There is no chance that this transition occurs quickly and efficiently due to the lack of a labor force. The old heart will be removed, but no surgeon is on call to put the new one in. The patient will die on the table — or more literally by freezing to death in their home one cold winter night.
Provided Gov. Scott vetoes the legislation, a coalition of Republicans, Democrats, Independents and Progressives will dig in at our Alamo and make one last stand to prevent this short sighted and poorly engineered legislation from becoming law.
Campaign for Vermont is calling on lawmakers to rethink their policy approach to reducing carbon emissions from home heating. There are a number of things that we could do to reduce or offset carbon emissions from home heating systems.
Senator McCormack and other legislators may end up owing a public apology to Mr. Goldberg for attempting to trade on his good name and his complex functioning creations by equating their efforts with his successful ones.
This $5 billion cost to provide weatherization, heat pumps, and heat pump water heaters, will mostly be borne by low and moderate income Vermonters. The Affordable Heat act will be the largest and most expensive social program ever paid for by Vermonters.
The question now is whether or not the members of the Appropriations Committee — a money committee —will raise the critical questions about what financial impact this bill will do to people trying to survive Vermont winters.
Given how much high-minded rhetoric has been dedicated to “a just transition” away from fossil fuels, the committee’s failure to even consider reaching out to Vermont’s director of Racial Equity except as an afterthought was revealing.
It turns out the real long-term cost of the Affordable Heat Act, S.5, proposed by the Natural Resources and Energy Committee is $5 billion over a 5-year period as demonstrated in a detailed financial analysis by the Ethan Allen Institute.
In this video, Gregory Thayer interviews Judy Taranovich, vice chair of the Vermont Fuel Dealers Association, and Manny Fletcher, president, about S.5.
Senate Bill 5, the Affordable Heating Act, was approved unanimously by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Friday morning. The bill is a reprise of the clean heat standard the Legislature passed last year only to be vetoed by Gov. Phil Scott.
Meeting the requirements of the Global Warming Solutions Act will funnel billions of dollars into the pockets of that diverse network of non-profits, businesses, etc. So, yes, they are most definitely here to help with that process.
Sen. Dick McCormack, D-Windsor, suggested that the committee consider scrapping the whole thing and simply enacting a carbon tax on fossil heating fuels and use the money to fund programs that reduce greenhouse gas emissions.