CHS may have flatlined, but we’re still stuck with the GWSA mandates.

By Rob Roper

Okay, we have established that the Clean Heat Standard is an unnecessarily costly, unnecessarily complicated, ruthlessly regressive, unworkable word salad of legal confusion. But, hey, at least, so bleated its supporters incessantly for three plus years, it wasn’t/isn’t a tax, fee, surcharge on home heating fuel, right?

So, what’s are the options for moving forward and away from this policy train wreck? Chapter XI of the PUC’s report provides a couple of ideas should our lawmakers insist on persisting with meeting the objectives of the Global Warming Solutions Act for the thermal sector. Suggestion “a.” “Fuel Tax.” Uh, what? Say again. Fuel tax, you say? And I quote:

In the Commission’s Act 62 Report, the Commission recommended increasing the fuel tax on heating oil, propane, kerosene, and other dyed diesel fuel to support additional weatherization services through the Weatherization Assistance Program for Vermonters with low income…. We found that the existing fuel tax collection mechanism has the benefit of being in place and successfully used for many years to fund the low-income Weatherization Trust Fund. Thus, the process of changing the fuel-tax rate would be incremental and easily understood and implementable. Though we do not recommend a specific per-gallon amount in today’s report, we continue to believe that increasing this fuel tax is an efficient, practical, and well-understood mechanism for achieving a greater level of thermal sector emission reductions.

Yuck. What else you got? “b. Thermal Efficiency Benefit Charge.” Benefit charge? What’s that, like a kind of tax? On what, pray tell?

A TEBC could be set in a similar manner to the electric EEC [Electric Energy Efficiency Charge, that annoying tack on tax/fee/surcharge that drives up your electric bill]. The Commission would estimate the anticipated thermal sector GHG reductions that are expected to be achieved under the current programs…. The Commission would then establish a TEBC necessary to achieve those additional reductions. The fuel dealers currently pay a fuel tax pursuant to 33 V.S.A. § 2503; the TEBC could be collected at the same time from the same entities as the fuel tax.

So, instead of just increasing the fuel tax, we’d have an additional “charge” on the same fuels collected at the same time as the existing tax from the same people. I ask in all seriousness, minor semantics aside, what’s the freakin’ difference?

Alternative to the Clean Heat Standard “A” is a tax. Alternative “B” is an air quotes “tax.” Which just goes to show that the original Clean Heat Standard is and always was — just as retired Senator Dick McCormack pegged it two years ago, bless his heart — a Rube Goldberg carbon tax on home heating fuels. All the politicians and reporters insisting otherwise were more full of you know what than renewable energy methane digester. We were not fooled.

Now, as someone who believes heating fuels are a necessity for life and, like food, clothing and medical services, should not be taxed at all, and as an advocate for free markets and free people making decisions on their own without the heavy hand of government smacking us into obedience to top-down directives, I can’t say I’m disappointed that the politicians and activists who chose this Clean Heat Standard path gave us three plus years of treading water ending with an inevitable drowning. But, gotta say, if I were Greta Thunberg, I’d be livid.

What the PUC points out now was equally obvious three-plus years ago when the Climate Action Plan was being written: we have existing organizations that do things like weatherization and electrification. We have existing government revenue streams that support these activities. The quickest, easiest way to move forward on meeting the GWSA goals would have been to just expand these existing programs in size and scope by increasing the existing revenue streams that fund them. Easy as flipping a switch!

If they had taken this easiest, cleanest, most efficient path, work on meeting the GWSA mandates could have been underway immediately instead of wasting four years in a bizarre attempt to re-invent the wheel (or rather abandon the wheel altogether in favor of a whacky scheme to train millions of caterpillars to do the work of one wheel). So why did they choose the path of most resistance? The cowards didn’t want to be tagged with raising a tax, and they were dumb enough to think we were so dumb that they could get away with the “Affordable Heat” charade.

Yes, our intrepid climate warriors under the Golden Dome placed a higher priority on protecting their pathetic little political careers than on saving the planet. How’s that for courage and commitment? They were happy to waste four of the eight years Greta said we had left to fend off doom, and to waste multiple millions of taxpayer dollars to achieve precisely nothing. So, I think on behalf of all the young people who really believe their future on the earth is in danger and were taken in by the false promises of the Clean Heat Standard and its propagandists, I’ll throw out a good, solid “How dare you!”

Where does all this leave us now? As the PUC wrote, “We do not recommend a specific per-gallon amount” of fuel tax increase necessary to meet the 2025 (whoop, where’s that time machine when you need it?), 2030, and 2050 greenhouse gas reduction targets in the GWSA. No, that job will fall to the legislature. I’m looking forward to what they come up with. I know what the Republicans think. In a press conference on Friday, January 24, Sen. Scott Beck (R-Caledonia), the minority leader, pegged the number at “zero.” What says the majority? Time will tell.

But a little history lesson: in 2019 the House voted to double the existing heating fuel tax from 2 cents per gallon to 4 cents. It didn’t go well, and amid the public backlash the Senate didn’t event take it up. The PUC’s cost impact for the Clean Heat Standard (which is low) was between 8 cents and 58 cents per gallon. So, good luck with this! Looking forward to round two.

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