Vermont is not on track to meet its 2030 climate emission-reduction commitment, but instead of accelerating to reach that mile marker, Gov. Phil Scott wants lawmakers to let him throttle back.
Scott says the cuts in carbon pollution would come at too high a cost for many Vermonters, especially those facing sharply higher property taxes and other expenses.
“We’ll continue to do our part but at a pace we can afford,” Scott said at a recent press conference.
Lawmakers and climate activists are incensed. They argue that Scott has been a Sunday driver on climate initiatives for years, so Vermont is no nearer to its goals. And now with an impending deadline, they say Scott should be hitting the gas.
“He is retreating at exactly the time when bold leadership is essential,” said Paul Burns, executive director of the Vermont Public Interest Research Group.
Whether Vermont lives up to its climate commitments is shaping up to be one of fiercest fights of the 2025 legislative session. Scott and his Republican allies, reinvigorated by electoral gains that eliminated the Democrats’ veto-proof supermajority, say Vermont can’t afford to meet existing goals. Climate activists and many of their Democratic allies say the state can’t afford not to.
Lawmakers must decide next year whether to continue on the path they have laid out to reduce the use of fossil fuels to heat Vermont homes and businesses. In 2023, they enacted the clean heat standard and tasked the Public Utility Commission with fleshing out a mechanism that would, over time, convert homes heated with natural gas, oil and propane to lower carbon sources of heat.
More recently, studies have suggested this clean heat transition would be tricky to administer and would raise the price of fossil heating fuels. That’s something Scott and many newly elected Republicans have vowed to prevent.
Now Scott is signaling that he wants not only to block the clean heat standard but also to unwind the 2020 law upon which it is based, the Global Warming Solutions Act.
“We’ll continue to do our part but at a pace we can afford.” Gov. Phil Scott
In 2017, Scott pledged that Vermont would stay the course to meet the targets of the Paris Agreement, the landmark international climate treaty from which then-president Donald Trump withdrew. Legislators enshrined the state’s climate goals in law. The Global Warming Solutions Act calls for Vermont to reduce its carbon emissions to 26 percent below 2005 levels by 2025; 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030; and 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.
If Vermont isn’t on track to achieve these goals, the law allows advocates to sue and ask a judge to order the state to take more drastic measures. The first lawsuit has already been filed. The plaintiff, the Conservation Law Foundation, says the state is likely to miss the imminent 2025 goal.
By delaying the targets set for 2030, Scott hopes to buy the state some time, protect Vermonters from higher fuel costs and avoid what he sees as inevitable litigation.
“We can’t put unrealistic goals out there and then wait to be sued,” Scott said. “That just slows everything down and impacts us financially and doesn’t really attain the goals that we hold.”
The state faces multiple crises at the moment, including a lack of housing, workforce challenges and flood recovery, he said. Climate change, he added, remains a concern but can’t be the only one.
“We have to pick and choose,” Scott said. “We can’t have all of them be our focus.”
On the issue of emissions reductions, Scott said he has ideas for “ways to make the goals more attainable and more cost-effective in the long run,” but said he would not provide details until lawmakers meet in January.
His ideas will likely get a better reception after an election in which the GOP picked up 18 seats in the Vermont House and six in the Senate. Democrats say they’ve received the message about affordability loud and clear and will make it their top legislative priority, though the immediate focus will be property taxes. Changing existing climate policy is certain to receive pushback from advocates and some lawmakers.
“What I’m hearing is a request for the administration not to have to comply with the law,” said Rep. Laura Sibilia, (I-Dover), one of the staunchest defenders of the Global Warming Solutions Act.
She said she’s open to negotiating how the state moves toward its climate goals but is not interested in retreating from them.
“If we are not making progress, we are leaving Vermonters behind,” Sibilia said.
Sen. Anne Watson (D-Washington), who expects to be the new chair of the chamber’s Natural Resources and Energy Committee, is also likely to play a key role in any discussions about moving deadlines. A high school physics teacher, Watson says she will be guided by the knowledge that the Global Warming Solutions Act was based on the same science that informed the goals of the Paris Accord. The treaty aims to keep the rise of global temperatures well below 2 degrees Celsius compared to preindustrial levels.
