The unrealism of the Renewable Energy Standard grows.
by Annette Smith, Executive Director, Vermonters for a Clean Environment
Minutes before the Vermont House voted 99 – 39 in support of H.289, the bill that changes the Renewable Energy Standard to require more wind and solar to be built in Vermont, Rep. Marc Mihaly of Calais told the body,
“The SEA Group which did a lot of the modeling relied upon here calculated the financial benefits to Vermonters and they’re nearly double the costs.”
Rep. Mihaly’s statement was especially influential because he was lauded as an “expert” by House Appropriations Chair Diane Lanpher during that committee’s discussion of the costs associated with the bill.
I was taken aback by Rep. Mihaly’s claim, because I was a member of the Department of Public Service’s Renewable Energy Standard Stakeholder Advisory Group which heard directly from SEA Group when they presented the report* on their modeling.
At no time did SEA Group calculate that the financial benefits to Vermonters are nearly double the costs.
What SEA Group determined was that:
· All scenarios modeled increase financial costs to Vermonters. GHG benefits are excluded because Vermont does not have polluting power plants to reduce emissions. Price suppression benefits are regional and Vermont gets only 4% of those benefits.
· Benefits were almost entirely societal and regional, not specific to Vermont.
· The only cost benefit shown by SEA Group was potential price suppression regionally. Vermont was credited with 4%.
As a member of the DPS RES SAG, my takeaway from the report on the modeling was that emissions reduction benefits were overestimated and environmental costs were underestimated. No land use impacts specific to Vermont were included in the model’s environmental costs.
Impact to ratepayers is the jurisdiction of House Environment & Energy, which got competing memos from Renewable Energy Vermont and DPS on Feb. 6, the day the bill was voted out of committee. Those memos about costs to ratepayers were never discussed in committee prior to the vote.
Two money committees, House Ways & Means and House Appropriations, took testimony on the costs and benefits to the state from Joint Fiscal Office’s Joyce Manchester, who wrote three different versions of the Fiscal Note on which legislators rely.
At no time did either committee hear directly from Department of Public Service Energy Planner TJ Poor. He waited in the committee room in House Ways & Means, prepared to testify. He was never asked by Chair Emily Kornheiser to provide information. JFO’s Joyce Manchester provided her first Fiscal Note to House Ways & Means, then revised it a week later and presented it to the committee before they voted the bill out.
JFO’s third Fiscal Note was presented to House Appropriations. In response to questioning, JFO’s Joyce Manchester said she prepared the updated note in consultation with Regulatory Assistance Project. RAP’s principle Richard Cowart is partners with Rep. Mihaly in a group net metering system in Calais where they both live. In committee, Rep. Mihaly was seen winking at the renewable energy lobbyists prior to presenting his glowing support of the legislation.
Totally missing from the discussion in all three House committees, except for this author’s invited testimony, are the land use impacts from doubling the Tier 2 in-state renewable requirement. The effect, according to SEA Group, REV and DPS, is a nearly 3-fold increase in lands necessary to build all those required new renewables. Business as Usual (BAU is about 800 acres while REV and DPS testified in House Environment and Energy that the proposed RES would increase that to 2200 to 2400 acres).
In recent years, the Fish & Wildlife Commissioner testified that their program for reviews of Act 250 and Section 248 applications is underfunded. JFO did not include an increase in state staffing necessary to review the increased land use impacts that this RES will require. The money committees in the House charged with reviewing impacts to state government never heard about the needs of the Fish & Wildlife Department. Testimony this year in House Environment & Energy on the Act 250 bill by the person who does those reviews now was that he is overwhelmed with work.
Fiscal responsibility, or the lack of it by House leadership and members, is causing tremendous financial harm to Vermonters. This is not the time to be hastily putting in place a bill that will benefit in-state developers in the short term and out-of-state investment banks to whom almost all of Vermont’s renewable energy projects are sold in the long term.
This commentary is offered with all due respect to our legislators who believe they are doing good but in this case, they are failing the people of Vermont who can least afford to pay more for electricity. If legislators want to see more people pushed over the tipping point and into the streets and woods by higher monthly bills, they could find no better vehicle for increasing the unhoused population than by passing this RES update.
