Business representatives — from a goat farmer to the CEO of Green Mountain Power — gave lawmakers a cross-sectional view of climate change’s impact on the Vermont economy.
After the two-hour hearing on Wednesday, East Montpelier Rep. Tony Klein, chairman of the House Committee on Natural Resources and Energy, proclaimed Vermont businesses are “ahead of the curve” in climate change preparation, but cautioned against “resting on our laurels.”
Twenty individuals testified at a joint hearing held by the House committees on Commerce and Economic Development, Agriculture, and Natural Resources and Energy. They came from corporate giants such as IBM, Casella Waste Systems and Green Mountain Power, government agencies such as agriculture, transportation and tourism, and from family businesses. Some of them owned up to being part of the problem — by emitting methane gas or contributing to fuel emissions — while others, like IBM, emphasized their own environmental chops, touting gains in energy efficiency and cutbacks in carbon footprints.
Despite extensive reports on climate change’s potential impact, it wasn’t all gloom and doom. Mike Raker, a consultant with Agricultural Energy Consultants, said climate change has spurred innovation on Vermont farms. Several dairy farms now have anaerobic digesters, which capture and use methane gas from manure. This “quantum leap forward in terms of manure management” would not have occurred, Raker contended, “if this climate change issue was not on our radar.”
Joseph Fusco, vice president of Casella Waste Systems, said his company has reduced its carbon emissions by 45 percent since 2005. Sen. Norm McAllister, a dairy goat farmer, said his operation is managing just fine.
Others, however, described havoc wreaked by extreme weather events and spoke about the challenges of planning for unpredictable weather.
Sen. David Zuckerman, a self-employed farmer, spoke about the challenges of planning when to plant or harvest crops. He said it was “very strange” to harvest leeks this January.
Ken Albert, founder of Shelburne Vineyard, said erratic weather has endangered his grape crops. “There’s overall more risk than we’ve ever had before … we need guidance on how to manage the situation.” To adjust, he has to ditch certain grape varieties and adopt more hardy hybrids.
The impacts of climate change on agriculture reach beyond the farmers themselves, said Bill Mares, former president of Vermont Beekeepers Association. Changes in weather patterns over the last decade are stanching the production of honey.
“To me, anecdotally, climate change is the reason for a slow steady decline in production,” said Mares.
Tim Perkins, director of the Proctor Maple Research Center at UVM, said the impact climate change has had on the maple industry has been cushioned by high market demand and technological advances in tubing systems and spout sanitation. But he cautioned about what’s to come. The sugaring season is starting earlier, which makes it hard for producers to predict when to tap, and lasting for a shorter period of time. On average, it is 3.3 days shorter than it was 50 years ago, which, Perkins pointed out, is significant when tapping traditionally occurs for a monthlong period.
The sugar maple species is slowly migrating north, which will also hurt the syrup sector, Perkins said. “We can expect to gradually see a shift in the composition of tree species from the maple, beech, birch association we currently have to a composition that is more oak, hickory, pine … you can’t make maple syrup if you don’t have maple trees.”
Mary Powell, CEO of Green Mountain Power, cited ways the company has had to adapt in recent years. GMP has “gone from a company that used to engage operationally in storm planning and recovery in a significant way maybe once every couple of years to basically it almost feels like a 24-7 part of the operation,” she said.
This has had a big impact on the company’s budget, she said. In recent years, GMP has spent $13 million to $14 million annually to ensure its electrical grid can withstand storms, Powell said. Since the start of its fiscal year — October 2012 — it has spent more than $6 million responding to weather events.
“These weather events that we are experiencing are more freakish and frequent,” Powell concluded.
Sue Minter, deputy secretary of the Agency of Transportation, said the volatile freeze-thaw cycles of 2011 produced “the largest crop of potholes in our state’s history.”
Minter, who also acted as the state’s Irene recovery officer, said Hurricane Irene highlighted a more potent problem in Vermont. The state’s roadways frequently transect its rivers, and there are roughly 485,000 bridges and culverts at risk of flooding.
Minter said her agency also recognizes it has a mitigation responsibility. “We know we need to have more efficient vehicles, we need to focus on less carbon-intensive fuels, we need to reduce demand on the system, and we need to think about reducing our idling through things like roundabouts.”
Alexis Nelson, executive director of Vermont Association of Snow Travelers (VAST), talked about how winter tourism has been affected. She blamed a nearly 50 percent decrease in snowmobiling membership on erratic weather and shorter winters. VAST is still reeling from $1 million worth of trail repairs after Hurricane Irene, Nelson said, but the sport is working to adapt by moving toward a more fuel-efficient fleet of snowmobiles.
However William Driscoll, vice president of Associated Industries of Vermont, which represented manufacturing companies, warned that the state should take a measured response on climate change. “We need to keep the conversation in the context of Vermont,” he said. Driscoll said many manufacturers were more worried about the Legislature than climate change.
“To be honest, the biggest concern related to climate change for most Vermont businesses, and certainly Vermont manufacturers, is not climate change itself but rather it is the legislative regulatory responses that may be coming because of climate change,” he said.
Chuck Ross, secretary of the Agency of Agriculture, touched on the regional and global nature of climate change impacts, noting that the Midwest drought has reverberated throughout Vermont’s agricultural sector in the form of higher grain prices.
Two ski resort owners — from Sugarbush and Jay Peak — had been scheduled to testify but did not show up. Megan Smith, commissioner of the Department of Tourism & Marketing, said ski resorts are offering “four season activities” to compensate for periods of scanty snow.
Rep. Bill Botzow said he left the hearing with two “core questions”: “Are we well-structured to mitigate the challenges that are ahead, and are we well-structured to seize the opportunities that are ahead?”
