by Meg Hansen
The Global Warming Solutions Act (GWSA) requires Vermont to reduce its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by specific amounts by 2025, 2030, and 2050.
Failure to meet these mandatory targets would allow any person to sue the state, at taxpayers’ expense, for non-compliance. The GWSA appointed a 23-member Vermont Climate Council to create an action plan.
Of the Council’s 200 recommendations, the Clean Heat Standard (CHS) bill has received the most attention. It has been passed by the Vermont House, will likely glide through the Senate, and soon reach the Governor’s desk.
If the CHS is enacted, Vermont will become the first state in the nation to regulate all fossil-based home heating fuels. An unelected 3-member Public Utilities Commission (PUC) – not the Legislature – will craft the details and administer the program.
The CHS puts the “polluter pays” principle into practice by forcing companies that sell fossil-based heating fuels to 1) switch to bioenergy, namely, biofuels and wood burning systems; or 2) pay for weatherization projects and installing electric cold-climate heat pumps. Small and family-owned fuel dealers will have to slap the extra costs onto consumers. The aim is to make fossil fuels so expensive and inaccessible that Vermonters will be forced to heat their homes with substitutes.
Biofuels and Wood are Not Carbon Neutral
Biofuels are made from plants and agricultural waste (e.g. corn ethanol and soybean biodiesel), and methane recaptured from organic waste, treated wastewater, livestock, and farms. Though these fuels are renewable, they are not carbon free. Biofuel combustion emits about the same amount of CO2 per unit of energy as petroleum; burning wood releases more carbon than coal or natural gas; and methane is a powerful greenhouse gas that warms the planet by 86 times as much as CO2.
Proponents believe that biofuels are inherently carbon neutral, i.e. clean, because the CO2 released when they are burned is 100 percent equal to the CO2 that was removed from the atmosphere by the plants when they were alive. In a groundbreaking study, however, DeCicco et al. disproved the assumption of carbon neutrality by showing that the CO2 uptake by plants offsets merely 37 percent of the CO2 emitted when they are burned as biofuel (Climatic Change, August 2016).
Vermont policymakers are therefore wrong to exclude the carbon emitted during biofuel and wood combustion. Due to this omission, the bill underestimates the GHG emission impact of replacing fossil fuels with bioenergy. It is not their only mistake.
Counting Emissions From Land Use Conversion
The CHS bill states that the PUC will hire third-party consultants to determine the total carbon emitted by various biofuels. This lifecycle analysis (LCA) will calculate the GHG emissions related to producing, transporting, and consuming the fuel. It will not, however, count the high emissions caused by converting agricultural land to grow crops like corn and soybean for biofuel production.
Previous LCA studies on biofuels, which informed the federal Renewable Fuel Standard (2005) and California’s Low-Carbon Fuel Standard (2009), underestimated the emissions impact of land use conversion. On account of new modeling that corrects these critical accounting errors, we now know that biofuels release greater GHG emissions than fossil fuels.
When rainforests and grasslands are cleared to grow biofuel crops, the carbon stored in the soil and plants is released as CO2. Fargione et. al showed that altering natural ecosystems into cropland releases 17 to 420 times more CO2 than the annual GHG reductions that these biofuels would provide by replacing fossil fuels (Science, Feb. 2008). A more recent study found that corn ethanol (the most common biofuel) emits at least 24 percent more carbon than gasoline (PNAS, Feb. 2022).
John DeCicco (University of Michigan Energy Institute) stated bluntly in an interview, “When it comes to the emissions that cause global warming, biofuels are worse than gasoline. The underpinnings of policies used to promote biofuels for reasons of climate have now been proven to be scientifically incorrect […] Hard data, straight from America’s croplands, now confirm the worst fears about the harm that biofuels do to the planet.” Disregarding the evidence, Vermont lawmakers purport that the CHS will achieve the carbon reduction targets by forcing Vermonters to burn carbon intensive fuels. Do they want the CHS to increase the state’s net carbon emissions and run afoul of the GWSA?
Curbing Consumption
The question that the Vermont Climate Council and legislators are attempting to answer, using schemes like the CHS, is not, “How do we heat homes and power cars without fossil fuels?” Rather it is, “How do we get most Vermonters to live in smaller homes and drive fewer cars?” Curbing society-wide consumption is the only way to curb carbon emissions. But it will not occur voluntarily and cannot be imposed without an imminent threat, as proven by the COVID-19 lockdowns.
