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.