{"id":28342,"date":"2025-06-30T23:20:16","date_gmt":"2025-06-30T23:20:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/28342\/"},"modified":"2025-06-30T23:20:16","modified_gmt":"2025-06-30T23:20:16","slug":"the-clean-heat-standard-is-dead-what-comes-next","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/28342\/","title":{"rendered":"The clean heat standard is dead. What comes next?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Vermont, the state with the lowest overall carbon emissions<\/a> in the country, has become a national leader in efforts to address climate change. But this year, lawmakers were subdued about further efforts to lower greenhouse gas emissions.\u00a0<\/p>\n

One reason was that the political climate had changed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Democrats lost more seats in Vermont<\/a> than anywhere else in the country last November. The state faced multiple<\/a> lawsuits<\/a> against its landmark plan to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for their contributions to a warming world. Gov. Phil Scott, a legion of heating fuel dealers and a media campaign<\/a> run by a conservative super PAC convinced voters that the state\u2019s plan to reduce its second largest source of fossil emissions<\/a> \u2014 heating \u2014 was too expensive to be implemented.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone knew the plan was dead the day after the election,\u201d said Matt Cota, a member of the Public Utility Commission\u2019s Clean Heat Technical Advisory Group that studied the proposal, known as the clean heat standard.<\/p>\n

READ MORE<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Clean\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tby Emma Cotton<\/a>
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tJanuary 16, 2025, 7:37 pmJanuary 17, 2025, 9:47 am\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

At the national level, fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas \u2014 the largest drivers of climate change and increasingly expensive energy sources to produce and burn \u2014 strengthened their foothold in the U.S. economy when President Donald Trump declared an energy emergency<\/a> on the first day of his second term.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In Vermont, meanwhile, action on climate quieted, and perhaps the state\u2019s most comprehensive plan under consideration to reduce emissions entered a state of limbo. The clean heat standard, half a decade in the making, would have established a wonky credit market to regulate the heating of air and water in buildings like homes and hospitals. But it was neither adopted as law nor formally repealed this legislative session.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Instead, key lawmakers shuffled the plan into the dusty corners of committee. Advocates and lawmakers do not expect it to reemerge.<\/p>\n

The program\u2019s failure could leave the state with fewer options to reach the goals of the 2020 Global Warming Solutions Act, which legally mandates reducing emissions by 80% below 2005 levels by the midcentury. Critics say the state already missed the first deadline, and the first lawsuit against the state has already been filed<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Under the shadow of that deadline, why did the clean heat standard fail, and what might Vermont do next?<\/p>\n

An incentive structure<\/p>\n

Vermonters are among more than 10 million households, largely in New England and the Midwest, still dependent on heating fuels, like oil or propane, according to a May 2025 national report from RMI<\/a>, an energy think tank. Most of the households that use heating fuels live in single-family homes and skew more rural, older and more likely to live on a fixed income.<\/p>\n

The clean heat standard, also known as the Affordable Heat Act, was compelling because it relied on incentives. Instead of a simple tax, or fee, on heating bills, like the charge Vermonters see on their electric bills to fund efficiency programs<\/a>, the program attempted to promote efficiency through a credit system.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first conversation was, how can we reward these heat fuel dealers performing this efficiency work, this good work to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, by creating an incentive structure?\u201d Cota said.<\/p>\n

Fuel dealers have long delivered the fossil fuels to heat individual homes through Vermont\u2019s long winters. But these fuels and the people who distribute them are less regulated than other forms of energy like electricity. The standard would have created a registry that tracked fuel dealers and worked to help them acquire credits.<\/p>\n

\"AA fuel truck delivers propane to a home in St. Albans Town on Friday, January 17, 2025. Photo by Glenn Russell\/VTDigger<\/p>\n

Each \u201cclean heat credit\u201d represented a unit of greenhouse gas emissions eliminated because of actions taken by fuel dealers. Details like how fuel dealers could earn such credits were still in the works, but the intention was to push fuel dealers to promote weatherization and more efficient heating systems like cold-weather heat pumps. Then customers could access state incentives to help pay for them. (Additional incentives of up to $2,000<\/a> for heat pumps once available through the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act are now on the Trump administration\u2019s<\/a> chopping block.)<\/p>\n

