Thursday, April 20, the House held its initial debate and voted 98-46 to approve the Affordable Heat Act. The Affordable Heat Act requires fossil fuel corporations and utilities that import heating fuels into Vermont to reduce their climate pollution over time, in line with Global Warming Solutions Act requirements. This landmark legislation has two goals: to reduce climate pollution and to reduce the costs of home and building heating for Vermonters over time.
Following the vote, House leadership made the following comments:
Speaker of the House Jill Krowinski (left):
“The Affordable Heat Act creates opportunities for us to move toward a cleaner, more sustainable energy future. We need to reduce the impact of rising heating fuel prices on lower and middle-income Vermonters and help them shift to more affordable, stable home-heating solutions. This legislation is among the most meaningful actions we can take to reduce carbon emissions, build resilience, and help families transition our economy away from reliance on fossil fuels. The Affordable Heat Act is vital for our state’s environment and economy. The cost of doing nothing is too great, and we must act now.”
Rep. Amy Sheldon, Chair, House Committee on Environment and Energy (center):
“Climate change is disrupting lives all over the world, and at the same time, dramatic fluctuations in global fuel prices are hurting Vermonters. The Affordable Heat Act will enable all Vermonters to reduce the costs of heating their homes while also addressing climate change.”
Rep. Laura Sibilia, Vice Chair, House Committee on Environment and Energy (right):
“Fixed-income Vermonters, rural Vermonters, and low- and moderate-income Vermonters are being exposed to greater and greater financial and health risks as a result of the unregulated and volatile global pricing of thermal heating fuels. Vermonters this year paid $2.00 more a gallon for heating oil than they did in 2021. Vermonters with means are already reducing their use of fossil fuels to save money. The Affordable Heat Act puts us on a careful path towards a vote in 2025 that could help Vermonters and fuel sellers alike.”
You can learn more about S.5 ‘The Affordable Heat Act’ – an act relating to affordably meeting the mandated greenhouse gas reductions for the thermal sector through efficiency, weatherization measures, electrification, and decarbonization here.
Categories: Press Release
Those of us who aren’t low income, and those of us who aren’t any longer middle class because the needle has moved 20% in just the last year will no longer buy housing in your damn state.
We the working class will no longer be bullied by your BS climate change agenda.
Good luck, I won’t be in Vermont to see it.
ANR Secretary Moore reiterated her estimate of $.70/gallon last Friday on The Morning Drive, and expressed concern that, ”S.5 could actually ruin the Clean Heat Standard because the costs, based on the current framework, are likely to be unaffordable and untenable.” Secretary Moore’s statement cannot be ignored.
Nor can PUC Commissioner Tierney’s warning, “I don’t think Vermonters understand the Mack truck that’s coming at them when you start matching up resources to priorities this plan is going to embody. I just don’t think they understand how this is going to impact their lives and what it’s going to cost.”
The judgement of ANR and PUC staff, who are experts with relevant education and experience, must be given precedence over the opinions of proponents in the Legislature, few, if any, of whom have the qualifications to second guess these judgements. Indeed, since ANR and PUC are tasked with designing the rules for the Clean Heat Standard, rather than legislators doing it themselves, does that not prove their expertise?
All I can say is that these folks have long since drunk the coolaid of climate hysteria and seem uninterested in the facts about what really drives climate change. Spoiler alert it’s not CO2. Hint: it’s called , the Sun. Anyone who has studied the climate and the stunning warming and cooling trends that have engulfed our planet over time knows that it is the powerful changes in solar activity that correlate with both the advancing and retreating of massive glaciers ( some 12,000 feet thick) over Vermont . Now that’s real climate change and oh gosh all before anyone knew what fossil fuel was.
Legislators are like puppets, repeating a new narrative when the old one is collapsing , intellectually disingenuous. And to think that the public does not see through that is not a good sign of self -analysis.
This is a bad piece of legislation,we have no carbon problem in Vermont,and high gas prices came from our President selling off our strategic fuel supplies and closed the Keystone Pipeline.I hope the Governor vetoes this bill and it is successful.I also hope citizens and fuel dealers resist this bill in any legal way! Representative Charles Wilson
We are going to look back at this legislation in a few years and utter the words, “boy, that sure was a dumb law”. The Climate Change Cult has bought into this series of lies and will not listen to scientific reason no matter how much you try to show them. Logic has gone out the window.
