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.
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.
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.
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.
During a briefing from the Energy Action Network on Vermont’s progress for meeting its greenhouse gas reduction goals under the Global Warming Solutions Act (GWSA), Sen. Mark MacDonald, D-Orange, pitched a plan to lower the speed limit on state highways to 55 mph.
Make no mistake: environmental activists have put gas stoves in their sights for elimination as part of their climate agenda. They will use their various megaphones to call this misinformation and a fear tactic right up until the point where the ban goes into effect.
The first meeting of the Vermont Climate Council of 2023 erupted with frustrated members of the BIPOC community accusing the council of racial tokenism.
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.
They were voting by absentee ballot in Vermont, deciding who would represent in public offices people who actually live here. That’s vote fraud, right? Wrong! At least according to our Secretary of State’s office.
An article in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal shows evidence that the expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act is driving, at least in part, the opioid epidemic that is ravaging the nation.
Allowing an ineligible voter to cast a ballot cancels out the vote of a legal voter, effectually erasing that legal voter’s vote. The outcome is the same as if the legal voter had been physically blocked from entering the polling place. This is unacceptable.