by Guy Page
Like expectant southern belle debutantes, would-be bills for the 2025 Legislature are being lined up and given a final once-over by their sponsors. Is everything just right? Will there be people in the crowd designated and ready to ooh and ah at their introduction?
New bills, like teenage debutantes, only have one chance to make a first impression at the coming out party, scheduled for the legislature’s website on January 8. Bills coming from the ‘best families’ (i.e. most influential interest groups) will have special attention paid to them by their handlers, who are often current or former committee chairs fine-tuning first drafts submitted by friendly interest groups.
One such influential special interest is the Energy Action Network, perhaps the State House’s most aggressive pursuer of renewable energy spending in Vermont, and no wonder – its hundreds of members are a who’s who of Vermont not-for-profit climate change organizations and businesses directly or indirectly invested in the transition from fossil fuels to renewable electricity.
Rather than take voters’ cue to slow down on expensive energy policy, EAN urges the Legislature to stay the course with the fossil-fuel to electricity transition at home and on the roads. “These [heat pump and weatherizing] programs have been effective and, more importantly, are key to ensuring a just and equitable transition.”
But – in an obvious nod to concerned voters tossing out a score of legislators in November, in part due to their support for the EAN-backed Clean Heat Standard – the interest group argues that the extreme weather, fossil-fuel reliant Vermonters are paying too much for the status quo.
In its “Taking stock of where Vermont stands on climate and energy heading into 2025” blog post of November 2024, EAN claims the Big Switch will be cheaper for homeowners – longterm. But it says little about how much it will cost to ‘get there’ to heat pumps and their low monthly heating bills.
Nor does it address consumer cost concerns about their future’s electricity supply/demand disparity. When demand, characterized by an energy-hogging AI-intensive world also reliant on electricity to stay warm and connected to the world by road, collides with an electric grid bereft of reliable, energy-dense fossil fuels to make electricity, will there be enough? Or will forced conservation and brownouts be the new order the day?
In their November, 2024 ‘look ahead’ report, EAN expresses grave concern about the double whammy of extreme weather damage (climate change caused, it says) and the current unaffordability of energy. For both it blames overuse on fossil fuels.
Specifically, the Green Mountain State is the fifth-worst state in the nation as measured by disaster relief funds per capita ($684). Climate change is blamed as culprit #1 for flooding. Also, it claims Vermonters pay the third-highest amount of household income in the country for energy – $7000. In other words, EAN seems to say, the status quo is so bad, what have you got to lose? In response, critics of EAN’s energy plan say fossil fuel costs were low under Trump ’45 and will likely drop under Trump ’47, and that in any case Vermont’s carbon-reduction efforts will do little to reduce weather-related disasters. In fact, they argue, it would be wiser to reallocate carbon reduction money to disaster mitigation.
As reported recently in VTDigger and later today in the Vermont Daily Chronicle, some of the legislature’s re-elected climate hawks appear to be at least talking compromise in the face of the political reality of a lost supermajority and a popular governor preferring Vermont take a more leisurely pace to carbon emissions reduction. For example:
“I think voters asked us to focus on their wellbeing over the allure of being some kind of national leader in an abstract sense,” – Senate Majority Leader Kesha Ram Hinsdale.
“Staying focused on affordability, I think, is key. If we can figure out a policy that helps make energy more affordable for Vermonters and oh, by the way, it’ll also help the climate — amazing.” – Sen. Anne Watson (D-Washington), a leading candidate to replace longtime Sen. Natural Resources and Energy Chair Chris Bray, who was voted out on November. 5.
Tune in to Common Sense Radio at 11 AM today on WDEV, and Friday at Four today at 4 PM on VDC’s X, Facebook, and YouTube platforms, for more discussion about upcoming legislation.