|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Would require $3.20 per gallon carbon tax on home heating fuel.
by Rob Roper
When Agency of Natural Resources secretary, Julie Moore, testified to the Senate Natural Resources & Energy Committee back in January 2023 that the cost of the Clean Heat Standard program would be $2 billion over the first five years, 2026-2030, — an amount that she said would result in an additional 70¢ per gallon for home heating fuels – oh, did she catch hell!
Up to that point, following a December puff piece, VT Digger along with the rest of the Vermont press corps had essentially been perpetrating a media blackout on the subject of the Clean Heat Standard because the less Vermonters knew about the awful program the more likely the Democrats’/Progressives’ signature piece of climate change legislation was to pass. But Moore’s sticker shock estimate caused their crack environmental reporter to spring into action with “Lawmakers dismiss Natural Resources secretary’s ‘back-of-the-envelope’ math on the Affordable Heat Act,” giving Senator Chris Bray (D-Addison), the law’s primary shepherd, and Jared Duval, a climate lobbyist and member of the Climate Council, carte blanche to attack Moore’s math.
Bray called Moore’s figures “incomplete and inaccurate” and that they shouldn’t be given the same weight as “professional” studies. Duval called them “inappropriately selective, improperly done and deeply misleading.”
Behind the Lines is a reader-supported publication. Please consider becoming a subscriber.Subscribe
When Moore presented on the House side she received an equally hostile reception, and in one case Representative Gabrielle Stebbins (D-Burlington) sternly admonished Moore to “lighten up on it.” “It” being Moore’s sincere efforts to determine how much a major new program will cost folks like you and me before that program is passed into law. Can’t have that now, can we!
Critics seized on Moore’s honest assessment of the limitations of her own calculations, “I’m confident this is wrong. I could easily be off by a factor of two here,” to imply that her assumptions were not just wildly wrong but wildly high.
Well, it turns out that Secretary Moore’s calculations were, in fact, wildly wrong. They were wildly low.
The Clean Heat Standard Potential Study, Final Draft Results were presented to the Public Utilities Commission’s Technical Advisory Group (TAG) on July 25, and according to their professional (let’s see if Senator Bray gives them weight) calculations, the Clean Heat Standard program will cost Vermonters $17.3 billion between 2026 and 2050. In the up-front years that Secretary Moore analyzed (2026-2030), the report shows the cost at being around $7.25 billion, or over three and a half times more than Moore’s estimates.
Of course, the big question we all want to know, and the one asked in final seconds of the meeting by Judy Taranovich of Proctor Gas, is what does this mean for the future cost of a gallon of home heating oil, the 70¢ carbon tax rate no longer being the benchmark.
Drumroll… and… we’re back to dealing with the numerical Voldemort syndrome – the number that shall not be named!
TJ Poor of the Department of Public Services told Taranovich that he didn’t want to say at this point because this presentation was a draft and would be modified based on feedback from the meeting for a final presentation in the Fall. But, hey, I’ll throw out a back of the napkin calculation here to chew on: 70¢ x 3.6 = $2.52. On WVMT’s Morning Drive (7/26/24) Matt Cota who represents Vermont Fuel Dealers on the TAG said the report implies a $3.20 per gallon carbon tax.
And even that could end up being low for a few reasons, but the big one is that neither Moore’s calculations nor the Potential Study includes the administrative costs of running the Clean Heat Standard, which will be exceptionally high, nor does either include the cost of any social safety net program(s) to protect low income Vermonters who are unable for whatever reason to move off of what will be increasingly expensive fossil heating fuels. Such safety nets are demanded in the law as part of a “just transition.” These are real costs everyone seems to be pretending don’t exist.
But whatever the official number turns out to be, it’s going to be absurd. Vermonters cannot afford this. The lawmakers who voted to pass the Clean Heat Standard into law – Act 18 – before doing this sort of cost analysis – in fact insisted that it not be done before passing the program into law — committed an act of unforgivable negligence. Maybe fraud is a better description because negligence implies the damage was unintended.
And one last point: this $17 billion program is just for the home heating sector of the economy. If we’re going to take the Global Warming Solutions Act at its word, we’ll need an equally ambitions – and expensive – program for the transportation sector (aka a gas and diesel carbon tax) and another for agriculture. All on the same timeline. It’s economic suicide for the state, and homicide for household budgets. Repealing the Global Warming Solutions Act should be THE ONLY campaign issue that matters for Vermont state candidates this summer and fall. Ask them early and often if they pledge to vote to repeal it and the Clean Heat Standard first thing next January.
Rob Roper is a freelance writer who has been involved with Vermont politics and policy for over 20 years. This article reprinted with permission from Behind the Lines: Rob Roper on Vermont Politics, robertroper.substack.com
Discover more from Vermont Daily Chronicle
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Categories: Commentary, Energy, Legislation, State Government, Taxes
https://thehighwire.com/editorial/new-peer-reviewed-study-co2-has-zero-impact-on-climate-change/
Take away their use of fear and truth will set us all free.
Hey, you elected these agenda-driven fools, they only have one goal, and all it takes are your ” tax dollars ” and the progressive’s push for the ” Affordable Heat Act ” Now that’s an oxymoron, this nonsense will put you in the poor house and they don’t care but you elected these clowns !!
Just imagine being a fly on the wall in the conference committee meeting on this bill. “tee hee, giggle, no I didn’t have time to read this, or study the effects properly. Meh, we’ll just pass it and see what happens” All in a days work at the statehouse.
