Legislative Report 3/21/2022 - Reaching crossover, Environmental bills score big

 

As the Legislature hit the crossover date last week, House committees were busy finalizing work on the dozens of bills they had been working on since January. The once-a-decade legislative reapportionment bill was finalized and passed, and the Charlotte-Hinesburg district, Chittenden 5, again contains all of Charlotte and a slightly larger portion of Hinesburg, running along the west side of Baldwin Road from the Monkton line to Burritt Road. (Map)

 

Among the many bills that passed and were sent on to the Senate, were several that touched on the environment and our efforts to address the climate change crisis. The Municipal Efficiency Resilience Initiative (H.518) passed unanimously to help municipalities assess the energy efficiency of their buildings and apply for grants to weatherize, reduce operation and maintenance costs, enhance comfort, and reduce energy use by improving heating, cooling, and ventilation systems. The Clean Heat Standard bill (H.715) also passed with a strong 96 to 44 vote to help homeowners, renters and commercial properties reduce their dependence on fossil fuels for heating.

 

The Natural Resources, Fish and Wildlife Committee sponsored several important bills including H.500, which prohibits the sale, starting in 2024, of four-foot linear fluorescent lamps in Vermont for which LEDs are available. All fluorescent lamps contain mercury and can create an immediate public health and environmental hazard when they accidentally break during installation, use, transportation, storage, recycling, or disposal. Light-emitting diode (LED) replacements for fluorescent lamps do not contain any mercury. Another bill, H.523, seeks to reduce hydrofluorocarbon emissions. Hydrofluorocarbons are potent greenhouse gases and enter the atmosphere as leakage from cooling systems. Products that contain hydrofluorocarbons for use in refrigeration systems and auto air conditioners are prohibited starting in 2024. Alternative refrigerant products are available.

 

Forests play an important role in Vermont’s working landscape, and in its tourist and recreation economy. Currently only actively managed forests are

A view of Camels Hump from Niquette State
Park.   Photo by Mike Yantachka

 eligible for enrollment in the Use Value Appraisal (Current Use) program. Forests that exhibit old forest characteristics can provide unique contributions to biodiversity, contribute to the climate resilience and adaptive capacity of Vermont’s working landscape, and serve as ecological benchmarks against which to measure active management of Vermont’s forests. The House passed H.697 which creates a pilot program to extend eligibility for current use for forest parcels that are left wild and meet certain criteria with the approval of the Commissioner of Forests, Parks and Recreation.

 

This forest program will complement nicely another bill, H.606, the Community Resilience and Biodiversity Protection Act. Nature is facing a catastrophic loss of biodiversity, both globally and locally. In addition to its intrinsic value, biodiversity is essential to human survival. According to the United Nations one million species of plants and animals are threatened with extinction, and human activity has altered almost 75 percent of the Earth’s surface, squeezing wildlife and nature into ever-smaller natural areas of the planet. The health of ecosystems on which humans and all other species depend is deteriorating more rapidly than ever, affecting the very foundations of economies, livelihoods, food security, health, and quality of life worldwide. The causes of the drivers of changes in nature rank as: (1) changes in land and sea use, (2) direct exploitation of organisms, (3) climate change, (4) pollution, and (5) invasive species. According to the Nature Conservancy Vermont plays a key role in the conservation of biodiversity regionally.  H.606 sets a goal of conserving thirty percent of Vermont’s total land area by 2030 and 50 percent by 2050, including state, federal, municipal, and private land. It requires the Agency of Natural Resources to develop a plan by the end of 2023 with public input from all stakeholders. These bills and many others now move to the Senate.

As always, I welcome your emails (myantachka.dfa@gmail.com) or phone calls (802-233-5238).  

9/2/2020 Senate's Energy Efficiency Bill Is Passed by the House

The House has passed a bill that allows Vermont's Energy Efficiency

utilities, Efficiency Vermont and Burlington Electric Department, to expand the money-saving services they deliver to Vermonters. It broadens their energy efficiency mandate to include helping Vermonters save on their heating and transportation costs, not just electricity bills. As such, it allows the testing and development of new strategies to achieve our climate goals while saving Vermont families and businesses money.