Switching to more efficient heat pumps could reduce energy bills by an annual average of $990 in Vermont, according to the RMI report on heating fuels. Across the country, customers could save an average of $15,000 over the life of the heat pump. If all delivered fuels were replaced with heat pumps, the country would save nearly $8 billion in energy costs, according to the report.<\/p>\n

But program expenses rose because of possible subsidies prioritizing low- and middle-income Vermonters. As fuel dealers looked at taking on the costs of the program, it seemed clear that some of those costs would have to be passed onto customers, according to a January report<\/a> submitted by the Public Utility Commission. The kind of credit system had also never been done before, and Vermont would have had no other state\u2019s model to rely upon, which also increased overhead costs.<\/p>\n

\u201cModeling a complex sector-wide program is extremely difficult and relies on a number of assumptions that could vary widely from real-world implementation,\u201d wrote the public utility commissioners in the January report<\/a> to the Legislature. They told lawmakers their estimates should be taken as \u201cvery rough.\u201d<\/p>\n

Customers would pay approximately $0.08 more per gallon of fuel oil in 2026, according to the report, or about $56 for residents who bought an average of 700 gallons to heat their home. If customers continued to use fossil fuels instead of taking advantage of incentives to switch to other options, the cost could rise to $0.58 per gallon, or about $406 more by 2035 for the same amount of fuel.<\/p>\n

For the first decade, the commission\u2019s report estimated the program could cost the state, including those costs to customers, as much as $956 million. The commission did not recommend implementing it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u2018They just parked it\u2019<\/p>\n

While that number is large, whether it\u2019s considered affordable depends on a number of factors like how Vermonters heat their homes, the flexibility of their spending, and whether they use state incentives to lower their fossil fuel use.<\/p>\n

But the governor took the position that the plan was unaffordable no matter what. In 2022, Scott vetoed the bill\u2019s first version, H.715<\/a>, and that veto was sustained by a single vote<\/a> in the House.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A year later, in May 2023, it became the Affordable Heat Act, or S.5<\/a>, a bill that set up the clean heat standard for further study but did not implement the program. Scott again vetoed the bill, but this time he was overruled by the then Democratic supermajority in both chambers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That new law, Act 18, gave the Public Utility Commission and two advisory groups 18 months to figure out the details. In the 2025 legislative session, once the commission issued its January report, little action was taken<\/a>. Another bill, S.65<\/a>, would have repealed the clean heat standard completely but never made it out of committee.<\/p>\n

\"AThen-Sen. Chris Bray speaks at the Statehouse in Montpelier on Tuesday, February 13, 2024. Photo by Glenn Russell\/VTDigger Credit: Glenn Russell<\/p>\n

While the commission\u2019s final report was in development, the conservative super PAC Americans for Prosperity, funded by the Koch brothers, launched a $60,000 digital and mailer campaign claiming the standard would \u201cskyrocket\u201d Vermonter\u2019s utility bills and \u201cwreak havoc on Vermonters\u2019 wallets.\u201d<\/p>\n

That campaign skewed the definition of affordability and promoted misinformation, according to advocates of the law. But the Green Advocacy Project, a pro-clean heat group, contributed three times that<\/a> \u2014 $180,000 \u2014 to a Vermont super PAC to boost candidates supporting the program.<\/p>\n

