Editor’s note: This commentary is by Shanna Ratner, who has over 30 years of experience in rural community and economic development as the principal of Yellow Wood Associates. As an independent citizen, she has been one of the “green vesters” in Montpelier on several occasions, working to draw attention to the current administration’s energy policy.
[W]hat about a forward-looking inclusive approach to energy transformation in Vermont?
The state of Vermont under Gov. Peter Shumlin has set a statewide “goal” of 90 percent renewable energy by 2050. This is not a goal; it’s an activity. There has been no effective statewide discussion and certainly no consensus reached on why we should be engaged in this activity, let alone how. What are the conditions we are trying to create?
There are many conditions we could be focused on creating by reducing our dependence on fossil fuels. We may want to create energy security, price stability and predictability, increased wealth and disposable income for those least able to afford energy at present, increased community wealth through shared ownership of energy infrastructure, increased value for our homes and buildings, improved health of our natural resources, improved human health, and/or improved resilience to climate change. Making progress toward any of these goals will require an understanding of the many aspects of energy transformation, not only industrial scale renewable energy generation.
What we need is a new, inclusive approach that empowers regions and municipalities to identify and implement solutions that provide measureable and measured progress toward goals that serve Vermonters before developers and are based on multi-stakeholder dialogue, not government fiat.
What we have now is a Comprehensive Energy Plan with no true goals based on aggregated statewide data that has been run through a statistical model based on a set of assumptions that are poorly understood. There is lots of potentially useful information in the plan, but it has not been used to chart an inclusive approach to energy transformation that engages Vermonters in positive ways. Our top-down, government-knows-best approach has encouraged developers at the expense of citizens and municipalities and is proving to be highly divisive. Act 174 notwithstanding, no meaningful role has been given to regions of the state and their municipalities to identify energy transformation goals and craft solutions appropriate to their context.
What we need is a new, inclusive approach that empowers regions and municipalities to identify and implement solutions that provide measureable and measured progress toward goals that serve Vermonters before developers and are based on multi-stakeholder dialogue, not government fiat. The dialogue should be informed by real time data on energy usage, waste and other factors at the municipal and regional levels in the electric, transportation and heating sectors. This will require changes in energy information systems which will tell us many things we do not know now. For example, which towns have experienced actual decreases in electricity use over time and what can we learn from them? How many fuel suppliers operate in each town and what are the trends in fuel oil and propane use? Are ride-share programs and alternative transportation options effective in reducing gasoline and diesel sales? Does renewable generation actually lead to a decrease in non-renewable energy generation or an increase due to the need for backup generation? Do we have examples of better energy storage and distributed systems that change this equation? What can we learn from people already living off the grid?
Today, Vermont utilities do not track energy use by municipal or regional boundaries, and not a single utility is able to provide up-to-date trend data on energy use by residential versus commercial and industrial customers over time and by municipality. There does not appear to be a system for data collection and sharing on distribution and use of heating and transportation fuels tied to municipalities and regions. If Vermonters are to be meaningfully engaged in energy transformation, we need transparent and accessible data from all relevant sources that is relatable.
A new plan should set specific and achievable targets at the state level with targets determined for each region and municipality based on understandable formulas. For example, efficiency targets (e.g. 10 percent reduction of electric, heating oil, propane and gasoline use at peak in two years) could be established in each sector – residential, commercial (including nonprofit), and industrial – for electricity, heat, and transportation based on the amount of energy used currently and the proportion that represents of statewide energy use. Similarly, renewable energy generation targets could be established based first on a thorough discussion of how much renewable energy we need to generate in-state versus import and why, and then on the amount of renewable energy currently generated and used in state in relation to the population base of the region. Some regions are already producing beyond their own needs while others are not. Opportunities for coordination and “trading” between regions could be considered as well such that regions that are overproducing for their own needs and could help to supply the needs of other regions would be compensated for their contributions. This would help spread the wealth related to energy production and use more evenly throughout the state, but only if communities have an ownership stake in local energy generation facilities. Meeting efficiency and baseline generation targets could be a prerequisite for “trading.”
Each region and its municipalities should be empowered to work together with the support of the state and the full engagement of nonprofits, social service agencies, citizens’ groups such as town energy committees, utilities and businesses, including renewable energy developers, to determine how best to meet their responsibilities under the plan in ways that are appropriate to the local and regional context and do not undermine stated goals. This will require new venues for civil discourse and collective problem-solving and adjustments to regulatory policies and approaches. We have the communication technology that could support rapid prototyping, shared learning and real progress. Instead, we are fixated on in-state renewable development driven primarily by profits and not the public good. Our top-down approach is excluding and alienating many Vermonters who would prefer to be part of the solution. We are going about this the wrong way.
Vermont is not homogeneous; each region of the state has specific energy use patterns, settlement patterns, resources, infrastructure and expertise that can help determine which approaches do and do not make sense in specific places. Though we will likely be tied to the grid for years to come, the likely future of energy is in decentralized or distributed power; not in centralized monopolistic utilities. We can help make this transition work for both our utilities and our communities by engaging in thoughtful dialogue and exploration now, but this requires a different way of doing business that begins with engaging Vermonters as trusted partners in our energy transformation.
