by Steve MacDonald, for Granite Grok

Vermont Governor Phil Scott just did something unexpected. Scott has long advocated for and supported efforts to achieve the Paris Climate goals. He has encouraged his state to pursue them even after President Trump withdrew America in 2017 and again in 2025, until he didn’t.

Governor Scott dropped two bombshells on Vermont’s climate cult. The first is a massive Executive order to address the housing crisis. Developers are to be allowed to build based on Vermont’s 2020 codes and environmental standards, rolling back barriers that have slowed or stalled development and made building, and therefore, housing, more expensive.

Section I: Building Energy Code Reform
1.1 Reinstatement of 2020 Standards

• All persons commencing building construction projects on July 1, 2024 or after shall
  have the option of complying with the 2020 Vermont Residential Building Energy
  Standards (RBES), Commercial Building Energy Standards (CBES), including the 2020
  Stretch Code, or the 2024 RBES and CBES.
• The Land Use Review Board shall update Act 250 materials to reflect that the 2020
  Stretch Code is permissible.
• Materials provided by the Commissioner of Public Service shall inform and allow for
  either building energy standard and specify that the flexibility is intended to be used to
  make housing more affordable for the buyer.
• The Department of Public Service and the Agency of Commerce and Community
  Development shall both immediately notify the public, municipalities, builders, and other
  stakeholders of this option.
• The Department of Public Service, in coordination with other relevant state agencies, shall continue trainings and encourage voluntary compliance with the 2020 or 2024 building energy standards.

The ten-page order addresses permitting, environmental review, land use, and other related matters concerning housing and development. It’s rather clever. Gov. Phil Scott just took one questionable problem, the housing crisis, and used it to kneecap environmental regulation overreach. It’s an interesting…transition.

In 2017, at a press conference on the banks of Lake Champlain, Scott criticized newly inaugurated President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris Climate Accord. And he doubled down on his administration’s decision to pursue those targets on its own.

“We have reaffirmed Vermont’s commitment to achieving the greenhouse gas reduction targets of the Accord,” Scott said. “I did so with confidence, knowing that my administration is committed to meeting our state’s existing targets for carbon reduction and renewable energy.”

At a press conference earlier this month, Scott called those same targets “arbitrary.”

The Governor is also calling for the legislature to rewrite or repeal parts of the Global Warming Solutions Act that he now sees as detrimental to housing development and home prices in Vermont (and a good deal more, I suspect).

Scott is now asking lawmakers to eliminate the mandatory targets, do away with the private right of action, and weaken the policymaking power of a 23-person Vermont Climate Council that was created by the Legislature to drive the energy transition in Vermont.

Scott’s Secretary of Natural Resources, Julie Moore, says the law has led lawmakers and the council to develop policies — such as the clean heat standard — that would raise the cost of fossil fuels.

A more accurate description would be unworkable laws that make energy unaffordable and Vermont unattractive to old and new businesses alike. Democrat supermajorities adopted California’s emissions and transportation standards, which were based on an exemption that the EPA no longer permits. The result was byzantine schemes cloaked in environmental language that screw everyone to create revenue streams for the government.

Or, at least they would if they made enough sense that someone could figure out how to make them work.

I have to believe that some internal polling is at work here. Gov. Scott has been an atypical northeastern green RINO republican on lots of things, including Climate. To come out now and say they are arbitrary and will raise fossil fuel prices (which was always true) is quite the one-eighty-degree turn. Did Saul just become Paul, at least on the issue of climate policy versus actual human thriving and prosperity?

The old 2020 standards predate the Global Warming Solutions Act and who knows what else, returning Vermont to those codes and related environmental standards, permitting, and review – indefinitely.

This Executive Order takes effect immediately and shall remain in effect unless modified or
extended by subsequent executive action.

He’s knocking down all the hurdles based on an old idea he’s decided is new.

The policies the left has been imposing on everyone don’t help the environment in any meaningful way and do so at great expense and significant harm to the prosperity of Vermonters. It’s another expensive failure from the Left (my words, not his), but he appears to see that, at least on this issue.

The climate cult is pissed, but the Legislature failed to adopt any meaningful improvement last session, and he’s sending a strong signal that he’s prepared to use his state of emergency and executive authority to bypass them.

I wonder if he will have any other road-to-Damascus moments?

Steve is a long-time New Hampshire resident, award-winning blogger, and a member of the Board of Directors of The 603 Alliance. He is the owner of Grok Media LLC.