Categories: Commentary, Legislation, State Government
Thank you Annette, for fact checking the disinformation campaign being waged by the left. The Vermont Super Majority’s allegiance to the renewable lobby, at the expense of their constituents, and in disregard of the PUC’s reporting on the priorities of Vermonters regarding their energy costs, is nothing short of legislative malpractice.
This legislative hubris cannot be exaggerated. H.289 is not only an unrealistic goal, it’s an impossibility. It’s a lie. And the legislators promoting this legislation are liars.
legislative malpractice/// i think you mean massive corruption and insider dealing/// it is time to/// get real///
Thank you Annette for setting the record straight on H 289. If ruling with unlimited authority is the definition of autocracy , then one can say without the shadow of a doubt that Vermont “democratic” legislators are no longer democrats but tyrannical and obsessive autocrats .
While countless Vermonters have testified as well a expressed by phone or emails their opposition to their legislators to the the cost of renewable energy bills for the last two legislative sessions , Vermont House democrats, driven by unsubstantiated arguments and pushed by political ideology and a coziness with the renewable energy industry, have in fact voted in support of that new even more demanding egregious bill .
Vermont residents should be terrified of each one of those legislators .
Ms. Thurston’s assertions are very correct. In fact, synonyms from Merriam-Webster for autocrat include fascism, totalitarian, communism, dictatorship, tyranny, despotism, oppression and nazism.
By whatever above term one may choose, the current Vermont government has firmly established itself as that. It is easy to view such exalted members as bray, white, macdonald, mccormick and sibilia as nomenklatura and apparatchiks- useful
idiots- in the Carbon Evangelist’s™ schemes. It is no stretch to see that Vermont’s politicians are effectively controlled by outsider influence and dollars- apparently with the willing approval of Vermont’s electorate.
? We should be terrified of them ? See, that is the problem. They should be terrified by us, and until that amount of respect is exacted from the duplicitious dirt bags under the Golden Dome, we will be treated as their servants. Term limits !!!!!!!
This is why Annette drops the ball in the last paragraph of her otherwise excellent article to logically and honestly assess the intentions of these legislators: “respect to our legislators who believe they are doing good but in this case, they are failing the people of Vermont”.
I disagree that those legislators believe that. To arrive at that conclusion after all her reporting, to me, misses the forest through the trees. Shutting the door and excluding important and relevant testimony is a demonstration of another attempt to prevent further damning evidence and lack of transparency. Such behavior indicates to me that they are utterly corrupt paid apparatchiks of the green lobby.
When H.289 is viewed by it’s stated goal, the folly of that goal is glaring.
When H.289 is viewed with it’s true intent in mind, H.289 becomes clear path for liberal crony capitalism while appeasing the “Climate Evangelist™” and is political genius. It enables those that actually wrote the bill to benefit tremendously- financially. Those that sponsor it to benefit politically and financially. Those that support all things ‘green’ get to feel morally superior to their plebeian neighbors.
After the veto override of H.289, we can all be comforted by the fact that paying excessive fees to the government and utilities means we have done our part to save the planet from the evil carbon atom, without reducing or endangering the carbon atom by any factor.
Thank you Annette. Get real and vote them out Nov ’24.
The whole concept of 100% renewable is a false premise on its face. The grid cannot operate with 100% renewable energy and ISO-NE is warning that adding more wind and solar to the grid will only require more reliable generators to be paid to be available to provide power when wind and solar are absent, which has been the case for much of this past cloudy and calm winter. Battery backup is a pipe dream which is anything but renewable due to the massive amounts of mineral extraction required and battery stored energy is 10x as costly per Kw as the current mix which is mostly nuclear and clean burning natural gas (compared to coal, oil, or biomass). This is a trip down a cul-de-sac of energy poverty and unneccessary economic hardship.
Thank you so much Annette for taking the time to understand the depth and details of energy and environmental policy in Vermont, for caring enough to ensure the truth is known and understood and for working so hard to help ensure Vermont heads in the right direction for both the environment and Vermonters. Your work is priceless and appreciated by so many throughout the state.
This Renewable Energy Standard just like S.5(Act 18) is highly destructive legislation that does not solve problems or serve people. Sadly it is the trend of the supermajority. We need a fundamental shift to help right our course. Thank you Annette for helping to show the way and for offering constructive solutions for Vermont.
Before you pray for, and lament the loss of Democracy, consider what Democracy has done to our Republic. Oh you didn’t know, we were once a Republic?