The report suggests a $17 billion cost. It also suggests $3 billion benefit will accrue to Vermonters. Invest $17 billion to make $3 billion is hardly a prudent investment. But in reality there is no $3 billion. This figure is based largely on the “social cost of carbon” a hypothetical concept based on the “ill effects” of CO2 on the climate. Using $190 per ton of carbon removed from the atmosphere by electrifying thermal heating the assumption is that Vermonters will receive an intangible benefit worth $3 billion by reducing the ill effects of CO2. No mention is made of the social benefit of carbon (life on earth and all the things energy has brought into being).
Proponents say that the above figures don’t account for the cost savings of switching from “volatile” fossil fuel prices to “stable” electric rates from a zero carbon grid. Personally I would rather pay between $3 to $6 dollars per gallon for heating oil than a stable $10 per gallon equivalent in electric rates. Renewables are a redundant and very expensive addition to the “reliable” electric grid, which must be maintained and expanded to provide electricity when wind and solar are nonexistent and the batteries are drained. Electric rates will skyrocket as this absurd pipe dream of the radical left unfolds.
This is peter shumlin’s single payer debacle all over again.
Throwing numbers around for a desired result- and basing assumptions on that desired result still yield an unworkable and unachievable goal. bray, krowinski, sibilia and the entire ClimateChange™ team cannot achieve- ever- the demand for subsidy required as shown on pg. 32 of this report. Vermont’s 2023 GDP was 35.07 Billion, per FRED (Federal Reserve, St. Louis) This report states incentive spending from 2028-2031 in excess if 1.2 TRILLION annually, 4 times Vermont’s GDP.
For those just discovering the labyrinth of regulation and grift beginning to be imposed upon Vermont, remember this clearly come Nov. 5. There is NO possible way to achieve anything near the results sought by the Clean Heat Standard, nor the GWSA- and the legislature knows this, but will obfuscate to remain in power.
All of these ‘brilliant’ ideas about how Vermont can save the world from a climate disaster NEVER takes into consideration that China and India are not worried about carbon emissions. Both of these countries dwarf Vermont in terms of population and carbon emissions. Not to worry, though. At some point (probably more sooner than later). Few people will be able to afford to live here. The state will evolve into a forrest again. Problem solved, I guess…
This article would be far more persuasive if it didn’t try so hard to BE persuasive. I would like the writer to explain what the Clean Heat Act does, what the intent of the act is and how it will impact prices on carbon fuel. Give us the info without the gravy.
Thomas, the Clean Heat Standard (CHS) has the sole objective of making Vermont comply with the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2020. The GWSA law requires carbon dioxide reductions of 26% below 2005 levels by 2025; 40% below 1990 level by 2030; and, 80% below 1990 level by 2050.
CHS is being written by the PUC to regulate how fuel dealers will have to purchase credits to deliver, in the next 25 years, a gradually smaller amount of heating fuel that eventually gets Vermont to the GWSA requirement. The $17 billion cost is what the total credits is estimate to cost the fuel dealer and that will show up in your fuel bill. The revenues will be provided as free grants to building owners to install heat and hot water pumps, pellet stoves and insulation. How many pumps and insulation jobs is astounding.
A contracted consultant (Cadmus) estimates totals at: 178,000 heat pumps; 135,000 hot water heat pumps; 120,000 building weatherization; 15,000 pellet stoves; and 30,000 shifts to biofuels. That is where the $17 billion will be invested as free grants to building owners.
About 30% of Vermont buildings cannot accommodate a heat pump for structural or electric wiring impediments. My log home has no dry walls so a heat pump will not work; and the nearly 30,000 manufactured, mobile homes have the same situation. Nonetheless we’ll be paying the steadily increasing cost of our heating fuels. Low income families and those receiving Low Income Heat Energy Assistance grants will also have to pay higher cost to heat their homes. CHS is adding a huge new burden to the already energy burdened Vermont households.
I am quoting two Democrat Senators who had a hand it writing CHS.
Senator Mark MacDonald: “We don’t do things based on helping poor people. We do things based on saving the world.” Senator Dick McCormack confessed, in the Committee hearing: “Usually at this point in the development of legislation I can picture after the bill passes what’s going to happen. I can envision what the world can be like after this passes. I get it that what we’re essentially doing is directing the PUC (Public Utilities Commission) to put together a kind of a ‘Rube Goldberg.’” And, “I don’t see how this works.”
Given the shortage of technical workforce the CO2 reduction mandates will be impossible to achieve. So, citizens can sue the State because the GWSA allows that; and the Conservation Law Foundation just notified the State Government it is going to file a lawsuit for non-compliance.
When the darned thing comes from the PUC to the Legislators for a final vote, Governor Scott will likely veto it. We need 11 Republican Senators ready to sustain that veto.
The Clean Heat Standard is a carbon trading scheme. It establishes a state bureaucracy to administer sate issued “credits” that are traded, and have a dollar value- to regulate the fuels and the pricing- and puts all commercial and residential energy use under government regulation. It does NOT achieve it’s stated goal of lower CO2 emissions, by any measurable amount. It DOES add to the cost of heating, presumably $17,000,000,000.00 statewide by 2050. (thats $680 million, per year in subsidy that must be raised by fees and taxation)
Rob Roper and others have been warning us of this bill and all GWSA legislation since the GWSA was introduced and veto over-ridden in 2020. There are easily 50 plus articles, easily searched on VDC’s website alone.
The $17B price tag has a little asterisk next to it. “Any additional participant costs such as electric panel upgrades and pre-weatherization barriers costs are not considered in total installed costs.” So how many thousands of dollars of panel and meter socket upgrades aren’t included in this astronomical cost?
This is parallel to the Plainfield situation…a projected cost of up to $17 million to recover and repair the flood damages with only a $1.4 million town budget. And legislators increase property taxes and lay a $17 billion price tag on home heating fuel??!! An egregious and uncaring coven of lawmakers who have absolutely no connection with the pain of Vermonters in peril…the elite who delight only unto themselves…pathetic.