But even that didn\u2019t help incumbents like Chris Bray, the former Democratic chair of the Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Energy who served in the Legislature for more than a decade. He lost his November race. In early June, Bray said part of that loss had to do with the campaign against the clean heat standard.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fossil fuel industry was vehemently opposed,\u201d Bray said. \u201cIt would\u2019ve been the country\u2019s first assessment on fossil fuels designed to look at their emissions impact and translate that into a variable fee.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bray had pushed back against the argument that the program was unaffordable. He asked lawmakers to consider not just the climate impacts but the volatile pricing of fossil fuels. During the winter of 2020 through the winter of 2023, the cost of heating oil more than doubled, according to numbers Bray compiled from the Department of Public Service and Joint Fiscal Office.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While the governor often cited a potential $4 per gallon increase<\/a> in fuel costs, far more than what the final commission report concluded.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If he\u2019d continued on as chair, Bray wanted to see his committee push the standard forward by working out wonky details like how much a credit would cost and how they could be obtained. But too many Democrats lost, he said, and the ones who remained were chastened by the governor\u2019s claims that the program was unaffordable.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThey just parked it,\u201d Bray said of Democrats.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There wasn\u2019t enough movement on climate and environmental work this session because legislators were playing defense rather than going on the offensive and continuing to try and make progress, Bray added.<\/p>\n

Sen. Anne Watson, D\/P-Washington, who took over as chair of the Natural Resources and Energy Committee after Bray lost his seat, said the standard wasn\u2019t a great fit for Vermont at this time. Because Vermont would be starting the standard from scratch, there were high overhead costs, and it would be easier if another state enacted the law first, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cNobody wanted to move forward with implementing it this session,\u201d Watson said. But she largely blamed state leadership.<\/p>\n

\"ASen. Anne Watson, D\/P-Washington, chairs the Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee at the Statehouse in Montpelier on Tuesday, January 28, 2025. Photo by Glenn Russell\/VTDigger<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s unfortunate that we\u2019re limited by a governor who doesn\u2019t want us to do the hard work of getting Vermonters off of expensive, price-volatile fossil fuels,\u201d Watson said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

At a conference in June at the University of Vermont, Lt. Gov. John Rodgers repeated these talking points, claiming that consumers, not oil companies, would have to pay for the clean heat standard.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery oil company has said, \u2018This is our business. If we have extra cost we have to pass it on to the consumer,\u2019\u201d Rodgers said in an interview afterward. \u201cBut there are people in the Legislature that are saying \u2018oil companies are going to pay for it,\u2019 and it\u2019s just a false narrative.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said the Affordable Heat Act should be repealed because Vermonters couldn\u2019t afford it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When asked if paying roughly $50 a year on heating oil was unaffordable \u2014 which Vermonters would pay in 2026, according to the PUC \u2014 Rodgers said he would have to go back to the report.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought it was much more than $0.08,\u201d Rodgers said, adding that if there was a real benefit from the standard, he might consider $0.08 a gallon affordable.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u2018<\/strong>There isn\u2019t currently an active plan\u2019<\/p>\n

As Vermont creeps toward its self-imposed, legally binding emissions deadlines, pieces of its first plan<\/a> to mitigate its contribution to climate change continue to fall away.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In 2021, a multistate pact to create a cap-and-invest program that would have reduced emissions from transportation, called the Transportation and Climate Initiative Program, crumbled<\/a>. Another plan to phase out the use of gasoline-powered cars and trucks is under direct threat from the Trump administration<\/a>. Now, the clean heat standard appears to be scratched off the list.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Last Tuesday, in a courthouse in Montpelier, Vermonters began to see the first skirmishes in what could be a long, drawn-out battle if the state doesn\u2019t come up with new ideas for meeting its goal.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a mechanism in the Global Warming Solutions Act where there\u2019s accountability for exactly this, where you have a governor obstinate against climate goals,\u201d Sen. Watson said. \u201cIt\u2019s played out in Massachusetts and maybe it needs to play out here.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

That mechanism is a citizen lawsuit.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Jenny Rushlow, an attorney in the clean energy and climate change program at the Conservation Law Foundation, successfully litigated that Massachusetts case.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now, her group is in the first stages of a suit filed against Vermont\u2019s Agency of Natural Resources, the state body in charge of implementing those reductions. The suit, filed in September 2024, alleged that the state was on track to miss the January 1, 2025, target to reduce emissions by 26% below 2005 levels.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The agency sought to dismiss that suit, and now both parties await the judge\u2019s decision. If he denies that motion, the Conservation Law Foundation\u2019s case \u2014 which argues that the review was so insufficient it was rendered invalid \u2014 would proceed, according to Elena Mihaly, the vice president for the organization in Vermont, after oral arguments on the motion.<\/p>\n

