Editor’s note: This commentary is by John L. McCormick, of Bristol, who for three decades was a lobbyist in Congress for environmental organizations on matters relating to climate and energy. He is a member of the Bristol Energy Committee.
[T]he Vermont General Assembly is roaring to get started. November’s election created a new political dynamic by delivering a veto-proof majority and Gov. Phil Scott’s re-election. That 40 percent of House representatives will be serving a first or second term gives the leadership another variable as it plans the legislative agenda. A too-progressive session could reverse the blue wave for some narrow victory freshmen.
The agenda will surely include unresolved issues and new challenges: minimum wage increase, pension protection, paid leave, and Lake Champlain cleanup. Looming in the corridors, however, is the pent-up demand for a state carbon tax. Veterans are determined to put it on the calendar and many new members campaigned for it. The stage was set for serious consideration when Scott’s Climate Action Commission recommended a tax, and the previous budget includes funds for the Joint Fiscal Office to thoroughly examine its costs and benefits. JFO awarded a contract to Washington, D.C.-based Resources for the Future and awaits the final report mid-January. Its arrival will heat the interest and opposition and capture public debate for much of the first session.
Meanwhile, draft carbon tax bills are being shaped for early introduction and, once again, Speaker Mitzi Johnson will wrestle with the downside of putting any of them to a vote as she did in 2017. It need not fall to this scenario. Regional consideration of the pending impacts of a warming climate has prompted new approaches to reducing the carbon dioxide culprit. Chief among them is the Georgetown University’s Transportation and Climate Initiative (TCI) focused on reducing consumption of fuels by promoting smart retooling of transit sectors of 11 Northeast states including Vermont. Scott has been a strong advocate for TCI’s potential including an aggressive shift to battery powered and zero emission vehicles.
His spokesperson Peter Walke, deputy secretary of the Agency of Natural Resources, said of the dialogue: “Addressing greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector requires working together across state lines. Vermont cannot afford to go it alone.” In Vermont, transportation fuel accounts for 47 percent of total CO2 emissions. Walke is working with partner states to design a policy to reduce the problem and deliver it to the legislature for enactment. Former Agency of Transportation Secretary Chris Cole and TCI partner described the eventual policy as: “not a carbon tax. It is a cap-and-trade, a cap-and-invest policy.”
Cap-and-trade is the method the nine state members of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) uses to reduce electric power plant fossil fuel emissions by auctioning pollution credits needed to operate under a regionally smaller CO2 cap. Vermont’s 2017 reimbursement of auction revenue totaled nearly $1.5 million, $1.44 million, of which, was deposited into the Electrical Efficiency Fund. RGGI’s decade of learning and success is a strong signal Vermont can accept a similar approach to transportation fuel emissions. A future Legislature will draw up the regulatory details. The governor can urge the Legislature to study the TCI campaign in anticipation of his plan to lower vehicle CO2 emissions.
That would leave the building CO2 reductions open to improvement. Currently the state’s Weatherization Assistance Program treats about 2,000 homes of which 900 are homes of low-income families. That slow pace was challenged by the Climate Action Commission’s recommendation that state weatherization programs should be accelerated. It offered no plan to fund that. Two ideas are taking shape to provide the funds.
The Vermont Climate Economy Action Team has been advancing initiatives to improve energy efficiency and reduce Vermont’s carbon footprint. Its mission statement is clear. “Too many Vermonters pay too much to heat their homes each year, and this burden is especially great for low income Vermonters.” It recommends doubling, from 950 to 1,900, the households the Weatherization Assistance Program serves using state appropriations of $9.5 million annually.
It avoids putting a price on carbon, a fundamental goal of climate control advocates. Rather, the budget appropriation cuts that cord and the efficiency signal is lost.
The Bristol Energy Committee has offered its carbon pricing recommendation by drafting a low-income weatherization bill for its elected representatives in the Addison-4 District. By adding a $0.02 cent fee to distribution costs of all liquid fuels, $12.2 million collected, in the first year, would provide grants to weatherize low income homes and particularly recipients of the state’s Low Income Heat Energy Assistance Program. It directly lowers CO2 emissions, heating bills, provides comfort, reduces winter health concerns, creates jobs and expands local economies.
Scott could introduce it as his carbon pricing policy, in the building sector, and promote TCI as a reasonable program to close the gap on Vermont’s goal to reduce in-state emissions to 75 percent of 1990 levels by 2050. He and the General Assembly leadership should lead the CO2 debate.
