Travels the state to warn Vermonters that the most important vote on the Clean Heat Standard is the ballot they’ll cast November 5

By Vicki Disorda

Columnist and free market activist Rob Roper of Stowe visited the Brandon Town Hall on Thursday, September 12 to talk about the Clean Heat Standard. With over 20 years of experience in Vermont politics and policy under his belt, Rob writes about financial and political issues in his Substack column “Behind the Lines.” 

Rob served as president of the Ethan Allen Institute, Vermont’s free market think tank, for nine years before starting “Behind the Lines”, inspired in 2020 by his concern about the Global Warming Solutions Act, Clean Heat Standard [S.5 (Act 18)] and a lot of the energy policies we are dealing with today.

“It was supposed to be transformational policy that would change the way we drive our cars and heat our homes and was going to cost billions of dollars and be extremely complicated. It is going to impact businesses and homes,” Roper told the Brandon crowd. Dismayed by the lack of media coverage, Rob vowed “to pay as close attention to this as humanly possible. I want to understand it and I want to make other people understand what’s happening with these energy policies.”

The Global Warming Solutions Act was passed in 2020 “over Governor Scott’s veto without knowing how it was going to be paid for, how it was going to work, or if it was even feasible.” The Act requires Vermont to reduce greenhouse gas pollution to 26% below 2005 levels by 2025. Emissions would need to be 40% below 1990 levels by 2030 and 80% below by 2050. (Source: climatechange.vermont.gov)

“If we don’t meet these mandates, says the Global Warming Solutions Act, anybody has standing to sue the state of Vermont, which is us, the taxpayers.” The Conservation Law foundation has already announced that they will sue the state.

“Not only do we have to pay to defend a suit─ from anybody, we are also going to have to pay their fees when we lose─ and we are going to lose these suits. Because the goals set forth with the Global Warming Solutions Act are impossible for us to meet as a state,” Roper said.

What is not in the Global Warming Solutions Act, Rob says, is a way to actually do it. About 40% of Vermont’s greenhouse gases come from heating our homes. This is called the Thermal Sector, which includes heating water and cooking.

“They devised this system called the Clean Heat Standard which basically is a carbon tax on a ton of greenhouse gas emissions.”

Here’s how they’ve structured it. If someone wants to sell you propane, for instance, “they have to buy a carbon credit from somebody somewhere─ probably a default delivery agent who has yet to be determined. But it’s going to be Efficiency Vermont. The credit functions essentially as an excise tax. We have a 2-cent excise tax on fuel already. It raises about five million dollars a year.

“There is no difference structurally by paying somebody a carbon credit to sell your product or paying a tax to sell your product. Where it differs from paying a tax is that it is so convoluted in how it works because the seller has to figure out how many tons of carbon is emitted from the product sold, which depends upon whether it is used for heating, cooking or for a generator.”

They still haven’t determined who owns these carbon credits.

“Generating them is almost like Bitcoin. We’re almost creating a cryptocurrency with these clean heat credits.” There are eleven or twelve categories of things you can do that theoretically remove a ton of carbon from the atmosphere to claim a credit, like insulating or installing a heat pump.

‘In order to meet the thermal requirements by 2030, we have to install 122,000 heat pumps and a similar number of heat pump water heaters and we have to switch twelve to thirteen thousand households to biofuels.’ Mobile homes can’t have heat pumps. “They don’t work.” Nor do they work in older homes with smaller rooms instead of an open floor plan. Additionally, there is not enough labor to do the work by the deadline. There are currently about 700 people in the state of Vermont who are licensed and capable to do the work when more like five or six thousand are needed in order to complete it on time.

“Each one of these actions is like mining for Bitcoins. It has to be verified by somebody that it took place. It has to be quantified over the life of the machine in the home it is installed in, which varies by home size and level of insulation. This is going to be hugely bureaucratically complicated and expensive to do.” 

Then Rob went on to share that (retiring) Windsor County Senator Dick McCormack, who sits on the Natural Resource and Energy Committee, said one day in committee, ‘I do not understand how this thing works. To me it looks like a Rube Goldberg carbon tax.”

Sure looks that way.

“It is a complicated mechanism of implementing a carbon tax on home heating fuel.” Rob confirmed. The estimates just came out from a group called NV5, paid for through the Department of Public Service. It is going to cost somewhere between $1.79 to $4 a gallon extra on home heating oil or kerosene and somewhere between 95 cents to $2.12 a gallon extra on propane. The anticipated cost is $3,000 extra every year to heat Vermont homes.

“It’s just not practical.” Rob stated. The administration of all of this is expected to cost Vermont tax payers $40 million a year. “Not to give them any ideas,” Rob said, “but if they just raised the 2-cent excise tax on home heating fuel there would be no added bureaucratic cost to this. They’re charging you $40 million extra every year to create a program so they don’t have to call it a tax when they run for reelection this November.”

All of this does not account for any sort of social safety net program for low-income Vermonters.

The legislature will likely vote on this in January. “The makeup of the legislature is crucial as to whether this thing gets implemented or gets put on moth balls until the Act can be repealed.” In 2022, the current legislature passed it. The governor vetoed it. They tried to override the governor’s veto and missed by one vote. In 2023, the legislature passed it. The governor vetoed it and they overrode his veto this time.

“If you send the same crowd back to Montpelier and think that they are going to all of the sudden say ‘NO, we’re not going to do this’, you’ve got another think coming. That’s the crucial vote. That’s why voters need to understand what this is before September 23 when the ballots get mailed out.” To see the details of the Clean Heat Standard and who voted for it, please search the following: Bill Status S.5 (Act 18) (vermont.gov). 

“This is just the thermal sector, which is only about 40%. The other big chunk is transportation. We will see something similar for gasoline and diesel by 2030,” Rob predicted.

To view Rob Roper’s full presentation at the Brandon Town Hall, search the following: FYIVT Rob Roper Clean Heat Standard Property Taxes VT (youtube.com). 

Roper will be speaking on October 1, at the Wyckoff Sugarhouse, 18 Catamount Ln, Smugglers Notch on “The Policies Making Vermont Unaffordable: A Look at what what Montpelier has been up to and has in store for VT taxpayers.” 5 PM meet and greet with local candidates with the presentation beginning around 5:45 – 6 PM.

Also Thurs, Oct 3, 6:30 pm, Ferrisburgh Town Hall.

And Tues, Oct 8, in Londonderry, details TBD.