The authorities thus settle on penalizing the middle class – a chronically abused demographic that is teetering on extinction in Vermont. Climate Council member Jared Duval demonstrated this punitive impulse when he admitted that the CHS will hurt businesses that sell “as much fossil fuel as you want.” How will bio-alternatives reduce consumption? By shuttering local companies and forcing middle-income workers and families to downsize or leave the state. Ultimately, the Clean Heat Standard will raise carbon emissions and deepen Vermont’s shameful chasm between the wealthy and welfare dependent.
Meg Hansen is president of the Ethan Allen Institute, a policy research and educational nonprofit organization in Vermont.
Categories: Commentary
Climate Marxism – Control the means, output and (re)distribution of production by controlling the means and distribution of energy. It’s the marriage of the Degrowth Movement with Marxism.
News flash! Wood IS inherently 100% carbon neutral. All that carbon ends up back in the ground where new trees use it to grow, or falls to the bottom of the ocean to be used by different organisms in different ways. Is wood clean? Well, that’s another question.
The more CO2 in the air, the cloudier and more humid the environment gets, causing, among other things, more greenery to grow faster, cooling the environment.
Prove me wrong with science.
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-12-28/wood-burning-power-plants-clean-energy
“The process of burning wood results in more carbon being released into the atmosphere than burning coal. This happens in two ways. Trees in a forest store carbon and keep it out of the atmosphere. When trees are cut down, more than half the wood is left to rot or burned in producing a usable form of fuel (usually wood pellets), which releases carbon into the air. The wood fuel that is ultimately burned in power plants generates still more carbon. Overall, using wood produces two to three times as much carbon per kilowatt hour as burning coal or natural gas.”
Lies, deception, and ignorance are the hallmark of Democrats, Progressives, and Republicans in name only (RINOs). Vermonters can see through misleading information and propaganda. Thank you for announcing the facts.
How the GWSA is the worst piece of legislation aimed at using the citizenry to be the enforcement mechanism to create litigation that will tie up the State in endless court battles. We THE PEOPLE need to fix this in November.
The CO2 that has been sequestered from our atmosphere into the earth and ocean for millions of years as dead plant life, animals and ocean carbonates. That plant life holding all that CO2 is where oil and gas come from and when burned is simply returning to the atmosphere. This applies to biomass and wood as well!
IF CO2 is a significant driver of global temperature, CO2 changes would lead temperature changes but they do NOT – CO2 changes lag temperature changes.
Our State leadership is failing us all with their virtue signaling on “carbon” elimination. In fact, far worse than a warmer planet with more airborne plant-fertilizing carbon dioxide would be a colder planet with less CO2. Keep up the fight!
Thanks for this article, Meg Hansen. And for not being discouraged by the anti-working class “ideas” being enacted by our one-party Legislature. Pushing back against the Global Warming Standards Act and the pension bill that doesn’t really lessen our collective debt are a valuable contribution from the Ethan Allen Institure.
It is time for the Vermont legislature to pause and listen to Henry Ford’s words ” Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again , this time more intelligently ” . The real existential threat to Vermont is not climate change but is actually the implementation of the GWS Act . Vermont like the rest of this country moved out of the dark ages with the availability of gas, oil and nuclear energy. Pretending that one” must act” because of a law which was based on emotions rather than facts MUST STOP NOW. The clean heat standard is a total absurdity as it threatens the survival of Vermonters on brutally cold days and it threatens their basic comfort during those same dangerous days and nights as the heat pumps are shoulder seasons systems only. The clean heat standard will also discourage young entrepreneurs to invest in the local delivery aspect of the fossil fuel industry and they will be reluctant to face the costly labor and equipment necessary to drive the fuel to Vermont residents. It will de facto kill that industry by making it a very insecure investment. No Vermont does not NEED to reach certain illusory emission goals because the law says so. The law is devious and not based on unambiguous empiric observations nor economic and safety rationale. It is an emotional law but sadly with terribly dangerous physical consequences. Even Bill McKibben, who revisited his comments on nuclear industry, has understood the deadly course our beloved little state is entering. The GWS Act was a stratagem concocted by environmental activists conniving with the renewable industrialists avid for subsidies and supported by a gullible legislature and brainwashed public .In fact it was so well concocted that it included a Dantesque possibility of “anybody suing the State if the goals are not attained “and it used an unelected ” Climate Council “ whose impartiality was never assessed . In order to decrease poverty, the most important task of a government is to provide its population with access to the cheapest source of energy available as well as to a reliable grid. The GWS Act does not provide either. Thank you so much Meg Hansen for your brilliant dialogues on this crucial subject. The survival of Vermont rests on the spreading of the terrifying truth and the false promise of the legislative monster called the GWS Act which must be repealed .
