO feel sorry for hard working Vermonters who will be forced to pick up their tab. Fundamentally changing America and redistribution on wealth.
Poem published in “The Newport Daily Express,” Friday, March 31, 2023:
When the Coltsfoot Bloomed
If the so-called “Affordable Heat Act” (S.5) is signed into law, people will die, just as they died last winter in heat-rationed Europe. This bill has not been canceled; it has simply been put on hold while its Democrat and Progressive perpetrators commission studies that will deliver the results they want. Anyone who does not wish to see their fuel costs double should contact their elected officials and let them know how they feel about this politically motivated, possibly malicious piece of legislation (which is currently under review by the House Committee on Environment and Energy). It’s important to remember that with a Democratic supermajority in the state legislature, Governor Scott may not have the votes he needs to simply veto S.5.
By Ellin Anderson
When the coltsfoot was in bloom
On sunny banks, and on the hill
Where Nature wove on April’s loom,
They sat in peace, as white and still
And stiff as any Dresden doll:
A little family in their car —
They will not answer when you call,
However close you are.
They rested there, through every storm,
The bleak black night, the silver day —
Had they been trying to get warm,
Or just to get away?
In unrelenting northern cold,
With dead blue lips, a mother’s kiss
Is pressed on Baby’s hair of gold —
But nothing good, not even bliss
As good as gold can stay.
Or stay the hand of cruel intent
And power open to misuse.
Would pity’s warming heart relent,
Or would the cold claw of abuse
Unfold there on the sunny bank
Where the unsullied violet curled:
A little house, a propane tank
Crumpled, to save the world.
They tap upon the window — near
The marble eye, the porcelain ear
To ask forgiveness — now, they come,
But find the father deaf and dumb,
The child who only asked a crumb —
The mother and her crystal tear —
“Forgive us” — mocking or sincere,
A prayer that only God will hear.