This commentary is by Marisa D. Keller of Montpelier and Roger White of Middlebury. They are volunteers with 350Vermont, an organization building a people-powered climate justice movement for a thriving world.
Gov. Phil Scott has once again blocked important action on climate, endangering our ability to transition to clean and just renewable energy and secure a livable future for ourselves and our children. On Thursday, May 23, he vetoed H.289, the new Renewable Energy Standard (RES), which passed the legislature by a wide margin this spring. H.289 is a key step toward building a strong local renewable energy supply and freeing us from our costly dependence on fossil fuels.
Vermonters currently lose a total of about $2 billion a year to out-of-state fossil fuel companies whose CEOs make thousands of dollars an hour. Imagine if our dollars could instead stay in our communities, paying for good jobs in the renewable energy sector and giving us access to energy that doesn’t cause 5 million deaths worldwide every year, pollute our environment, and worsen the heat waves, storms and floods of the climate crisis.
The new RES takes us critical steps closer to a renewable energy future. H. 289 gives us:
New renewables: the bill significantly increases the requirement for low-emissions renewables, from 10% by 2032 to 40% by 2035, holding utilities accountable to Vermonters’ best interests;
A local energy economy: the bill doubles the requirement for new local or regional renewable energy, bringing good jobs and clean, local energy to our state and region;
Limits on biomass: while falling short of an explicit ban, the bill strictly curtails new electricity from biomass, a high-emissions, air-pollution-heavy energy source that does more environmental harm than good.
The governor claims that the bill would be a burden to ratepayers. However, the Joint Fiscal Office’s review of the bill estimates that since the RES would speed the path to electrification, “households would experience savings on total energy costs over time” and “be better off financially in the long term.” This is because ratepayers would be able to reduce their spending on heating oil, gasoline, and other fossil fuels.
According to Department of Public Service models of the bill, H. 289 will provide $560 million in net benefits, including $51 million in saved health care costs and $400 million in general savings from reduced greenhouse gas emissions.
In dismissing the importance of the RES, the governor’s administration also cites the fact that our electricity sector accounts for, in official reckoning, just 2% of our greenhouse-gas emissions. But not only do official analyses fail to properly tally emissions from our current electricity supply (for example, large hydro power), a huge part of our climate action plan is to electrify our heat and transportation. Securing plentiful renewable electricity is key to transforming our largest emissions sources.
In return for these benefits, the average ratepayer would see a baseline increase in electric bills between $2.24 and $3.73 a month by 2030. To ensure that this doesn’t impact our most vulnerable citizens, we also need the “Energy Cost Stabilization Study,” a first step toward a ratepayer protection program to ensure Vermonters don’t spend an untenable portion of their income on energy. This study, part of S.305, is currently awaiting the governor’s signature.
H. 289 isn’t the whole solution: to ensure that Vermonters don’t bear the burden of our transition to cleaner energy, we must also implement ratepayer protection, develop a strong statewide program for community solar and implement thoughtful criteria for the siting of renewable energy projects. But the bill represents genuine progress towards the necessary goal of clean, affordable energy for Vermonters.
This legislation is, in a very real way, the foundation for a viable future. Preventing or delaying the transition to renewables will cost us far more than this bill ever could. We urge our senators and representatives to override the governor’s veto and pass the revised Renewable Energy Standard this year, setting us on a path toward clean and affordable energy for all Vermonters!
Read the story on VTDigger here: Marisa D. Keller and Roger White: Override Scott’s Renewable Energy Standard veto before it’s too late for a livable future.