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It is time for the Vermont legislature to pause and listen to Henry Ford’s words ” Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again , this time more intelligently ” . The real existential threat to Vermont is not climate change but is actually the implementation of the GWS Act . Vermont like the rest of this country moved out of the dark ages with the availability of gas, oil and nuclear energy. Pretending that one” must act” because of a law which was based on emotions rather than facts MUST STOP NOW. The clean heat standard is a total absurdity as it threatens the survival of Vermonters on brutally cold days and it threatens their basic comfort during those same dangerous days and nights as the heat pumps are shoulder seasons systems only. The clean heat standard will also discourage young entrepreneurs to invest in the local delivery aspect of the fossil fuel industry and they will be reluctant to face the costly labor and equipment necessary to drive the fuel to Vermont residents. It will de facto kill that industry by making it a very insecure investment. No Vermont does not NEED to reach certain illusory emission goals because the law says so. The law is devious and not based on unambiguous empiric observations nor economic and safety rationale. It is an emotional law but sadly with terribly dangerous physical consequences. Even Bill McKibben, who revisited his comments on nuclear industry, has understood the deadly course our beloved little state is entering. The GWS Act was a stratagem concocted by environmental activists conniving with the renewable industrialists avid for subsidies and supported by a gullible legislature and brainwashed public .In fact it was so well concocted that it included a Dantesque possibility of “anybody suing the State if the goals are not attained “and it used an unelected ” Climate Council “ whose impartiality was never assessed . In order to decrease poverty, the most important task of a government is to provide its population with access to the cheapest source of energy available as well as to a reliable grid. The GWS Act does not provide either. Thank you so much Meg Hansen for your brilliant dialogues on this crucial subject. The survival of Vermont rests on the spreading of the terrifying truth and the false promise of the legislative monster called the GWS Act which must be repealed .
But one article that hasn’t been scrubbed from the internet on carbon dioxide and plant growth:
https://theconversation.com/yes-more-carbon-dioxide-in-the-atmosphere-helps-plants-grow-but-its-no-excuse-to-downplay-climate-change-130603
Climate change is happening but its not from anything addressed here.
Its a 26500 year cycle coming due, along with solar sunspot maximums, changes in the magnetic poles, and of course… geoengineering pouring particulates of poison that are KNOWN to kill all life from plants to bees to birds to bears to frogs to humans and little babies.
But lets go with the gaslighting that is inherent in the Agenda 2030 (qui bono?) of humans as the cause, sourced from the 2014 IPCC report that says…humans done it.
Justifies all the culling of humanity going on around the planet.
The polluters need oversight.
And that is also inherent in the Agenda 2030/50 qui bono profit driven policies.
Upstream costs of ALL of these policies will break humanity every which way but loose, and downstream policies will not pay for our graves. We’ll become fertilizer.
Or ready meat.
Take your pick.
Diabolical in sheeps clothing.
I will keep burning wood as the only common sense upstream downstream and in my cabin heat in Vermont.
No brainer.
Here’s the link to the alternative science on what is happening on the planet… ain’t warming. Its cooling.
https://suspicious0bservers.org/
Greater winds, colder temperatures, and the earth’s mantle losing its grip.
Nothing to see here folks.
Crickets.
One more link, to realclimate.org – just for comparison.
Puny humans got nothing to do with it peeps. Just more munchausen by proxy from above, applied to you and earth cycles that have been happening since earth was formed, naturally. Playing god won’t change it.
In the meantime, the money changers in the temple of the cult make beaucoup buckeroos.
https://www.realclimate.org/
Truth is California is finding out the cost of recharging EV’s is higher than a gallon of gas. They also find that recharging stations are backing up for at least an hour. People have to sit in line then wait up to 15-20 mintues to recharge. The entire narrative is falling apart and they are losing bigly in the court of public opinion. The Green New Deal is dead, yet the Climate Council will continue to pretend because they have to continue to steal and launder money from Vermonters.
Here’s some info on Burlington’s McNeil plant
What McNeil generates now is technically renewable, but that doesn’t mean it’s clean. In 2012, the last year the facility reported its data to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, McNeil was one of the top carbon-emitting facilities in the state.
The plant burns up to 30 cords of wood chips — about 76 tons — every hour. Most of the wood chips are gathered from within a 60-mile radius of the plant. About 75 percent of the chips are loaded onto railcars in Swanton and shipped south to McNeil.
The district energy system would improve the efficiency of the plant from 23.8 percent to 26 percent. The best-case scenario is 30 percent, according to VEIC’s Sherman, because most of the heat still can’t be harnessed.
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