Vermont climate caucus leaders discuss impact of pandemic on climate change policy

By Guy Page

Many Vermont Daily Chronicle readers have been asking how the pandemic has impacted Vermont climate change legislation. The short answer is that I have asked that question of at least one climate change-leading senator about the Senate’s COVID-19 era plans for Act 250 revision, Global Warming Solutions Act, Proposal 9, 100% renewables legislation, and the Transportation and Climate Initiative(TCI), and have not yet received an answer. But I’ll keep trying.

Safe to say the Legislature is only thinking COVID-19 right now. Too soon to say if or when that will change. The Senate plans to reconvene Tuesday but apparently only to address emergency climate change legislation passed a week ago Friday by the House.

It is interesting to note that Vermont Climate Solutions Caucus leaders Sen. Chris Pearson and Rep. Sarah Copeland Hanzas are asking the same question. On this March 13 video, beginning at 8 minutes 22 seconds, see them discuss the pandemic’s consequence on Vermont climate change policy.

Read more of Guy Page’s reports.

Image courtesy of Michael Bielawski/TNR

14 thoughts on “Vermont climate caucus leaders discuss impact of pandemic on climate change policy

  1. This part of proposition 9 should scare every landowner, wood burner, and private water collector with it’s communistic ideals. It is saying that it is “common property of all the people”, but in all reality, it is implying that the natural resources are the property of the state.

    Right to a clean environment
    That the people have a right to clean air and water and the preservation of the natural, scenic, and cultural values of the environment. ((The State of Vermont’s natural resources are the common property of all the people.)) The State shall conserve and maintain the natural resources of Vermont for the benefit of all people.

  2. Vermont’s “climate caucus leaders ” discuss the impact of the pandemic on climate
    change policy ?? , Liberals will not even let a health hazard like the “Wuhan Virus ”
    stop this foolish agenda…………

    Wake up people, as this shows they don’t care about the citizens of the state they
    only care about there ” Agenda ” and how to push it through…. shameless fools !!

  3. I have heard non-sense ad nauseum, from these climate change hypers , to the point I am bewildered. You see I am nearly 80, and must have missed something, having lived in Vermont all my life.
    So I would like the hypers to tell me what it is I have missed and just when did climate change begin?
    I remember vividly growing up as a child, I have all the pictures my parents took, up to the point of remembering the last years of WW2; those pictures tell some stories as well, particularly snow-fall amounts. Any ” climateer”I have talked to doesn’t want to talk about temperatures and snowfall amounts in the 40’s and 50’s. Their common answer: “I wasn’t around here then”. How did we ever make it to the point of needing to be saved by these boneheads?

  4. A climate-change legislator?
    What in h … is that?

    Does that mean he is a 100% RE huckster, willing to vote for anything that comes across to please his RE friends?

    Such people ought to take a long walk in the woods, take deep breaths, find a good book and chill out. All of those are LOW-CO2 activities.

    Burning the midnight oil to find illusionary SOLUTIONS that do not exist, is similar to tilting at wind mills.

    There are not enough subsidies anywhere, certainly not in economically stagnant Vermont, to affect the climate in any way.

    Every Senator, with half a brain, would quietly admit that to himself, but would never voice it in public, for fear he would lose his “RE standing”, and damage his re-election prospects.

    • Addition to comment:

      Here is an example of RE hubris regarding EVs

      As of October 2019, Vermont had 1,451 EVs and 2,090 plug-in hybrids, for a total of 3,541 vehicles.
      About 700 are added each year.
      AWD and 200+ mile range is required in Vermont, especially during winter.
      The EAN report is grossly optimistic regarding adding 90000/5 = 18,000 EACH YEAR during 2020 – 2025. See URL
      https://www.driveelectricvt.com/Media/Default/docs/maps/vt_ev_registration_trends.pdf

      NOTE:
      Source energy, SE, is from mines, wells and forests, etc.
      Primary energy, PE, is finished fuel/energy fed to power plants
      Upstream = SE – PE
      Calculations are made on SE basis, which would include Upstream, or PE basis, which would not include Upstream.

      The EAN report CO2 calculation, PE basis, is a gross misrepresentation, because EAN:
      http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/response-to-energy-action-report-2019-to-reduce-co2-in-vermont

      – Used 34 g CO2/kWh, PE basis, wall meter basis, a feel-good, artificial value for the Vermont electricity sector for 2018, concocted by VT-DPS, based on “paper” power purchase agreements, PPAs, between VT utilities and in-state and out-of-state owners of electricity generators. See table 4

      That value has nothing to do with the physical world.
      EAN should have used 321 g CO2/kWh, PE basis, wall meter basis, for 2018 (latest available), as determined by ISO-NE, based on the real-world CO2 of fuel/energy to power plants. See explanation in Appendix, and table 5 and 7

      – Used 22.7 gpm, the Vermont average for light duty vehicles, LDVs, in 2018. See EAN URL, page 4
      That LDV average includes cars, crossovers, minivans, SUVs and ¼-ton pick-ups of all sizes, including large, Tahoe-type SUVs
      Table 2 shows, Vermont EVs are small/compact vehicles
      Vermont EVs mostly replace small/compact vehicles, which have higher mpg.
      EAN should have used 25 or 30 mpg for gasoline vehicle comparisons, based on real-world evidence

