By Rob Roper

When the 23-member Vermont Climate Council was set up under the Global Warming Solutions Act, it established that eight members would be appointed by the Senate’s Committee on Committees, and eight would be appointed by the speaker of the House. The remainder would be made up of members of the governor’s administration.

In order to at least nominally create some diversity of perspective, each House and Senate appointee is supposed to represent a different faction of Vermont. Some of the Senate appointees, for example, represent the “farm and forest” sector and “the small business community.” From the House appointees there are representatives for “rural communities” and “municipal governments.”

Asked if he had any word of a pending appointment to the seat, Matt Cota, who lobbies on behalf of the small fuel dealers and formerly was executive director of the Vermont Fuel Dealers Association, said, “I applied twice for the position, but was not selected.”

Last October, the two-year terms of the eight House appointees were up. Five asked to be reappointed. Four were immediately reinstated. One, Dr. Lesley-Ann Dupigny-Giroux, was eventually reinstated in January, two of the remaining three slots were just filled this March, and one remains vacant.

The vacant spot is the one reserved for a “member to represent the fuel sector.”

Vermont’s small fuel dealers have been vocal opponents of the clean heat standard, the primary recommendation from the Climate Council to the Legislature. Their members have forced public discussion about how much the program would increase the cost their customers have to pay to heat their homes, as well as realities surrounding workforce, supply chain issues, and technology constraints that make transitioning to all-electric thermal heating a challenging if not impossible task.

Lawmakers who are intent on pushing through the clean heat standard have been stacking the deck against small, mom-and-pop fuel dealers who stand to lose the most if the clean heat standard becomes law. When a handful showed up to testify before the Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee in February, they were each given six minutes to say their piece, compared to the two meetings and 90 minutes given to one lobbyist for Vermont Gas Systems alone.

The previous representative to the Climate Council from the fuel sector, Brian Gray, was general manager of the Energy Co-Op of Vermont, whose business model is more focused on supplying alternatives to fossil heating fuels. As such, Gray’s business stood to profit from the “carbon credit” system established under the clean heat standard. The Energy Co-Op would be able to generate “credits” by doing what they do already — installing heat pumps and selling biofuels — which the fossil fuel dealers he was supposed to be representing would be forced to buy from him. Essentially, free money.

Gray was in a very different position than the several traditional fuel dealers who testified that if forced to operate withing the expensive “carbon credit” system with its complex regulatory framework, described even by a supporter of the bill as a Rube Goldberg contraption, they would likely go out of business.

Increasingly as time goes by, and we are already five months into a two-year term, it appears that if the speaker of the House can’t have a ringer “representing” fuel dealers on the Climate Council, she just won’t appoint anyone to fill the seat.

Asked if he had any word of a pending appointment to the seat, Matt Cota, who lobbies on behalf of the small fuel dealers and formerly was executive director of the Vermont Fuel Dealers Association, said, “I applied twice for the position, but was not selected.” He was unaware if any other candidates are under consideration.

At the March 6 meeting of the Climate Council Steering Committee, Jane Lazorchak, director of the Global Warming Solutions Act, noted that the fuel dealers’ slot was the only remaining vacancy on the Council and said, “We’re hopeful that they are working in service to make that appointment in a timely manner.”

This raises the question, what is an untimely manner?

Judy Taranovich of Proctor Gas commented on the vacancy: “If we are truly seeking to do what’s best for Vermonters, the only way to make an educated decision is to hear from both sides, and they are not doing that. If we [fuel dealers] can’t have one voice out of twenty-three, what are they afraid of?”

Rob Roper is a freelance writer who has been involved with Vermont politics and policy for over 20 years. © Copyright True North Reports 2023. All rights reserved.