Law sets ‘untenable pace’ for ‘highly complex and technical program’
By Guy Page
The January, 2025 deadline imposed by the Clean Heat Standard AKA ‘Affordable Heating Act’ for the extensive regulations needed to transition Vermont from fossil fuel heat to electricity can’t be met, the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) reported in the first ‘checkback’ required by the controversial 2023 law.
The Public Utilities Commission checkback report on the progress of developing the massive regulatory structure required by the law – was supported by Gov. Phil Scott and opposed by climate change advocates in the Legislature. In the end it was included in the bill passed by the Legislature.
The Clean Heat Standard law requires a new regulatory apparatus to levy fees on fossil fuel dealers and direct the revenue collected to energy efficiency and electricity-based heating systems. Virtually all heating fuel dealers and consumers would be affected.
Critics consistently maintained that poor, rural Vermonters reliant on fossil-fuel heat in older homes would pay more than affluent, urban residents living in newer homes. Supporters said the need to reduce climate emissions was paramount and that cost inequalities could be resolved in the regulatory planning.
The first checkback was issued yesterday, February 15 and sent to key legislative committees. Highlights:
Not Enough time. The January, 2025 deadline demands “an untenable pace” making “extremely challenging” the “sufficient public participation to design such a transformative, first-of-its-kind, highly complex, and technical program.”
Harm to frontline communities. The law’s Guiding Principles for a Just Transition require “moving at the speed of trust” to provide adequate time to incorporate all voices, especially those of impacted and frontline communities in the transition to a sustainable climate future. Under the current schedule, that just won’t happen, the PUC said.
Appearing below is a lengthy excerpt from the PUC Checkback Report to the Legislature:
As the Commission reflects on the work completed to date and the work necessary to deliver afinal rule to the Legislature by January 15, 2025, we must highlight a significant concern: As they have struggled to meet the series of deadlines in the draft comprehensive schedule that was designed specifically to meet that statutory deadline, most participants have expressed serious misgivings that the quality of the rule and the success of its implementation will suffer as a result of the aggressive schedule required by Act 18.
Comments reflect strong opinions that the schedule sets such an untenable pace that it will be extremely challenging for the Commission, the Equity Advisory Group, and the Technical Advisory Group to carry out their responsibilities in a manner that allows time for deliberative process, thoughtful input from all stakeholders, and sufficient public participation to design such a transformative, first-of-its-kind, highly complex, and technical program.
Such comments include: “VEIC believes the schedule reflected by the PUC drafted RULE, combined with the ordered INV schedule sets an untenable pace that would limit public participation and deeply constrain interested or affected parties from participating effectively,” and “[t]his intensity likely will lead to a poorer outcome from the proceedings than could be a achieved with a lesser intensity.”
Several parties advocated strongly for an extension from the Legislature, stating that the current schedule presents a significant barrier to engaging effectively and doing their best work.
The Commission shares stakeholders’ serious concerns that any draft rule presented to the Legislature in January 2025 will suffer from the haste demanded by Act 18, which – following the months required to hire the necessary personnel and appoint the necessary committees – allots mere months to the creation of an unprecedented, complex program with the potential for unintended consequences that impact the lives of all Vermonters. In addition, the expedited timeline necessary to deliver a proposed Clean Heat Standard rule by January 15, 2025, is in direct tension with Vermont’s commitments to climate equity. The State’s environmental justice policy, expressed in statute, is to “provide the opportunity for the meaningful participation of all individuals, with particular attention to environmental justice focus populations, in the development, implementation, or enforcement of any law, regulation, or policy.”
We are concerned that the streamlined process required to meet Act 18’s statutory deadlines will run afoul of at least two of the Guiding Principles for a Just Transition described in the Climate Action Plan: (1) ensuring “inclusive, transparent, and innovative engagement,” and ensuring that “all Vermonters are informed and able to participate” meaningfully in the development of the Clean Heat Standard rule, and (2) “moving at the speed of trust” to provide adequate time to incorporate all voices, especially those of impacted and frontline communities in the transition to a sustainable climate future.
