Vermont Governor Opposes Ambitious Renewable Energy Bill Over Costs

Citing a disputed cost study, Vermont Governor Phil Scott is pushing back against a bill that mandates faster, wider adoption of renewable energy by the state’s power utilities.

House Bill 289, which would require utilities to purchase 100% of their electricity from renewable sources by 2030, represents “an enormous step forward” in getting new renewables projects built and cutting carbon pollution in Vermont’s electric system, said Ben Edgerly Walsh, a lobbyist with the Vermont Public Interest Research Group.

The bill would augment Vermont’s Renewable Energy Standard [pdf]  set in 2015, which requires utilities to purchase 75% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2032, with 10% coming from sources within the state. At the time, “these goals seemed like the limits of what might be both economically achievable and sustainable for Vermont’s power grid,” explains [pdf] Renewable Energy Vermont.

Should it pass, the bill would make Vermont one of the U.S. states with the fastest timeline to reach 100% renewable electricity, writes Environment America.

Other updates [pdf] to the standard, proposed in H.289, require utilities to buy 20% of their power from in-state renewable energy projects built recently, plus another 20% from newer regional sources like offshore wind. The bill offers a longer time frame for smaller, rural utilities and eliminates new biomass-generated electricity from counting towards the target.

Though Vermont’s grid already relies strongly on renewables—notably, hydropower from Quebec—the state has lagged on expanding other sources like solar and wind. Clean energy advocates also say the grid is not as fossil-fuel free as claimed, arguing that emissions can be obscured through accounting with renewable energy credits.

The Conservation Law Foundation explains that the emphasis on new renewable energy is important: as the electrification of transport and heating increases, so will overall electricity demand, and “new energy sources can match the need without having to turn to fossil fuels or backup electricity from dirty power plants.”

Proponents say the accelerated time frame is necessary because so much has changed since the original standard was set: renewable energy prices, have gone down, the state legislature has adopted the Global Warming Solutions Act, and the impacts of climate change have continued to worsen—like last summer, when Vermont was subjected to intense floods.

But Scott says the US$1-billion cost of fulfilling the bill’s requirements—as calculated by Vermont’s Department of Public Service (DPS)—is far too much. DPS has proposed an alternate, cheaper bill “that would exceed H.289’s progress toward meeting emissions reductions,” he said in a statement.

As residents “stare down an enormous increase in property taxes,” he added, “the last thing Vermonters can take is the risk of another billion dollars of costs being imposed on them by this Legislature.”

“There is clearly a more affordable and equitable alternative to H.289. We can and should do better.”

The DPS valuation has been disputed as a crude estimate that does not reflect the specifics outlined in the bill. Although the director of DPS’ regulated utility planning division has conceded as much, he maintains the central point of the estimate is that costs will be significant—and pointed out that no other estimates have been proposed.

“You have to start somewhere,” Scott said. “So the billion dollars is something to react to, and if it’s less, then I think the utilities, who had a lot of input into the bill, should tell us what it is.”

Passing the bill would make Vermont a leading state in the energy transition, even though Renewable Energy Vermont says its current targets trail behind other New England states like Rhode Island (which also aims for 100% renewable energy by 2030), and Massachusetts and Maine (both aiming for 80% by 2030). Maine also now leads the country in home heat pump adoption.