This commentary is by Annette Smith, executive director of Vermonters for a Clean Environment, a statewide grassroots nonprofit organization based in Danby.
Vermont’s 23-member Climate Council is in the final stages of constructing its Climate Action Plan to be delivered Dec. 1, as required by the Legislature’s override of Gov. Scott’s veto.
What has the Climate Council been doing and what can we expect?
In addition to the 23 members appointed by the speaker of the House, the president pro tem of the Senate and members of the Scott administration as required by the Global Warming Solutions Act, the Climate Council has five subcommittees populated by members of the Climate Council plus people chosen with specific expertise on specific topics.
Councilors and subcommittee members have attended a lot of video meetings.
Beginning in November 2020 and throughout 2021, the Climate Council, its steering committee and five subcommittees have held an increasing number of meetings increasingly closer together. In the final weeks when the Climate Action Plan must come together, the full council and most of the subcommittees are holding weekly meetings for two to four hours each.
As of this writing, which is late in the process, meeting topics and discussions have been mostly abstract. Now, with about a month to go, there are more conversations, fewer presentations, more consultant reports and action Items requiring agreement on specific recommendations. It feels rushed to the point of frantic.
A common theme in some of the subcommittees, most notably Agriculture & Ecosystems and Just Transitions, is time. “We do not have enough time,” they have been saying for months.
June Tierney, state Public Service commissioner and Climate Council member, spoke at a recent council meeting, stating that the time constraints “border on being criminal.”
The first presentations the Climate Council heard were from other states about their Global Warming Solutions Act process. Maine, Massachusetts and New York all had more time, at a minimum two years compared to Vermont’s one-year requirement.
The Massachusetts presenter gave one solid piece of advice: “Be realistic.”
The Science and Data Subcommittee is engaged in what might be considered mind-numbing discussions, studies, literature reviews of carbon and emissions accounting. Disagreement is surfacing about accounting for burning trees for electricity (biomass) and Hydro-Quebec power as more members of the public weigh in. Because emissions reduction is the only mandate in the Global Warming Solutions Act, how various sources are accounted for matters.
Calculations have also been done about the social cost of carbon, which the Science and Data subcommittee brought to the full council to adopt as an action item. A carbon budget was released recently. More consultant reports are expected.
Rural Resilience and Agriculture & Ecosystems subcommittees are the most relevant to adapting to the changing climate. The greatest tensions among the subcommittees come from Ag & Ecosystems, where members recognize the need to focus on the loss of biodiversity and the important role of Vermont’s mountains and forests for water resources, wildlife habitat and resiliency.
Unfortunately, the Global Warming Solutions Act makes emissions reduction a mandate, while not giving equal weight to how Vermonters — two-legged, four-legged and those that swim and crawl — need to address the increase in flooding, drought and more extreme temperature variations.
That Vermont has some of the lowest emissions in the country has not been mentioned in the Climate Council meetings. The focus is on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, which requires a lot of assumptions, modeling, accounting and easily-biased manipulations of data.
The Cross-Sector Mitigation Subcommittee is where it all comes together with what may become mandates. Its work has been broken up into sectors: transportation, buildings, electricity and non-energy.
To address buildings, a clean heat standard will be recommended. This could turn into a mandate implemented by the Public Utility Commission, involving credits that diminish the value of fossil fuels and put higher value on electric heat pumps, pellet stoves, “advanced wood heating” and biofuels.
For transportation, joining the Transportation and Climate Initiative is high on the list of recommendations. The initiative does not result in direct emissions reductions, so it has to be tied to the electricity sector and the electrification of the vehicle fleet to result in emissions reductions.
“Electricity” is being discussed as “clean and renewable,” implying continuation of nuclear power contracts and reliance on Hydro-Quebec electricity. A new renewable energy standard requiring more new in-state renewables or purchases of renewables from out-of-state will be part of the plan.
Members of the public have pointed out that electrification increases the impact of the extractive resource industries and, like the oil and gas industry, exploits Indigenous peoples and undermines fragile democracies. This topic does not seem to have gotten traction.
Solar hot water is not considered because it does not fit the utilities’ plan to control all electrical load by manipulating consumers’ batteries and appliances.
Everything in the plan must be viewed through the lens of “Just Transitions.”
The Legislature will be presented with a plan on Dec. 1 that may have a high price tag. We will see if the council has chosen to be idealistic or realistic.
