By John McClaughry, Ethan Allen Institute
Matt Cota, executive director of the Vermont Fuel Dealers Association, is a very good source of information on the consequences of implementing the Vermont Climate Council’s sweeping recommendations. Here’s some of what he reported last week:
“The Climate Action Plan week relies on a basket of regulations, taxes, and fees to get more Vermonters to use electricity to heat their home and fuel their car. If the plan works as intended, Vermonters will need more than twice the amount of electricity they use today. The head of ISO-NE [the New England power grid] declared “The region would be in a precarious position if an extended cold snap were to develop and these fuels were not available.”
“We know this because we have been here before. During a week of sub-zero temperatures in 2018, New England electric generating plants burned nearly 100 million gallons of fuel oil to make up for the lack of natural gas. But what if there is not enough solar, wind, natural gas, or fuel oil to keep up with demand for electricity during the next cold snap? We should be prepared for “controlled power outages” or rolling blackouts to keep the grid from short circuiting. “
There is a simple way to avoid all this: use less electricity. But nearly every state in the Northeast is doing the exact opposite, encouraging more electric heat and electric cars. It’s time to rethink that policy.”
It certainly is. Thanks, Matt Cota.
Categories: Energy
Sorry Mr. Cota, but you just can’t help a State bureaucracy that’s stuck on stupid…Sir Isaac Newton’s laws of Physics doesn’t apply to them. (For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction)….Maybe try reading up a little on the Marxist Social Conflict Theory…Chaos abound…
The genius Henry Ford realized that the fuel infrastructure had to precede the proliferation of the machinery that required it. Vermont’s leftist elected leadership seems ok with mandating the equipment BEFORE we have the necessary electrical grid upgrades in place. I would like to see a comprehensive survey done to determine how many members of the Vermont Legislature have their own fossil-fuel powered backup generators at their homes to assure that they wont be affected by their own poor decisions. Just like people in California with electric cars realized,
when the rolling blackouts were ordered during times of fire risk and they were ordered to evacuate, they had to have a backup plan.
Elections have consequences.
And, of course, what happens when everything is powered by electricity — your cars, your home heating and cooking systems, etc. — and the power goes out for an extended in the middle of February in Vermont? You get to choose between freezing and starving to death in your home or driving your car as far away from your house as whatever charge you have left in your battery will take you. This plan isn’t just stupid, it’s dangerous stupid.
Govt officials who like to control people like an electric-powered society, where it is easy for them
to essentially throw the switch, like the State of California does. People who use fossil fuels or wood for transportation, heating, cooking, hot water etc typically have a stash of fuel on hand which will last a while during an “outage”. At some point during this debate, anyone who bitterly clings to their kerosene or their woodpile will be tarred as a “prepper”.
Mr. Roper, What precisely, is the Council’s solution when presented with this problem, if it happened this winter? Where are we to get twice the electricity, we use now? Thirdly, can you provide the public with the names and addresses of those on this council?
Let’s remember that gasoline was an unneeded by-product from the manufacture of kerosene! We now have some of the cleanest, most fuel efficient auto’s ever produced running so clean one can barely even asphyxiate oneself in a closed garage anymore & NOW “they” want to shut it all down? Sure we should button up all our homes, stop heating w/oil & maybe go to all heat pumps but THAT demands electricity from somewhere, can Hydro Quebec power ALL New England? There’s some folks who claim we HAVE “found” zero-point energy (Nicola Tesla) and it’s suppressed as it’s free & can’t be metered..Remember when “they” told us in the future it would “be too cheap to meter”? Maybe when the flying saucers land they will share that technology with us, in the meantime we must stop burning stuff, period, just not right away.
Steve, have you noticed that there has been very little, if any, mention of using or harvesting wood for heating homes, cooking fuel or producing our famous Maple Syrup?
The intelligent thing to do here is for the Climat Council to all resign.
Do it yesterday, is my sincere advice.
Vermonters awaken… this represents a potential disaster for our state!