Smith asked Clark again if she thought she could win a suit against the CLF, and again Clark refused to directly answer the question, or acknowledge the premise that meeting the goals of the GWSA, despite all the best efforts of the legislature and the Administration, is not possible.
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. Members of the House Committee on Environment and Energy are looking at ways of offering benefits to residents in both income brackets.
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.
If you think Vermonters should be punished and charged more for using heating fuel to reliably heat their homes in the winter, then this bill is for you.
Now that the Clean Heat Standard bill is in the House, we are getting some clarity as to just how hollow even that level of “check back” really is. For one thing, it isn’t really a “check back” or a “circuit breaker” at all, it is a — new term — “throttle down.”
When the clean heat standard bill, S.5, was in the Senate, Vermont fuel dealers who testified in committee were given a mere six minutes each to make their case. Now that the bill has moved over to the House Committee on Environment and Energy, they got a chance to try again with a new audience — and a little more time.
The House Committee on Environment and Energy combed through Senate Bill 5, which outlines a series of steps toward meeting Vermont’s climate plan that aims at achieving net zero emissions by 2050 across all energy sectors.
The Democratic legislative majorities will commit to extracting over $2 billion in tax dollars from Vermont’s heating fuel customers to advance an unworkable scheme that even its advocates can’t explain — unless thousands more emails and phone calls jolt them back to reality.
Green pointed to the language in S.5 that does, in fact, require very specifically that 16 percent of all clean heat credits must be generated by low-income Vermonters, and another 16 percent by middle income Vermonters.
The Vermont Climate Council is currently mired in controversy over accusations it is really just another embodiment of “white privilege” that only pays lip service to social justice.
S.5 and its clean heat standard forces the thermal sector into the emissions trading trap — a game where big business and bogus environmental justice win.
Now that the Clean Heat Standard bill has passed the Senate and moved to the House, Moore is back defending her math, this time in the House Energy & Environment Committee — and once again she is incurring ire.