Clean Heat Standard: Lost Time is Never Found Again
By: ANR Secretary Julie Moore
We have all witnessed the impact of our changing environment. It is warmer, storms are stronger, and repeated floods are testing the limits of our resilience. The need for climate action is urgent, but this doesn’t mean that the transformation won’t be complex and challenging and come with real costs.
In the pursuit of solutions to the climate emergency, we cannot ignore household financial realities.
As many can attest, the gritty tasks of replacing boilers and furnaces with heat pumps, weatherizing older homes and upgrading electric panels is expensive. Vermonters – as dedicated they are to climate action – will find these hard investments to prioritize when they are increasingly struggling to pay for housing or buy groceries.
When the Legislature was considering the “Affordable Heat Act” in 2023 – also referred to as the Clean Heat Standard – it seemed obvious it would require a significant, upfront investment by Vermonters to achieve both the greenhouse gas reductions and the promised long-term savings.
In contemplating this legislation, there were a lot of big numbers tossed around – billions of dollars in both costs and benefits, with some seeming to suggest this policy would effectively pay for itself. I felt it was critical to tease apart the household benefits – things like lower long-term energy bills – and societal benefits – things like improved air quality and reduced carbon emissions – from household costs, including labor and materials for installation, which largely occur upfront.
So using the best available – but admittedly incomplete – information, I estimated the investment – the upfront costs – Vermonters would need to make to fulfill the obligation the Legislature made on Vermont’s behalf when they overrode the Governor’s veto of the Global Warming Solutions Act (GWSA) in 2020.
I was prepared for my attempt to put a rough price tag on the Clean Heat Standard to be unpopular but hoped that it would result in a more complete and honest conversation with Vermonters.
Unfortunately, that was not what happened. My cost estimates were dismissed as political, irresponsible and misleading, intended only to scare Vermonters. There was no substantive discussion and Vermonters were denied the chance to be given a sense of the cost of this program before state agencies were directed to jump straight to program design.
Over the past 18 months, the Public Utilities Commission and the Department of Public Service have engaged consultants and worked extensively to more fully understand what would be required to establish a Clean Heat Standard, investing hundreds of thousands of dollars of state resources and many, many hours of staff time. An initial report-out from this work was published earlier this month.
While the report highlights that uncertainty remains around the exact cost of implementing the Clean Heat Standard, it affirms that it will require billions of dollars of upfront investment, a disproportionate amount of which will need to take place between now and 2030 deadline imposed by the GWSA. And the data from the report suggests that it will be particularly challenging to shield low-income Vermonters from bearing the economic brunt of its implementation.
I am left feeling disappointed because making the transition away from fossil fuels is a goal I very much share.
Rather than taking the time to develop thoughtful policy that considered affordability and efficient use of resources in building a durable climate strategy, the Legislature directed state agencies to fully design a policy with no regard for the cost. The result is a policy that is technically complex, will be hard or impossible to administer and, perhaps most important, will be so expensive it is unlikely to gain the broad public support needed to succeed.
As climate change continues to impact Vermont and Vermonters, I am asking our legislators to carefully consider and weigh the information being developed by the Public Utilities Commission and the Department of Public Service, and commit to open dialogue, collaboration, collegiality and math.
The successful creation of a far-reaching and consequential policy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions – such as the Clean Heat Standard – must include real consideration of its costs. Otherwise we will continue to squander our most valuable resource in charting a path to climate safety – time.