This commentary is by Christine Donovan of Stowe and David Farnsworth of South Royalton, who were task leads for the Vermont Climate Council.
Any honest discussion about fuel choices for heating our homes has to answer the question, “Compared to what?” You may like one thing and I may like another, but it has to come down to comparing the pros and cons of each.
In our work for the Vermont Climate Council, we took almost a year working with others comparing options for Vermonters to reduce our heating bills and the climate pollution from homes and other buildings. We studied the costs, availability and climate impacts of a number of heating choices, from the fossil fuels we import now to electric heat pumps, renewable biofuels, and advanced wood heat.
While each of the clean heat resources comes with its own challenges, we found that they are all available today, are affordable, and are much less polluting than the oil, propane and gas they would replace.
We do not have the luxury of totally excluding such clean heat options from a potential list of solutions. Vermonters need to heat their homes. And they need support in choosing among the cleaner choices that are available. The key is to compare all the fossil and clean heat options on a common scale: namely, how much climate pollution do they cause or avoid?
At the end of the year, we recommended to our Vermont Climate Council subcommittee that Vermont adopt a Clean Heat Standard. Later on, our recommendation was unanimously approved by the entire council in its report to the Legislature.
A Clean Heat Standard creates a framework for heating fuel companies to be innovative and reduce emissions, just as the Renewable Energy Standard provided a clean electricity framework for our electric utilities. A clean heat standard is open to the use of any sustainably produced fuel or technology that contributes to reducing emissions. It also gives heating fuel customers choices of what works best for them.
Darren Springer observed that Vermont already has forward-looking heating fuel providers offering weatherization services, wood pellets, renewable fuels, heat pump installations, and many other products that would be incentivized under a clean heat standard. This policy would provide cleaner choices for consumers and an important business pathway for all heating fuel companies into the clean energy future that Vermonters have indicated that they want for our state.
As Richard Faesy noted, any contractor or retailer who installs or sells a clean heat product could benefit from the sale of the clean heat credits earned by that product. These benefits would most likely appear in the form of additional financial incentives to businesses and homeowners that purchase these products and services like insulation, heat pumps, and air sealing. In other words, because of a clean heat standard, the environmental and other benefits of this work will — for the first time — have an economic value.
The Climate Council and equity advocates have made sure that a clean heat standard contains provisions for extra support to low- and moderate-income Vermonters. Current legislation also establishes an Equity Advisory Board to help ensure that overburdened and underserved communities are well represented and that they benefit from the program.
Looking back, it was the Global Warming Solutions Act that created Vermont’s Climate Council, which, in turn, produced the Climate Action Plan and recommendations like the Clean Heat Standard. It is telling that these days that statute is referred to simply as “the Solutions Act.”
One of the solutions that it created is the Clean Heat Standard — a solution because it will encourage and enable Vermonters to make the needed comparisons among cleaner choices to heat their homes.
An important bill (H.715) is now pending in the Legislature to create the Clean Heat Standard. We urge the Legislature to pass it without delay.
