MONTPELIER — When artist Jamie Cope bought her small and cozy modern-looking 2-story home near the state capital 26 years ago, she didn’t pay much attention the home’s heating system.
Today, it’s front and center in her mind: She just got a $1,149 bill for a delivery of propane, which she uses for hot water and cooking. The cost per gallon was $3.729.
“It’s just going up and up,” said Cope, 89, who was shocked by the late-winter charge. She had to call her gas company and arrange to make the payment in three installments.
Like many Vermonters, Cope is finding heating costs taking an increasing bite out the wallet. Her entire yearly bill for propane bill in 1988 – she keeps good track of her costs – was just $797. Now one delivery is more than that, and she doesn’t even use propane for her main heating source, which fortunately is wood. (Her son is a logger and lives with her).
A comprehensive new report by the Vermont Public Interest Research Group calls the escalating and inescapable costs of staying warm in winter a quiet crisis facing Vermont. But the report also says the crisis presents a great opportunity for innovation, economic development and jobs and a step toward a greener and more sustainable future when it comes heating the state’s homes and businesses.
The 32-page report, titled, “Clean Heat: A vision for Vermont’s Renewable Heating Future,” was authored by Clay Francis and released last week. It provides a provocative 20-year blueprint for how Vermont can shift away from its costly reliance on heating oil, propane and natural gas to less costly and locally grown sources for heating. In the process, it foresees the state becoming a leader in the nation in finding ways to decrease reliance on those sources.
“Vermont can meet almost 90 percent of its thermal needs through increased energy efficiency and Vermont-based renewable heating,” the report says. “Vermont has the opportunity to create a more affordable, cleaner heating future that will keep our energy dollars in-state,” the report says.
Francis has pulled together a broad array of statistics which paint a picture of an unsustainable future if we continue to rely on fossil fuels for heating. Over 80 percent of Vermonters heat their homes and businesses with fossil fuels like fuel oil, propane and natural gas, whose costs have been steadily rising – doubling in the last decade. He notes that Vermonters pay nearly a billion dollars a year for their heating costs, and thus 80 percent of that money — $800 million – goes out of state.
By turning to local heating sources, from biofuels to wood pellets, solar and ground source heat, as well as increasing energy efficiency and using a variety of incentives to tighten up Vermont’s housing stock, the state can build “a clean heat future today that reduces our overall need for heating fuel and promotes the use of local, clean heating options from our farms and forests (which) will strengthen Vermont’s economy and environment while providing better price stability for consumers.”
Vermont has the second oldest building stock in the United States, with one third of its homes built before 1950, the report says, concluding: “Continuing to rely on fossil fuels to heat our inefficient buildings will only worsen the financial burden we face in years to come. We cannot simply pass these costs on to the next generation.”
Francis, who is a graduate of Vermont Law School’s masters program, has been working since last August on the issue of how Vermont can dramatically change its current fossil fuel mix. The impetus came from “kind of a groundswell” for the need for Vermont to address a wide range of energy issues, he said.
The state and Legislature, he notes, are moving on several fronts that tie into energy issues, including a rewriting of the states’ comprehensive energy plan by the Vermont Department of Public Service (DPS), a key guideline that will guide Vermont’s energy planning down the road.
Kelly Launder, assistant director at the DPS, says rewriting of the plan includes ongoing stakeholder hearings and public hearings planned around the state this summer. (A draft of the plan is at http://publicservice.vermont.gov/pub/state-plans-compenergy.html)
At the same time, there is entrepreneurial and agricultural enthusiasm for businesses that would provide home-grown energy sources, such as wood and switchgrass pellets, wood chips, and oilseeds to produce biofuels. The report notes Vermont has 84,000 idle acres of cropland and farmers can use existing equipment to grow oil-producing crops whose output could be used by farmers, ski areas, and industrial equipment.
And technical innovations are opening the door to utilization of a broader range of heating sources, such as add-on systems that can convert oil burning furnaces to use wood pellets.
