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.
The Vermont Housing and Conservation Board is in an excellent position to balance the goals it was given by the Legislature. Some legislation will be required to make clear that, although keeping the land dairy farms are on productive is essential, preserving them as dairy farms is not.
What was striking about the press conference, apart from the remarkably ambitious timetable, was the fact that most of the advocates of this bill would benefit financially from the policy should it become 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.
Less than two weeks after dismissing the gas stove furor as little more than tinfoil hat conspiracies, Granholm’s own agency proposed energy efficiency standards that ignited opposition from the gas appliance industry.
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.
Where are Vermonters, whose enviro extremists have already driven out our dependable Vermont Yankee nuclear plant, going to get enough electricity to run 120,000 electric cars by 2030, not to mention hundreds of thousands of electric heat pumps?
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.
Sorry, Mr. McKibben, no matter how I squint at those turbines, all I see is our absolute failure to take responsibility for our impact on the world and the creatures that we share it with.
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.
Green Mountain Power (GMP) announced renewed savings opportunities for customers in 2023, to continue to switch away from fossil fuel for driving, heating, and more. These rebates are available to all customers to make the switch and help cut carbon and costs for customers.
The Vermont Department of Environment Conservation has released a 2022 performance report that highlights water quality progress achieved through public investment. The report details how $337 million of state investment in water quality projects over the last seven years has been put to work.