This commentary is by Linda Gray, a resident of Norwich. She has served on the Norwich Energy Committee since 2008, chairs the town Democratic Committee, and is chair of the board of Vermont Conservation Voters.
I hear on the news about the current increases in heating oil and gas prices, but they aren’t hitting my wallet. Why? Because in 2015, my late husband and I installed a heat pump on the main floor of our home, and in 2020, I installed another (on the basement level), plus a heat-pump water heater.
We had previously weatherized our home, installed solar panels in the field below our house, and bought an electric car.
We did all this because we knew two key things from my husband’s 30 years of work on renewable energy: 1) the reality of the climate crisis means that we need to stop burning fossil fuels, and 2) making these changes would save us money in the long run.
Those two ideas are also embedded in the Clean Heat Standard bill in the Vermont Legislature.
First, what is a Clean Heat Standard? It’s a performance-based program that would require the companies that sell fossil fuels for heat in Vermont to reduce their climate pollution over time. To meet the new performance standard, fossil fuel suppliers will have to sell cleaner heating fuels or pay for clean-heat work done by others, like weatherization or heat pumps.
Why do we need it? All the people who study the climate crisis and what to do about it — from the Vermont Climate Council to the U.N.’s climate panel — say that we must stop burning fossil fuels as quickly as possible: Key Thing #1. But most Vermont homes and businesses are continuing to burn them.
To change this, we have to come up with a structure that can steer a decentralized, high-carbon market to low-carbon options. That’s what the Clean Heat Standard does, and the Climate Council specifically recommended that the Legislature adopt it this session.
How will a Clean Heat Standard help? The bill, H.715, makes a fundamental change to a historically scattered sector and — for the first time — gives us a lever to steer it in the right direction: toward greater adoption of low-carbon heating options. The Clean Heat Standard sets up clear and increasing requirements for emission cuts.
Here’s where Key Thing #2 — saving money in the long run — enters the mix. The system of clean heat credits establishes a mechanism for other dollars to be put toward clean heating options, and makes them more accessible to more Vermonters, moving beyond early adopters like me. The bill specifically requires fossil fuel companies to direct a significant chunk of their clean-heat work toward low- and middle-income Vermonters.
The Climate Council recommended policies for both a Clean Heat Standard and weatherization, aiming for them to work together. The Legislature is doing just that in moving forward both H.715 and approximately $80 million for weatherization investments in the budget (a down payment toward the Climate Action Plan goal of weatherizing an additional 90,000 low- and moderate-income Vermont homes by 2030). With this combination, real progress can be made on affordable, price-stable, clean-heat options. As my husband and I knew, in the long run, the genuine solution to high heating costs is to stop using fossil fuels.
How can we be sure it will work as intended? Like pretty much all significant policies, it will have to be monitored. But H.715 includes provisions to ensure accountability: The only measures that will be eligible for clean heat credits must 1) actually reduce emissions on a global basis and 2) be delivered to Vermont homes and businesses.
The bill lays out specific parameters for the program with detailed operational rules to be developed by state regulators in a transparent, public process. That’s how quite a few big policy initiatives have been carried out in Vermont, including the low-income weatherization program, Efficiency Vermont, and the Climate Council.
We know that we have to make this transition, so let’s do it with a program that provides predictability, clarity and stability to both customers and suppliers.