Francis argues that there is growing support across the whole spectrum of business, state, municipal, local and private interests for “attacking the heating market.”
The current fuel mix in Vermont, according to the report, is 49 percent heating oil, 18 percent natural gas, 15 percent propane, 15 percent wood, and 3 percent other. The vision for 2031 would be to reduce energy use 33 percent with energy efficiency efforts and employ a fuel mix of 24 percent wood, 12 percent biodiesel, 12 percent natural gas, 12 percent electricity and other, and 7 percent grass pellets, and 4 percent solar hot water.
Vermont, thanks to Efficiency Vermont, a state utility, is already a leader in energy efficiency efforts, Francis says. By performing energy efficiency upgrades to less than half of Vermont homes and buildings, Vermont can reduce heating fuel demand by more than 33 percent and add 3,600 jobs during the next 20 years, he says.
The report calls for a wide range of measures that can reduce heating needs in the state, requiring efforts in the legislative, regulatory and municipal arenas. “There are a lot of moving part to this,” he admits.
They include:
• Accelerate upgrades of building efficiency standards.
• Implement time-of-purchase energy disclosure requirements that help Vermonters make smart energy choices.
• Adopt a biofuel requirement starting with a 5 percent blend and ramp up to a 100 percent requirement.
• Implement a renewable heating standard for new buildings.
• Institute high quality standards for wood pellets and other biofuels (Austria, for example, has done this already).
Vermont’s educational sector is helping with cutting edge research. The University of Vermont is working on how to transform algae (not the kind on Lake Champlain) into renewable liquid heating oil, for example.
New technology in home wood heating systems, especially the development of high-tech European wood boilers that are 70 percent to 80 percent efficient and clean-burning, offer another avenue for improvement. Since most heating systems have a 20-year life cycle and the average age of heating units in the state is 13 years, the state can use incentives to encourage modern heating systems which could have a major impact on the mix of fuel use.
The report notes wood heat is already in use at town, city and state facilities – 44 Vermont schools, numerous state buildings, three Vermont colleges and many industrial facilities – but there is room for considerable growth.
Sustainable harvesting – annual timber growth exceeds harvest by 43 percent, the report says – would provide jobs in the logging and timber industry as well as remove reliance on fossil fuels.
The report also looks at innovations in financing upgrades to heating systems. One simple idea is called Property Assessed Clean Energy, or PACE. According to the report, “PACE helps Vermonters come up with the upfront money they need to make significant, money saving energy renovations to their homes, businesses and farms.”
Property owners pay back the initial investment with their energy savings over time through a separate assessment on their property tax bill, which would continue with the house if it is sold until paid off. Some 40 towns have expressed an interest in the idea, though a legal obstacle currently would prevent the idea from being implemented, the report says.
Francis says aside from the idea of an all-fuels efficiency tax, VPIRG’s 20-year vision will have little extra cost. Vermonters are already spending a fortune on heating, and the idea is just to spend less and spend it more efficiently.
Matt Cota, executive director of the nonprofit Vermont Fuel Dealers Association, likes a lot of the ideas in the VPIRG report. He notes the group has “been on the biodiesel bandwagon” for some time, and that might help an industry that has seen consumer fuel demand decrease with rising prices.
“We’re not ideologues we’re businessmen,” Cota explains, saying his association is in the delivery business, not the fossil fuel business. “We’re looking to sell you BTUs. “
The association isn’t afraid of the changes VPIRG is calling for either.
“My grandfather used to sell ice and coal, that’s how he made a living,” Cota notes. Then along came refrigeration and oil. The industry has always had to adapt, and if deliveries switch to more biofuel and heating pellets, dealers will adjust and perhaps benefit.
That said, ultimately everything comes down to economics and not vision or green intentions.
For example, a load of wood pellets has only half the BTUs as a load of oil, meaning the economics will require twice as many trips to provide the same BTUs. Will that economic delivery model work? That needs to be figured out.
So too, he asks, is an all fuels energy efficiency tax a good idea and will it fly in the Legislature?
“The big issue is money, quite frankly,” he says.
