News Analysis

The path to 100% zero carbon emissions the Legislature is ignoring

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100% renewable, or 100% clean?

by Guy Page

Writing about energy policy is like walking into a Vermont corn maze: go too deep and you quickly get lost, both you and the folks trying to follow you.

In the coming days, the Vermont Legislature will choose between competing plans to get Vermont to 100% zero carbon emissions from electricity. One will cost Vermonters about $110 million more over 10 years. The other will cost a lot more – up to $1 billion, depending on which estimate you believe. 

Yesterday, the Vermont House moved forward on the costlier plan: H.289, updating the state’s renewable energy standards for electricity. Cost estimates vary from as low as $150 million (low number in most recent, more optimistic Joint Fiscal Office estimate, JFO’s Feb. 22 ‘high’ estimate was about $500 million) to about $1 billion (Public Service Dept. estimate). 

H.289 – a bill proposed by Environment and Energy chair Amy Sheldon and vice-chair Laura Sibilia – doubles down on in-state renewable power generation. It alters the state’s power distribution grid to accept a big increase in in-state solar and wind power generation. It keeps up the regulatory fences designed to keep out out-of-state big hydro and nuclear power. Supporters we must spend big now to provide the scads of zero-emissions electricity needed to ‘electrify’ heating and transportation, now heavily reliant on fossil fuels. 

By contrast, the Vermont Department of Public Service plan says the huge build-up in instate zero-emissions power generation just isn’t needed. They say emissions-free electricity already exists in New England, and that it’s there for the asking. In fact, says PSD analyst TJ Poor, we’re already using it: nuclear power. 

Nuclear may not be renewable, but it is carbon-free, Poor explained in a Jan. 11 memo:

“The proposal for 100% clean [power] by 2030 recognizes that many Vermont utlites have embedded contracts for low carbon nuclear power through 2034, and that regardless of whether Vermont officially includes nuclear as part of its porfolio, the nuclear facilities in New England provide a valuable reliability service that Vermont depends upon and are likely to contnue to depend upon. A 100% Clean requirement is likely only slightly less costly than a 100% Renewable portfolio requirement, with equal emissions impact between the two policies, but recognizes the reliability that nuclear brings to the region.”

The nuclear facilities Poor refers to are Seabrook in New Hampshire and Millstone in Connecticut. Vermont Yankee and Pilgrim in Massachusetts both closed about a decade ago, facing intense pressure from unfriendly state regulators, Fukashima-inspired upgrades, and aggressive price-point competition from regional fracked natural gas. 

In 2011, the Vermont Senate walked away from Vermont Yankee nuclear power, thus increasing both the cost of instate energy and the state’s electricity carbon footprint. The Legislature almost simultaneously passed laws requiring utilities to buy solar power and excluding  large-scale hydro from Quebec from the state’s renewable energy portfolio. 

As H.289 goes over to the Senate, the Legislature’s upper chamber once again faces a choice: raise energy costs and please the renewable energy lobby, or keep costs low and buy nuclear. 

Electricity accounts for just 5% of Vermont’s carbon footprint. The hundreds of millions spent if H.289 becomes law won’t fund the Clean Heat Standard and other ambitious state initiatives. to reduce emissions from heat and transportation. The Legislature also is staring in the face $7 billion in the hard capital needs to build new school buildings. And housing. And floor repair. And $100 million in the child care tax most employers and residents will be paying soon.

Will the Legislature choose the expensive path to 100%? Or the non-VPIRG approved less costly path? We’ll know soon.

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Categories: News Analysis

15 replies »

  2. Re: ” The amounts of total renewable energy required by this subsection shall be 63% …until reaching 100 percent on and after January 6, 2030.”

    One hundred percent!

    Michael J. Fox made the point as well as anyone.

    “I am careful not to confuse excellence with perfection. Excellence I can reach for; perfection is God’s business.”

    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.

    • Ahh…but, Mr. Eshelman- There a billions at stake, just here in Vermont.
      Unrealistic goals are part and parcel to Vermont’s legislative boondoggles for the past 50 years. No amount of logic nor reasoning will overcome the hubris or the effect dollars have on out elected ‘representatives’. None. We need only look back 2 decades to see the disastrous effect of Health Care legislation, or Education Funding. Since 2020, when the GWSA survived scott’s veto- the lies have only increased as the stakes grew. The only way to change this path is thru the electorate recognizing the lies and voting accordingly. Climate Evangelism™ is a juggernaut, feeding relentlessly on tax dollars to grow- and it’s defeat is to replace the legislators shoveling tax dollars in it. An almost impossible task, given Vermont’s current demographic of voters.

    • Mr. Bammo: I agree with you and wasn’t questioning the legislator’s methods or motives. I’m simply pointing out that they are lying…. to themselves and to us.

      “And thus I clothe my naked villainy
      With odd old ends stol’n out of holy writ;
      And seem a saint, when most I play the devil.” – – W,S.

  3. The only path I see is to bankrupt the Vermont citizens by legislating more nonsense, and this 100% zero carbon is the biggest boondoggle of them all !!

    Wake up people, they don’t care.

  4. Please do Vermonters a service and provide and publish the list of names of the alternatives to vote these people out Nov 2024.

    • If there are any alternatives… one can only hope… and continue to prod the VT GOP to do what its charter claims it does.

  5. The question we should all be asking is, of course, “Why are we going to such lengths to reduce carbon?”

    Reduce pollution? YES!
    Reduce sewage discharge into Lake Champlain? YES!
    Reduce trucking food from China and Chile? YES!
    Reduce the abundance of one of the most common elements on earth? WHY?!

    The science on climate change is about as settled as the science on MRNA vaccine safety. IF we go along with the narrative that CO2 will kill us all in 6 years, THEN we have already failed. STOP playing their silly games.

  6. Jay- at 18 years or older, a district resident for one year, a state resident for 2 years, then in Vermont you can run for house or senate. Get Vermont Young Republicans hooked up into the system. Then the are alternatives to vote them out : https://www.vermontyr.org

  8. I imagine God looking down at earth, getting smoggy with pollution. And ask “wait, you’ve been *burning* my creations to make heat/electricity/etc? Huh? I gave you rocks that if you just stick them close enough together in water? Makes heat.”

  9. It is telling that the goal is 100% emissions reduction. This makes it clear the goal is to eliminate us all since each of us is a source of emission. Our legislators driving this are either complacent in our elimination or incredibly inept

  10. Plant 150,000 trees. That’s more than enough to make Vermont carbon neutral.

    Ah, but that’s not really what it’s all about, is it? And if you haven’t been paying attention, what it’s all about is this – $$$$$$$. How to get it out of your wallet and into the pockets of political cronies, lobbyists, PACs, and eventually, the politicians themselves.

    Essentially, this is just another money laundering scheme, plain and simple. If it makes you poorer, more compliant, and more controllable, well that’s just an added bonus.

    Still not convinced? I’ve been around awhile, so I know what the environment was like in the 1960s. Depending on where you were, exhaust from smokestacks clouded the sky, rivers caught on fire or if they didn’t, they were polluted with things like PCBs. You surely couldn’t eat fish caught in them. Smog covered all our major cities. Look around today. I think if anyone said back then that our environment would look like it does today, they’d have been laughed out of the room. Yet here we are. And left to our own devices, we’ll be far better sixty years from now. Why? Because 90% of us want cleaner air, cleaner water, and fewer chemicals. How was this achieved and how will it continue to get better? The natural evolution of science. What was impossible 60 years ago is taken for granted today. It’s the free market at work.