These strategies will be tested in small pilot programs for 3 years, and funded out of existing revenues with no increase in electric rates.  

Details

Program funding is limited to no more than $2 million (less than 5%) of existing revenues — in fact the overall electric efficiency budget for the three-year pilot period is required to stay at or below the current three-year period, or else the pilot programs will be discontinued.  Though targeting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the bill, S.337, stipulates that programs must have a nexus to electricity — essentially this means encouraging "beneficial electrification," or replacing high-GHG fossil fuel use with low-GHG electricity.  

Efficiency Vermont and Burlington Electric Department must consult with State agencies to avoid duplicating programs.  They must also cooperate with other utilities, and the pilot programs must complement and not replace or compete with utility programs.  The programs must maximize cost-effective GHG reductions, and must be delivered statewide and reasonably proportional to electric efficiency charges collected in each utility territory.  

Legislative Report 1/23/2020 - The Transportation and Climate Initiative: How it works

Transportation is the largest source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in Vermont at 43% of total emissions. Our neighboring states are facing the same problem with transportation being the highest GHG source. So, in 2018 Vermont joined with 12 other eastern states from Maine to Virginia and the District of Columbia

Photo from VT Agency of Natural Resources TCI website

to design a regional program called the Transportation and Climate Initiative (TCI) to reduce GHG emissions from transportation.  Details of the design were released in December, 2019, and Vermont’s Agency of Natural Resources has invited public comments on the proposal.

The concept behind TCI is similar to that of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), of which Vermont is a member along with 8 other states in the northeast.  RGGI, established in 2009, is a market-based program to cut GHG emissions from electric generation.  RGGI has been successful in reducing region-wide emissions from 188 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO₂) in 2009 to 80 million in 2019. The revenues Vermont has received from the program have been a major reason why our electric rates have been relatively level over that period and why we have been able to transition most of our electric energy to renewable sources. TCI will operate in a similar way to reduce climate-changing emissions and invest in cleaner transportation, healthier communities, and more resilient transportation infrastructure.

All pollution reduction mechanisms have compliance costs which are eventually paid by consumers. The TCI “cap and invest” system is designed to drive down the price of compliance and lessen the cost to consumers while providing a mechanism to reduce fossil fuels used for transportation. This is how it will work.

1. A limit, or cap, is set on the amount of CO₂ that is released from vehicles using transportation fuels. The initial cap is based on a “business as usual” scenario and is reduced over time.
2. Transportation fuel suppliers must obtain an allowance for every ton of CO₂ resulting from the fuel they sell.
3. The total number of available allowances is limited based on the cap. An auction is held to determine the price per ton of carbon to meet the cap. Transportation fuel suppliers can bid on available allowances.
4. States receive payments based on the revenues raised from the sale of allowances. Each state then determines how to best invest proceeds to reduce transportation carbon emissions through subsidies of transportation options that emit less CO₂. These might include electric and hybrid-electric vehicle and charging station incentives, mass transit improvements, park-and-ride lots, and encouraging smart development. Attention will be given to relieving the cost impact on low-income and rural Vermonters.

Although Vermont has participated in the TCI design process, Governor Scott has been less than enthusiastic about signing onto this multi-state agreement.  He has stated his opposition to any concept that includes carbon pricing.  However, we must also consider the costs of not participating. Since we are in a regional market, Vermont may be subject to the increased cost of fuel without getting any of the benefits.  We also face the costs associated with more extreme weather that damages our roads and bridges, drowns our crops, and downs our power lines. Furthermore, it is disingenuous to talk about concern for climate change without taking the steps to reduce our contributions through a more efficient transportation policy. The legislature may elect to participate only to face a veto.  It is time for our Governor to translate words and intentions into action.

  

I welcome your emails (myantachka.dfa@gmail.com), phone calls (802-233-5238), or in-person contacts.  