Google “duplicity”.
The idea of doubleness is at the core of duplicity. Duplicity comes from a Latin word meaning “double” or “twofold,” and its original meaning in English has to do with a kind of deception in which you intentionally hide your true feelings or intentions behind false words or actions. If you are being duplicitous there are two yous: the one you’re showing and the one you’re hiding. And—key to the idea of duplicity—you’re hiding that you in order to make people believe something that’s not true.
Not exactly a positive attribute I’d say. Sound like anybody we’ve got under the “Golden Dome”? Vote the duplicitous dirt bags out !
“rising heating fuel prices” … “dramatic fluctuations in global fuel prices” … “greater and greater financial and health risks as a result of the unregulated and volatile global pricing of thermal heating fuels” — So this bill adds even more to those prices in some righteous extortion racket! They are truly despicable. They say it’s your choice! But one is rewarded and the other punished. (Except the “right” choice will also cost you.)
Also, there’s one reason only that fuel prices rose dramatically over the past year: Joe Biden. I recently recorded my heating oil costs since 2009 as I cleaned out old files. They generally ranged between $2 and $3 per gallon (up and down) until 2022, since when they now hover around $5.
Climate Change. Oh my goodness!! There has to be some climate change in play. Think what it would be like if at the North and South Poles, there was no change in temperature. At the low end the ice would be built up into unimaginable amounts; or problems because of it being too warm. The Almighty has designed things to function pretty well over all the thousands and thousands of years of existance.
Vermont experinced a glacier once, the evidence is all around us. The impact on climate change because of fossill fuel use is minimal, very minimal at best. There is something else in play with these folks; it is money and control of more things. Both of these are not compatible with the needs and wants of Vermonters, and they have spoken clearly; but deaf ears seem to be in play as well.
Now in my late 60’s, I’m glad I lived my life in a country whose politicians, businesses and schools worked honestly and hard to keep their promises of education, social security and pensions. Hard working politicians and companies that afforded the opportunity to get good jobs, pay off both college and graduate student loans, to continue to afford mortgage payments even after a career change that cut previous income in half but was very rewarding in other ways, and finally the ability to pay off the mortgage while young while also caring for aging parents who themselves had benefitted from the largesse of honest and thoughtful government and business. I pity the young families today who can expect little of this life, and even now fear how much will be stolen from me as I approach my 70’s and 80’s!
Has anyone ever paid Jill Krowinski for her professional opinion about anything? I can find no evidence of professional, critical, thinking or peer reviewed, published research. Not surprised.
This will not help Vermont
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
from Macbeth
A dark Cave. In the middle, a Caldron boiling. Thunder.
Enter the three Witches.
1 WITCH. Thrice the brinded cat hath mew’d.
2 WITCH. Thrice and once, the hedge-pig whin’d.
3 WITCH. Harpier cries:—’tis time! ’tis time!
1 WITCH. Round about the caldron go;
In the poison’d entrails throw.—
Toad, that under cold stone,
Days and nights has thirty-one;
Swelter’d venom sleeping got,
Boil thou first i’ the charmed pot!
ALL. Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and caldron bubble.
2 WITCH. Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the caldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt, and toe of frog,
Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,
Adder’s fork, and blind-worm’s sting,
Lizard’s leg, and owlet’s wing,—
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
ALL. Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and caldron bubble.
All 3 of these moon bats state we pay too much for Fuel Oil and this bill will raise the price by something approaching 25%. In what Orwellian through the looking glass world do you lower prices by raising prices? It is like some sick Monty Python skit without the “Well I got better” punchline. The cost of doing nothing by the way is nothing. Vermont is not and will never be even a fart in a hurricane wind of carbon production. Compared to China, India, and other countries who continue to build coal and gas plants at record pace while the US hobbles itself by closing and tearing down coal, gas, oil, and nuclear power plants. I don’t behoove those countries wanting cheap forms of energy that is the only path to the standard of life we enjoy in this country. Why must we tear at our proverbial clothes and reduce our quality of life, could it be oh VIRTUE SIGNALLING gone wild. News flash the rest of the world does not care and you are ruining future of our children, stop!