(Editor’s note: Senate Natural Resources and Energy chair Chris Bray (D-Addison) emailed the note below in response to a recent inquiry about S.5, the Affordable Heating Act, from Addison County resident Robert Burton. The Chronicle was CC’d. As a result of overwhelming feedback from constituents, Bray and the rest of the Senate agreed to a ‘hard stop’ until 2025. The bill passed the Senate and now goes to the House.)
by Sen. Chris Bray
Whether you believe in global warming or not, the affordable heat act is a transition away from expensive, price-volatile fossil fuels to heating using regulated electricity The governor’s climate action office estimates heating savings of approximately $2 billion through 2050, and this alone is reason enough for us to investigate the plan.
As you might know, when I returned to Montpelier, last week, I worked with the Senate appropriations committee, and we crafted a complete hard stop for the plan being developed under the affordable heat act. That is, the report will be prepared, as per the original bill, in January 2025, but then a separate bill must be passed, in order to implement that plan.
In short, in 2025 we will have answers to the many questions that people have brought forward, and we won’t proceed unless we have clear answers that Vermonters will be able to attain savings.
Returning to climate change: I am always interested to read what you share, and, given my own background in the sciences, I do rely on scientific consensus.
While the relative contributions of biogenic versus man-made greenhouse gases is not precisely known, the data points overwhelmingly to anthropogenic greenhouse gases as the factor that is driving climate change currently.
I’ll respectfully say that the Heartland position that Mr. Wheeler is learning represents an outlier position.
Given the stakes we are talking about here, namely, severely damaging the planet we, and all living things, rely on, I think it makes good sense to be prudent and take steps to reduce the mechanism most widely believed to be the driver of climate change.
