Social justice, equity, and income sensitivities may sound nice, but when these ideals come into conflict with political patronage and rent-seeking from influential players they’re quickly dismissed and their sincere advocates stifled.
Recently in the Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Energy, the testimony has been overwhelmingly in favor of halting the movement of the Affordable Heat Act (S.5). Despite all of the evidence and pleas, the committee still seems determined to force it through.
At the end of the fifth week of the legislative session, the Senate Natural Resources & Energy Committee currently working on the Clean Heat Standard bill, S.5, decided to hear testimony from Vermont fuel dealers — the businesses that will be most negatively impacted by the law.
Despite Ethan Allen Institute estimates of a surcharge on heating fuel of as much as $4.00 per gallon which will unravel implementation of the AHA, the committee continues to seek advice on how to prevent the program from being opposed on legal grounds.
The clean heat standard bill, S.5, would put Vermont’s Public Utilities Commission (PUC) in charge of figuring out how the program would actually work — after the bill becomes law — and managing it once in place. This will be a huge, complicated, expensive task.
As the Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee takes testimony on and discusses the Clean Heat Standard bill, S.5, observers become privy to some of the visions for the future that the authors have in mind.
The clean heat standard is dead. That’s not to say that S.5 won’t become law, because it will. But the fatal flaws in the policy which will prevent its implementation became very clear this past week.
The members of the Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee are tying themselves in intellectual knots over why they don’t need to investigate how much the Clean Heat Standard they’re prepared to put into law will cost Vermonters or how it will work.
We need a real conversation and thorough assessment and analysis of this bill which is currently under review in the Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Energy.
Although there may be good intentions and hopes behind S.5, it is actually harmful to Vermonters and small businesses who have been heating homes for decades, even generations.
Democrats and Progressives are hoping that newly elected supermajorities in both the House and Senate, along with a new name for what is essentially a carbon tax on home heating fuels, will ensure that that the Clean Heat Standard will become law this year.