Legislative Report 4/3/2019 - Steps to Address Climate Change

This past week in the Vermont House saw several major bills passed with significant floor debate. They included Broadband Deployment (H.513), Childcare (H.531), Workforce Development (H.533), and the major money bills including Transportation (H.529), Revenue (H.541), and the Budget (H.542) plus a controversial Weatherization bill (H.439) that increases the Fuel Tax by 2 cents per gallon.  After many weeks of long hours and input from all the policy committees, the administration, and individual legislators, the House Appropriations Committee presented a balanced budget, which passed 139 to 1, that is 2.6% higher than last year’s but less than the 3.1% increase proposed by the Governor.  These bills, now headed to the Senate, are significant and deserve describing in more detail than this article will allow.  Instead I will focus on elements of the budget that address climate change.

Three reports that were issued last year highlighted the importance of addressing climate change during this session: the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on global Warming, the Fourth National Climate Assessment released by the Trump administration, and the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation Greenhouse Gas Emissions Inventory Update.  The IPCC report noted that we are already seeing the effects of a 1 degree Celsius rise in global temperature and gave a dire warning that we have to reduce global CO2 emissions 45% by 2030 to avoid a 1.5 degree increase which would have catastrophic geologic and demographic results worldwide. The Vermont DEC reported that Vermont’s greenhouse gas emissions have increased 16% over 1990 levels, mainly from transportation (43%) and heating (24%). We have a global problem which will require global action, including Vermont’s, to solve.

The House has taken a number of steps in this direction with the passage of the budget and revenue bills. The budget includes $1.5M for an electric vehicle (EV) incentive program, $300,000 for public charging stations, $500,000 for EVs and charging stations for state government, $250,000 to Efficiency Vermont for weatherization assistance for moderate income families, and $350,000 for weatherization workforce training.  While the budget passed almost unanimously, The Weatherization bill with the fuel tax increase was the most controversial.

We currently pay 2 cents per gallon on heating oil, propane, and dyed diesel fuel and 0.75% on natural gas. The revenues fund the Weatherization Assistance Program for families below 80% of median family income to reduce the amount of fuel needed to heat their homes.  Combined with federal funds, the program benefited 860 families in 2018. The need is much greater, however.  Because of the understandable prioritization to serve the lowest income families first, many eligible, low income Vermonters are waiting years to be served while thermal energy continues to be wasted, unnecessary amounts of fossil fuels are burned, and Vermonters continue to live in cold, unhealthy and dangerous conditions. By increasing the tax from 2 cents to 4 cents on liquid fuels and from 0.75% to 1% on natural gas, an additional 400 families can be assisted.

This tax increase was debated over two days with several amendments offered.  Opposition centered on the additional cost to the low-income families it’s supposed to help as well as the additional cost to farmers and loggers who use large amounts of dyed diesel. One amendment was passed to exempt farmers and loggers not only from the increase but also from the existing 2 cents per gallon. (The House earlier also approved an exemption from the sales tax for logging equipment.) This bill, which passed by voice vote, is beneficial for the following reasons:

1) The weatherization program, in existence from the 1970s, has been very successful in helping low income families reduce their heating bills, live healthier, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

2) The additional cost is minimal. A typical household using 750 gals of heating oil a year will have an additional cost of $15 over the entire heating season.

3) The price of fuel oil varies ten times as much during the heating season.  This year my deliveries ranged from $2.75/gallon to $3.00/gallon.  A 2 cent increase adds only $2 more on a 100 gallon delivery which today costs $290.

4) The savings are huge. Weatherization typically saves 29% of fuel use resulting in $500 to $600 savings per season and results in cumulative savings over time instead of cumulative wasted fuel and money heating a leaky house.  This is money that stays in Vermont compared to 80% of fuel dollars which leave Vermont.

5) It reduces dependence on LIHEAP and other fuel assistance which lasts only for the season.

6) It creates more construction jobs in the weatherization field.

I see this as a win for low-income families, a win for the economy, and a win for the environment!