She said she’s open to talking to administration officials but would view any change in the pace of emissions reductions through the lens of what is needed globally.
“I’m going to stick with the science,” Watson said. “I am going to be looking at all of our options to try to stay the course.” She said she is “all ears” if Scott offers plans that clearly ensure emission reductions.
United Nations climate experts say countries are far behind in meeting their climate obligations. Vermont is, as well. By 2021, the latest year for which data is available, the state had only reduced total emissions by 3 percent compared to 1990 levels, far from the 40 percent cut it will need by 2030.
Natural Resources Secretary Julie Moore said she is likely to ask lawmakers to extend that deadline. “The overall desire here is to be ambitious but achievable in the path we’re charting to decarbonize by 2050,” Moore said.
She declined to say how far back the 2030 deadline should be moved, noting that more analysis must be done to see what is reasonable.
Moore said, however, that changes under way in the transportation sector suggest those emissions cuts could hit required levels by 2034. That’s due to the growing popularity of electric vehicles and 2022 state rules that require automakers to sell an increasing percentage of zero-emission vehicles through 2035.
Moving back the 2030 deadline would actually reaffirm the state’s commitment to the 2050 goal in a way that aligns with the ability of Vermonters to pay, she said.
Timing is important, she said, when encouraging people to replace oil furnaces with cleaner options such as cold-climate heat pumps. Offering incentives to somebody whose furnace is near the end of its life, rather than imposing an arbitrary deadline, could be a more cost-effective way to enable the transition.
Debate about the cost of reducing emissions in the heating-fuel sector has been raging for years. Jared Duval, executive director of the Energy Action Network and a member of the state Climate Council, has been on the front lines of those fights.
“Those science-based targets are designed to avoid the worst impacts of a destabilized climate.” Jared Duval
Vermont may be an environmental leader in some respects, such as land conservation. But the state still has the second-highest per capita annual emissions in New England, at 14.1 metric tons per person, he said. And since 2005, the state has reduced climate pollution the least of any of its neighbors.
“The idea that Vermont is greener than everywhere else, when it comes to climate pollution, it’s a myth, unfortunately,” Duval said. The 2030 deadline is not arbitrary; it was set because time is of the essence, he added.
“Those science-based targets are designed to avoid the worst impacts of a destabilized climate,” he said.
Duval ticked off reasons for staying on the current path: Emissions cuts made now are more effective because their benefits are cumulative. Vermonters need to do more, not less, to make up for years of inaction relative to their neighbors. Arguing that Vermont is so small that its emissions don’t matter is a cop-out; any state or nation can say that, he noted.
Just as electric vehicles are more efficient and cheaper to operate, transitioning to cold-climate heat pumps would, over time, save money for many homeowners — especially those burning expensive oil and propane, he said.
It is frustrating that climate discussions are being framed as something the state can’t afford, he said, when transitioning off fossil fuels would both help the state meet its climate goals and save people money.
“There is no path to energy affordability as long as dependence on fossil fuels continues,” Duval said.
When Russia invaded Ukraine, fuel oil prices rose by $2 per gallon. And yet the clean heat standard was demonized when a 2023 report by the Energy Futures Group showed it might increase fuel oil prices by pennies per gallon between now and 2030, he said.
Moore counters that other cost estimates in the same report showed short-term increases closer to 50 cents per gallon and far higher after that.
Moore acknowledges that moving away from fossil fuel heat is vital to meet the state’s climate goals. The sector represents 31 percent of climate emissions, second only to transportation.
But many Vermonters can’t afford the up-front cost of making the switch themselves, and how much help they’ll get remains unclear, she said.
“I think there was a very clear signal from Vermont voters this November that they are concerned about climate and they are concerned about affordability,” Moore said. “And therefore, it is incumbent on both the executive and the legislative branches to figure out a way to accommodate and address both of those concerns.”
The original print version of this article was headlined “Brake Time? | Gov. Phil Scott vowed that Vermont would meet the targets in the Paris Accord. Now he’s not so sure.”
This article appears in Nov 27 – Dec 3, 2024.
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