Initiatives targeting a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions would be funded if the Vermont Office of Climate Action gets an additional $200,000 in the state’s upcoming fiscal year 2024 budget.
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.
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.
Several witnesses (and basic math) are on record that Vermont is not on track to achieve those reductions by the first milestone in 2025, nor the second milestone in 2030, so the anticipated lawsuit now appears inevitable.
So why this constant and relentless push to past the Affordable Heat Act and more? It’s really not about saving our planet because it’s obvious Vermont will have no impact on reducing global carbon loading even if we achieve zero emissions.
Secretary of Natural Resources Julie Moore pulled back the veil on what the cost of the proposed Clean Heat Standard, S.5, would cost Vermonters — and it’s a really big check.
Sen. Rebecca White’s Clean Fuel Standard would require fuel providers to gradually reduce the carbon intensity of motor fuels by mandating an increase in the amount of biofuel blend motor fuel that is sold in state.
On Tuesday, Annette Smith, executive director for Vermonters for a Clean Environment, testified before the Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Energy regarding Vermont’s plans to meet ambitious reduction targets for carbon dioxide emissions.
With a few exceptions, the opposition by Republican legislators to the clean heat standard has tended to be tepid. Republicans have been willing to vote against a bill, but not as enthusiastic about speaking out against it aggressively. That seems to be changing, at least to some degree.