COMMENTARY: If not now, when for a Vermont Clean Heat Standard?

April 20, 2022  |  By Jeff Forward 

In 2020, the Legislature passed the Global Warming Solutions Act, which among other things created the Vermont Climate Council made up of administration officials and legislative appointees charged with developing a Climate Action Plan by December 1, 2021 in time for lawmakers to consider proposed programs and legislation in the 2022 session. 

The council worked very hard, forming five subcommittees that dealt with everything from agricultural impacts of the climate crisis to rural resilience to how to create a just transition from our fossil fuel economy, among other things. The council met its deadline and drafted an ambitious plan mapping out how we might get a handle on the climate crisis in Vermont.

One of the more significant policies the Vermont Climate Council developed was a Clean Heat Standard that for the first time would require fossil fuel corporations and utilities that sell heating fuels in Vermont to reduce their climate pollution.  Fossil fuel suppliers would be able to meet the performance standard either by selling cleaner heating fuels or by paying for work done by others that helps Vermonters use clean heating options (such as weatherization, heat pumps, or advanced wood heat). The goal of the Clean Heat Standard is to both reduce climate pollution and reduce costs of home and building heating over time. 

The Clean Heat Standard is now up for consideration in the legislature in the form of the bill H.715.  It has already passed the House and last week passed out of the Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee. The Vermont Natural Resources Council, VPIRG and the Sierra Club all back this policy and are advocating for passing H.715.  

This year is the end of the biennium, which means that next year will be a brand new legislature and bills that do not pass will die.  We will have many new leaders in the legislature and it will take time for them to get ramped up next year.  Big policy ideas like the Clean Heat Standard don’t typically happen in the first year of a biennium.  So if we miss this chance now, it could be another two years before we have another shot.  

What I like about the Clean Heat Standard is that it sets up a structure to regulate carbon impacts from the notoriously difficult-to-regulate fossil fuel heating industry.  To make this standard work, the state is required to develop metrics on how to measure the carbon impacts of all fuels from extraction to consumption, including biofuels. To ensure climate pollution is actually reduced and not simply moved elsewhere, fuels would be assessed on a lifecycle emissions basis, preventing unsustainable biofuels from earning credits.

Some say that the state could get this process wrong, that some fuels could make it through the process and still have significant carbon impacts. They say we will need to accurately account for the carbon impacts of our electric supply as well as biofuels and fossil fuels. I couldn’t agree more. We congratulate ourselves for having a “clean” electricity mix and yet are not accurately accounting for the carbon impacts of out-of-state renewables like Hydro Quebec.  It is time we do so.

Some feel that it could be too costly because it may add a few cents per gallon to our fuel bills. Fuel dealers will be required to reduce their carbon impact or pay an alternative compliance fee. It will be cheaper for them to invest in efficiency, heat pumps and alternative fuels that have a lower carbon impact. All of this might cost a few cents more per gallon. I say it is high time we begin to acknowledge that fossil fuels extract enormous environmental costs and we need to do something to mitigate those costs. Weatherization and heat pumps will undoubtedly save more than they cost in fuel costs and reduce our fossil fuel addiction.

Others feel this policy is not good enough.  I say we can’t wait to get it perfect.  The Clean Heat Standard is the most significant policy to come out of the Global Warming Solutions Act process.  If not this policy, then what is the alternative?  

The Clean Heat Standard establishes a process to do the necessary calculations and it sets mandatory goals to reduce the carbon impacts in our heating sector that get ratcheted down over time. Undoubtedly this work will be challenging and the process will need to be carefully monitored so that some vested interest doesn’t try to game the metrics.

I say let the legislative process play out this session, and I for one will commit to paying attention to the rule-making process where much of the meat will be fleshed out on this policy. For it if we don’t do this now, it may be too late by the time we work out all the details within the legislative process in a few years’ time.  

In other words, if not now, when?  

Jeff Forward is a renewable and energy efficiency consultant who lives on his homestead farm in Richmond with his wife Patty Brushett.  He is a Richmond Select Board member and a former board chair of Renewable Energy Vermont.