      – Ignored the upstream CO2 for extraction, processing, and transport of finished fuel/energy to power plants

      – Ignored the upstream CO2 for extraction, processing, fabrication, assembly, transport for the vehicle body and battery.

      https://www.driveelectricvt.com/Media/Default/docs/maps/vt_ev_registration_trends.pdf
      https://www.eanvt.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/EAN-report-2020-final.pdf

      – Used 0.315 kWh/mile, which should have been 0.3310 kWh/mile, in case of a Nissan Leaf S Plus

      The 2019 Leaf S Plus is EPA rated at 124, city/99, highway/112, combined, wall meter basis (EPA 2020 ratings not yet available).
      https://www.edmunds.com/nissan/leaf/2019/mpg/
      (112 mpg-eq) / (33.7 kWh/gal-eq) = 0.3009. kWh/mile, PE basis, EPA wall meter basis

      Adjusted for 1) self-use losses, and 2) losses due to NE real-world road and climate conditions (both not measured by EPA), would be about 0.3009 x 1.10 = 0.3310 mile/kWh, PE basis, EPA wall meter basis. See URL.
      http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/the-proper-basis-for-calculating-co2-of-electric-vehicles

      EAN made its assumptions, likely to hype the value of EVs regarding CO2 reduction
      EAN omitted the details of its calculations, likely to minimally inform Vermonters, including legislators.

      • EVs are a big part of Vermont’s laughable, illusionary, climate change “solutions”.

        I never even heard of climate change having “solutions”.
        I had always been under the impression climate change occurs by itself, just as a glaciation period occurs by itself, just as melting all that ice occurs by itself.
        After all, no humans were present…..

        ELECTRIC VEHICLES IN VERMONT
        http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/vermont-co2-reduction-of-evs-is-based-on-a-misrepresentation

        As of October 2019, Vermont had 1,451 EVs and 2,090 plug-in hybrids, for a total of 3,541 vehicles.
        About 290 EVs and 410 plug-in hybrids are added each year.

        The EAN report is grossly optimistic regarding adding 90000/5 = 18,000 EVs each year during 2020 – 2025 “to meet Paris”.
        https://www.eanvt.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/EAN-report-2020-final.pdf

        About 43,000 vehicles are sold in Vermont each year, of which 1.75% are plug-in hybrids and EVs.
        If 18,000 EVs were sold in 2020, the percentage would be 42% of sales.

        It would take a huge amount of state subsidies, mostly to up-scale households, to get that many people to take the plunge.
        The EAN report goal is far beyond rational. See URLs

        https://autoalliance.org/in-your-state/VT/pdf/?export
        https://www.driveelectricvt.com/Media/Default/docs/maps/vt_ev_registration_trends.pdf

        AWD and 200+ mile range is required in Vermont, especially during winter.
        People own these vehicles to drive on snowy, icy, hilly, pothole, muddy, rutted roads during cold winter.
        Pure EVs would lose up to 40% of their already-limited range during these adverse conditions.
        A full-battery, 200-mile range, could become 120 miles on the colder days of winter.

  5. “…emergency climate change legislation” Do these expletive deleted expletive deleted have any understanding of what an emergency is? Particularly in light of the undetectable amount of climate variation created by anything that could happen in Vermont – short of having its own volcano.

  6. Well Ed they have already assured that with not addressing the gov workers
    retirement fund. We’ve become nothing more then a liberal agenda experiment
    willingly allowed by flatlanders who don’t adhere to the independent self reliant
    mind your business frugal woodchucks…

    • Republican Native Vermonters never want to take any fault for what is going on in this State. You assume if a person is a Liberal, they are a “flatlander”. Why are most of the native Vermonters of all age groups I speak with Left Wing Bernie lovers? There are many Senators that are natives also. But if you insist on putting the blame on “flatlanders”, please tell me who chose to vote for them when there were more natives than these horrible outsiders that came here to take over Vermont? Native Liberal Vermonters, right? Instead of always trying to put the blame on others, Republicans should be more outspoken and work to get more Republicans involved in politics. Maybe the Vermont Republican Party needs to strengthen their leadership and go in an aggressive direction so we get more active members. The few Republicans I do know don’t even go and vote because they say it’s a waste of time. I wish we had a State electoral college so the Liberals in Burlington didn’t own the entire State.

      • NO, NO there are NOT many Senators in VT that are natives. Check the records. The mix is very lop-sided non-native.
        I cannot let that one get by.

  7. Nothing will get fixed in this state until the liberals making these laws find it so expensive even they can’t live here. — Of course Vermont will be deep into bankruptcy at that point, and they will all lose money on their houses.

    • Edward, If it’s the only way to be rid of them, I’m all for it. It is apparent that the stupid here is too deep to do it at the ballot box. I was born and raised in Vermont!

    • Ed, that is never going to happen because the Liberals that make these laws also have a lot of control over how high their salaries will go. I worked in local gov’t for over twenty years. The Supervisor of this large Township in NY wouldn’t agree to give raises to the union civil servants, but he made sure that the elected and appointed officials received at least $6,000. raises every year.

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