Vermonters deserve a thoughtful, equitable, and achievable Clean Heat Standard, designed with enough time for the deliberative process that such an undertaking requires. This is a complex and unprecedented program that requires robust public engagement, technical analyses, iterative processes, and thoughtful consideration of all outcomes. The Clean Heat Standard is intended to have transformative effects; being careful and deliberate during the design phase will ensure that those transformations allow Vermont to meet its greenhouse gas emissions targets while avoiding undue harm.
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Categories: Energy
fire all of these b….ers/// no more b. s.///
Vermonters are volatile as it is: just wait until someone freezes to death because of this law and its financial penalties. Like the victims in the Salem Witch trials, fuel customers and also the local fuel dealers are innocents. They were born into a system they did not create, but like the witch trial victims, they are to be tried, convicted, and executed on spectral evidence: “It’s harming the planet!” Concrete evidence: Vermont’s air is fine, except when Justin Castro is smoking upstairs, and there aren’t enough people or furnaces here to harm anything. On December 7, I woke up to no heat, and my fuel company was there right away to replace a broken valve. According to a certain malicious actor, the “dirty trick” of imposing a bookkeeping impossibility in the dead of winter is intended to make adequate service and delivery impossible when it’s most needed, whatever one’s financial resources, which will result in great harm to lives, health and homes. Luckily, for me that was not the case this time, but I continue to be concerned about others and about the future. Let’s forget about making Earth a sparsely inhabited playground for its 3,000-odd billionaires, attended by a few choice human slaves, robots, and AI: Let’s get rid of this idiotic law before someone gets hurt.
Sure…..just set a timetable to one’s liking and press the on button. Sure….just mandate and all shall yield to what’s proscribed. And if any problem arises, why sure…….just impose sanctions and penalties for non-compliance, no matter the reasons. And lastly, sure….just sit at a desk in a chamber or office and concoct a scheme (law) incorporating all of the above. It all makes sense, doesn’t it? Why sure! I mean, look at how well this approach worked for the FAA and Boeing!
“ The Clean Heat Standard is intended to have transformative effects; being careful and deliberate during the design phase will ensure that those transformations allow Vermont to meet its greenhouse gas emissions targets while avoiding undue harm.”
This is why it is a complete fraud.
There is NO NEED TO LIMIT CARBON EMISSIONS.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/article/climate-scientists-say-we-should-embrace-higher-co2-levels-5551562
Time to oust the left wing idiots and elect intelligent HONEST people to the Legislature.
Clean house.
Nothing has ever stopped or slowed the ill considered legislation from the super majority train wreck in Montpelier. Why would we expect this to be any different?
I found the website they’re crowing about. It’s a worthless use of internet space, especially the page that’s supposed to provide a space for public comment. It leads to multiple links going nowhere, and one with a 4 page rabbit hole of links to information only documents. https://puc.vermont.gov/clean-heat-standard. Why would I even think they might welcome public comment? Must be I’m a dreamer.
As far as “work product” goes, it looks like a lot of high paid bureaucrats producing busy work. We used to criticize teachers for giving students worthless busy work. But I guess they trained the students well to duplicate the practice.
If the deadline is untenable, then so is the stupid law! Revoke it!
What is the current CO2 level of planet earth? 0.04%. Has the CO2 level of planet earth been higher? Yes, many times higher in the distant past, provable by reading ice cores. What is the minimum CO2 level required to support life on planet Earth? 0.02%.
How much CO2 do erupting volcanoes put into the air? Several millions of tons in just the first few hours of eruption. How much CO2 was released when the Nordstream pipeline was sabotaged? 14.6 million tons. In short, more than the entire US would put out (4.94 million tons) in 4-5 years.
Science – it always gets in the way of a good narrative.
But yeah, let’s worry about cow farts and farmers. They’ll do as they’re told and never object, right? Uhhhhhhhh….. See France, Belgium, and many others.
Duplicitous politicians aided by equally duplicitous lawyers, and bureaucrats who’s biggest worry is hanging in there long enough to draw a good pension, and move out of state . To quote Alfred E. Newman, “What, me worry”?
