by Dave Soulia, for FYIVT.com

Two bills sit before the Vermont Senate that would undo the state’s unfolding climate policy disaster. S.110 would repeal the Global Warming Solutions Act’s citizen-suit provision and convert its mandates back to goals. S.68 would repeal the Affordable Heat Act.

Neither has advanced. S.68’s motion to relieve it from committee failed 12-18 on the Senate floor in February 2025. S.110 has received a single hearing since its March introduction.

The committee blocking both bills is Senate Natural Resources and Energy. Its chair, Senator Anne Watson, appeared alongside VNRC lobbyist Johanna Miller at the November 2025 VECAN Conference—the same VNRC whose lobbyist, Johanna Miller, testified against S.68. Committee member Senator Ruth Hardy voted for the original GWSA in 2020. She now sits on the committee declining to revisit it. The vice chair is Senator Terry Williams—lead sponsor of S.110. His own bill can’t get a hearing in his own committee.

Meanwhile, the Conservation Law Foundation has already filed suit under the GWSA’s enforcement provisions. CLF lobbied for those very provisions back in 2020.

To understand how Vermont arrived at this impasse—spending half a billion dollars to achieve nothing measurable on a planetary scale while building a legal trap it now refuses to disarm—start with what the Global Warming Solutions Act actually did.

Lasting Effects

In 2020, Vermont’s legislature passed the Global Warming Solutions Act over Governor Phil Scott’s veto. The law set legally binding emissions reduction targets: 26% below 2005 levels by January 1, 2025, 40% below 1990 levels by 2030, and 80% by 2050. It created a Climate Council, mandated state rulemaking, and—critically—included a citizen-suit provision allowing anyone to sue the state for failing to meet its targets, with attorney’s fees awarded to prevailing plaintiffs.

Five years later, Vermont has spent upwards of $500 million on climate programs. The 2025 target has been missed. Transport fuel sales are trending upward. And the global temperature impact of Vermont’s sacrifice? Zero. Literally, measurably zero.

They Knew the Math Didn’t Work

The 2025 target required Vermont to reduce annual emissions from approximately 9.81 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent (MMTCO2e) in 2005 to 7.26 MMTCO2e—a reduction of 2.55 million metric tons. When legislators voted in 2020, emissions stood around 8.5 MMTCO2e. They gave themselves four years to close a remaining gap of roughly 0.75 to 1.25 MMTCO2e.

The problem: Vermont’s emissions come primarily from transportation (cars, trucks) and thermal heating (oil furnaces, propane). These sectors depend on physical assets—vehicles and heating systems—that turn over on 10-15 year cycles. You cannot replace 80% of a state’s vehicle fleet or rip out 90,000 oil furnaces in four years. The workforce doesn’t exist. The supply chain doesn’t exist. The timeline was physically impossible.

Governor Scott’s veto message warned them. Testimony before the legislature warned them. Basic arithmetic warned them. They passed it anyway—and built in a mechanism to sue the state when the inevitable failure arrived. The Conservation Law Foundation was already lobbying for the bill in early 2020, explicitly touting the enforcement provisions that would later enable them to file suit.

What the Numbers Actually Mean

Climate policy is conducted in abstractions—MMTCO2e, parts per million, percentage reductions. Here’s what the 2025 gap of 0.75 MMTCO2e looks like in terms ordinary Vermonters can understand:

None of this happened. According to the Agency of Natural Resources, gasoline sales are down about 8% from 2019—but that’s largely a COVID hangover. The critical metric: transport fuel sales from 2023 to 2024 actually increased. After half a billion dollars in spending, the trend line is going the wrong direction.

What Did $500 Million Buy?

Tracking exact climate spending is difficult—funds flow through multiple agencies, federal programs, utility incentives, and one-time ARPA allocations. But the ballpark is defensible: the legislature committed $250 million over three years in 2021-2022, Governor Scott noted “nearly a quarter billion dollars of ARPA money” for climate in his FY2024 budget address, and additional federal IRA funds, Efficiency Vermont programs, and ongoing appropriations push the total north of $500 million.

What did Vermonters get for that investment?

At $5,000 per heat pump installation, those 60,000 units alone represent $300 million. Add weatherization at $10,000-15,000 per home, EV incentives, program administration, the Climate Council bureaucracy, consultants, and legal costs—and $500 million is likely conservative.

The Global Impact: A Number That Doesn’t Exist

Vermont’s total annual emissions represent approximately 8 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent. Global annual emissions total 37.4 billion metric tons. Vermont is 0.02% of the problem.

The 1.8 MMTCO2e reduction Vermont achieved over 17 years—most of it before the GWSA existed and attributable to federal vehicle standards, economic factors, and COVID—represents 0.005% of one year’s global emissions. China alone emits 12.6 billion metric tons annually. China’s emissions fluctuate more in a single year than Vermont produces in total.

The temperature impact of Vermont’s reduction? Approximately 0.000000001°C. That’s not a rounding error. It’s not detectable by any instrument on Earth. It’s a number that exists only in spreadsheets.

Put another way: Vermont’s 17-year effort gets erased by global emissions growth in approximately 25 minutes. China replaces Vermont’s entire sacrifice before second shift starts.

What Comes Next: The Lawsuit Trigger

The Conservation Law Foundation has already filed one lawsuit under the GWSA’s citizen-suit provision. That case was dismissed on procedural grounds, but the mechanism remains. The statute explicitly allows “any person” to sue the Secretary of Natural Resources for failure to meet emissions targets, and awards attorney’s fees to prevailing plaintiffs.

The 2030 target—40% below 1990 levels, or approximately 5.17 MMTCO2e—requires closing a gap nearly four times larger than the one Vermont just failed to close. With current emissions around 8.0 MMTCO2e, the state needs to eliminate 2.8 million metric tons in five years. That’s the equivalent of removing 80% of all registered vehicles or eliminating every drop of heating oil sold in the state.

When—not if—Vermont misses the 2030 target, courts could order the state to adopt rules achieving compliance. The statute doesn’t require those rules to be economically feasible, physically possible, or politically survivable. It requires hitting the number.

The Bottom Line

Vermont spent north of $500 million over five years to achieve a global temperature reduction of zero. The state failed to meet its first legally binding target. Transport fuel consumption is now trending upward. And the enforcement mechanism—designed by the same advocacy groups now using it—ensures ongoing litigation regardless of physical reality.

The Global Warming Solutions Act was never going to solve climate change. Vermont could go carbon-zero tomorrow and the planet wouldn’t notice. What the GWSA does accomplish is transferring policy authority from elected legislators to courtrooms, creating a permanent revenue stream for environmental litigation groups, and imposing costs on Vermonters for symbolic gestures the climate will never register.

The legislators who passed this law had the numbers. They had the warnings. They voted yes anyway. Now Vermonters will pay—again—for the privilege of having accomplished nothing measurable on a planetary scale.