This commentary is by Jonathan Dowds, deputy director of Renewable Energy Vermont.
Cigarettes didn’t get any safer or less addictive when Philip Morris rebranded as Altria. Facebook didn’t get any less polarizing when it changed its name to Meta. Nuclear power isn’t any more appealing to Vermonters just because it is rebranded as carbon-free.
A proposal in the Department of Public Service’s 2022 Comprehensive Energy Plan to establish a “carbon-free” standard amounts to a rebranding to promote an ongoing role for aging nuclear power plants at the expense of the deployment of new renewable generating capacity.
When it comes to climate change, we need action, not rebranding that supports the status quo. We need to get to a place where every new car sold is electric and where every aging furnace is replaced with a heat pump. And we need to power it all by increasing our renewable electricity generation, not by increasing our reliance on nuclear plants.
Instead of a branding change to switch to a carbon-free standard, we need to update our current Renewable Energy Standard to require our utilities to provide 100% renewable energy.
Under a carbon-free standard, we can just keep grinding away with the status quo. A status quo that asks our New England neighbors to live in the shadows of nuclear reactors long after we have shut down nuclear power in Vermont and a status quo that continues to slow-roll new renewable construction.
When Vermont Yankee closed its doors, many Vermonters sighed in relief. But residents in Connecticut, New Hampshire, and bordering Massachusetts are still dealing with the realities of living next to nuclear facilities. Nuclear facilities that are aging with signs of wear at a time when extreme weather from climate change is placing new stressors on these plants.
The people who live and work near these plants live every day with warnings like this one from the Massachusetts Department of Emergency Management, stating, “People that live, work, or vacation within 10 miles of a nuclear power plant should be prepared for an emergency at a nuclear power plant.”
A carbon-free standard would codify the status quo and perpetuate an environmental injustice.
Rebranding as a carbon-free standard now would be all the more misguided because, with the passage of the landmark Inflation Reduction Act, there has never been a better time for Vermont to invest in renewable energy alongside the electrification of our thermal and transportation sectors.
The Inflation Reduction Act provides tax credits that will cover 30% of the cost of a new renewable energy or battery storage project and includes new provisions that will allow nonprofits and municipal governments to access these benefits as well. Doubling the amount of in-state renewable energy that we build by 2030 would result in hundreds of millions of dollars of federal tax credits flowing into Vermont.
The Inflation Reduction Act is already credited with creating more than 100,000 new jobs across the country, and by investing in renewable energy and electrification, we can bring new jobs right here to Vermont.
The Inflation Reduction Act also includes a host of other tax credits and rebates that support families and businesses as they transition to electric vehicles, heat pumps and electric stoves, and invest in other efficiency measures. Electrification helps combat climate change and protects Vermonters from an increasingly volatile fossil fuel market.
Making sure that electrification is powered by renewable energy maximizes these benefits.
Real success fighting climate change comes from pairing electrification with the development of new renewable energy. Vermont legislators have a choice: They can update our Renewable Energy Standard so it really spurs the development of new renewables in Vermont and throughout the region, or they can rely on rebranding measures like a carbon-free standard in hopes of making us feel better about the same old path.
I know what I want. It’s real Vermont leadership on climate, not another meaningless rebrand.