It is well known that Vermont could not meet these timelines. At least to the ones who aren’t visiting safe injection sites on a daily basis. If my memory serves me correctly, if Vermont does not meet the timelines, can’t we be sued……by the same people/lobbyists who pushed this through in the first place? Bend over Vermont – your apathy about those who are supposed to represent you is about to come home to roost. Oh, wait a minute……..with a 20% increase in property taxes, and the unaffordability of heating fuel, you won’t have a home. Can’t say we all weren’t warned.
Are the chickens finally coming home to roost ?
“In 2015 I attended the state’s Comprehensive Energy Plan workshop in Middlebury organized by Asa Hopkins, Department of Public Service Energy Policy Director under the Shumlin administration.
Hopkins first gave a slide presentation showing that Vermont would need to reach 90% renewable electricity generation by 2050. Without explaining the source of the new electricity, the enormous taxpayer and ratepayer costs, the ever-growing bureaucracies, and ever more intrusive controls over the choices of ordinary Vermonters to achieve the 90% goal, Hopkins proposed to the audience to write suggestions on how to achieve such goals on several easels placed around the auditorium. Each easel contained a statement that supported the ideas contained in the slide show. Green stickers were available for audience members to place on the easels to show their agreement.
I approached Hopkins and asked him the following three questions:
1) “What is the tonnage of CO2 emissions in Vermont annually?” He did not know “off the top of his head”;
2) “What is the tonnage of CO2 emissions in the world annually?” He did not know that either “off the top of his head”;
3) “What would be the percentage of reduction of the annual world emissions, if his plan would be implemented.”
He moved away from me. I was truly shocked. Indeed, how can you recommend to an already low CO2-emissions, sparsely populated, mostly rural poor state such drastic recommendations without knowing the practical benefits for Vermonters or for the planet?
Two months after I questioned Asa Hopkins, he told Vermont Watchdog that global warming targets aren’t in the plan “because Vermont efforts won’t affect climate change.” And at a public forum to discuss the CEP, his boss, then DPS Commissioner Chris Recchia said when asked about what kind of impact Vermont’s renewable energy policy would have on global temperatures, “I disagree with the characterization that the reason we’re doing this is to try to improve global warming.”
Energy policies based on a supposed science with no empirical correlation are wrong policies. Didn’t Vermonters deserve to know what these plans would translate into and what sacrifices they would be required to make? ”
https://vermontdailychronicle.com/subsidized-fortunes-sketchy-details-plague-vermont-plan-for-90-renewable-power/
Every time i hear or read the word equity or equitable i know the policy involved is destined to fail. Can anyone provide me with an equity driven policy where the results were positive? What’s it going to take for our legislature to admit this?
I still want to know where $850,000 went which was gifted to the new bureaucratic agency. It was supposed to be 2 full time and one part time positions. All they did was to create a website and make a few phone calls? 20x the going rate for a data driven website? This is what you get under socialist fascism: it has been proven again and again throughout history. So either 2/3rds of Vermonters are retarded numbskulls, or there was a problem at the ballot box. In the latter case, All laws enacted over the past 4 years are null and void. In the former, we can thank the scaredemic, clot shot, censorship by government agencies, and a wholesale failure of the internationally owned major media companies. “Gee, why would our enemies want us to shoot ourselves in the foot with falsehoods that cause an economic disaster and food shortages?” I wonder.
i am waiting for the public hangings/// the governor , house, senate, and all elected under an oath of office allowed the covid kill shot/// this was a premeditated act of genocide/// once the damage was know your elected leaders should have stopped it/// no/// they were still drawing a pay check, when every one else was shut down/// more damage to come///
your foil hat is too tight///no one cares about covid anymore except elon and aaron rodgers///tell my grandfather that vaccines kill///you can’t because covid killed him
Covid didn’t kill my 90 year old mother, and she wasn’t jabbed. What killed my mother was Governor Scott’s lockdown, which was WAY more than two weeks…if anyone cares to remember.
I care as do a countless number of my associates. This was the biggest travesty is the history of mankind. One day the truth will be yelled from mountaintops and those responsible will be held accountable.
the only ones wearing the foil hats now are the ones still having heart problems/// this has all been proven now with the amount of deaths two years after the lock downs/// i am not going to debate this any more///waste of my time///
You haven’t seen nothing yet. Watch what the next 3 years will bring.