I welcome your emails (myantachka.dfa@gmail.com), phone calls (802-233-5238), or in-person contacts.  

Addendum: While I normally don't link to other publications within articles I write, I want to link to this VTDigger column which speaks to the same topic for reasons you will find obvious.
Margolis: In the legislative arena, worthy goals can sometimes conflict

Legislative Report 1/24/2018 - A Practical Approach to Pricing Carbon Pollution

Most people recognize that climate change is happening, that it is caused by burning fossil fuels, and that it has serious environmental and health consequences. The challenge to our generation is how to counter the trend of increasing concentrations of CO₂ and other greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere. The most obvious action is to reduce our consumption of fossil fuels.

Our economy and lifestyle depends heavily on fossil fuels for electricity, heating and transportation. We successfully continue to transform our electric generation to renewable, clean sources, making Vermont's electric supply among the cleanest in the country while keeping our electric rates the second lowest in New England. However, despite our goal of reducing Vermont's GHG emissions by 25% compared to 1990 levels, our GHG levels have instead increased by 4%. We cannot be successful unless we address fossil fuel consumption in heating and transportation.

A proposal currently being considered called the ESSEX Plan, an Economy Strengthening Strategic Energy EXchange, was developed by a group of environmental advocates, business people and legislators over the last summer and has been introduced as Senate bill S.284. The goal of the plan is to move dependence on dirty fossil fuels to Vermont's clean electric energy by discouraging use of fossil fuels and encouraging a transition to electricity for heating and transportation. Here is how the plan works.

The EPA during the Obama administration calculated the “social cost of carbon pollution” to health and the economy to be $40/ton. Based on this number the plan starts at $5/ton of CO₂ (5 cents/gallon) and rises steadily to $40/ton (40 cents/gallon) over an 8 year period. The revenue generated goes back to Vermonters in the form of a rebate on electric bills. About $30M would be raised the first year and grows to $240M when the price tops out in eight years. This money would go into a special fund which would be drawn on for the rebates. Each month the amount collected would be allocated to each utility based on its electricity consumed for that month. That share would then be allocated based on whether the revenues came from the commercial, industrial or residential side of fossil fuel consumption. The rebates would be based on the amount of a customer's electricity usage. The revenues from the commercial and industrial customers would be rebated to them. The revenues from the residential customers would be divided based on income and geography.

Of the residential revenue 50% would be rebated to all residential customers, 25% would be rebated to customers in rural areas, and another 25% would be rebated to low income customers. Low income Vermonters in rural areas would get both bonus rebates. This formula is in recognition that Vermont is a rural state that requires longer commutes for rural residents and that low income residents pay a proportionally higher share of their income on energy costs. This strategy should encourage Vermonters to use less fossil fuel by transitioning to technologies like cold climate heat pumps, electric vehicles, mass transit, carpools and other strategies to reduce their carbon footprint.

So, how does this strengthen the state's economy? First of all, it makes Vermont more affordable. While electric rates themselves won't be affected, the carbon rebates, itemized on consumers' electric bills, will significantly decrease the net cost of electricity. Vermont's already low rates relative to our neighboring states will be even more attractive to businesses. Secondly, Vermont is not a source of fossil fuels, so 80 cents of every dollar spent on fossil fuels leaves Vermont. On the other hand, Vermont's electricity is increasingly sourced within the state or region, keeping millions of dollars of energy spending in Vermont. Third, transitioning from fossil fuels to electricity will add more well-paying green jobs to the 17,500 already created in Vermont. Finally, we are not alone. Vermont's New England neighbors and New York are poised to introduce their own carbon pricing legislation in the coming weeks making this a regional effort.

This method of carbon pricing is innovative and environmentally and economically beneficial. I look forward to a productive dialog about this plan and will host an informational forum on the topic at the Charlotte Senior Center on February 12 at 7:00 PM. I hope to see you there.

As always, I can be reached by phone (802-233-5238) or by email (myantachka.dfa@gmail.com).