\"\"Jennifer Rushlow speaks at a press conference on Tuesday, June 21, 2022. Photo by Glenn Russell\/VTDigger<\/p>\n

\u201cThere isn\u2019t currently an active plan for how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the thermal sector at the level that\u2019s required,\u201d Rushlow said. \u201cThe clean heat standard was the focal point for reducing emissions from that sector, and it died under pressure from outside fossil fuel interests and misinformation about the cost of the program.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

But Mihaly said no part of this lawsuit hinges on whether the clean heat standard passed, nor could a judge siding favorably with her foundation force the Legislature to pass the standard or the Agency of Natural Resources to adopt it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Instead, the latest focal point in the Global Warming Solutions Act is the new Climate Action Plan set to be published on July 1, which will reset the state\u2019s priorities in reducing emissions. That plan is developed by a 23-member Climate Council legally obligated to produce the plan every four years. Now the council is considering a modified clean heat standard, according to Cota, who serves on the council.<\/p>\n

While the clean heat standard could have been a key mechanism to help them meet the emissions goals of the Global Warming Solutions Act, \u201cit was not ever going to be the silver bullet,\u201d Watson said.<\/p>\n

A leaky roof<\/p>\n

With limited progress made this legislative session, it\u2019s unclear what pathway the state has for meeting its emissions targets.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you look at what this Legislature did \u2014 or more accurately didn\u2019t do \u2014 on climate this session as compared to the last few years, it\u2019s a stunning reversal,\u201d Rushlow said. \u201cThat being said, the Legislature doesn\u2019t have a supermajority, and Gov. Scott loves to veto, particularly on issues related to the environment. So it\u2019s completely understandable that they were not confident in their ability to make progress on climate this session.\u201d<\/p>\n

In lieu of meeting the state\u2019s climate goals, Scott and fellow lawmakers have tried to cripple the Global Warming Solutions Act<\/a>. During the legislative session, the House Energy and Digital Infrastructure Committee took up H.289<\/a>, a bill that never made it out of committee but is intended to defang the Global Warming Solutions Act.<\/p>\n

In March, Jared Duval, a member of the Vermont Climate Council, testified on the bill, telling lawmakers: \u201cIt is important that we remember that there are costs not just to action, but of inaction.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

He gave an example: If you have a leak in your roof, there\u2019s a cost to get it fixed. But the cost of damage to the roof from inaction is far greater than the cost of the repair.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s too bad, because the problem didn\u2019t go away, but it\u2019s just being ignored for a while,\u201d Bray, the former lawmaker, said. \u201cIt\u2019s just going to be more expensive to address for having put it off. But ultimately, unless we\u2019re going to accept the idea that we\u2019re going to destroy the planet on our watch, we\u2019re going to have to do better.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Vermont, the state with the lowest overall carbon emissions in the country, has become a national leader in…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":28343,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[24413,24414,24415,24416,24417,24418,24419,746,24420,24421,24422,24423,24424,24425,24426,24427,24428,24429,24430,24431,159,24432,24433,4352,67,132,68,24434,24435],"class_list":{"0":"post-28342","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-affordable-heat-act","9":"tag-agency-of-natural-resources","10":"tag-anne-watson","11":"tag-chris-bray","12":"tag-clean-heat-standard","13":"tag-conservation-law-foundation","14":"tag-elena-mihaly","15":"tag-environment","16":"tag-global-warming-solutions-act","17":"tag-greenhouse-gas-emissions","18":"tag-h-289","19":"tag-h-715","20":"tag-jared-duval","21":"tag-jennifer-rushlow","22":"tag-john-rodgers","23":"tag-matt-cota","24":"tag-phil-scott","25":"tag-public-utility-commission","26":"tag-s-5","27":"tag-s-65","28":"tag-science","29":"tag-senate-committee-on-natural-resources-and-energy","30":"tag-transportation-and-climate-initiative","31":"tag-trump-administration","32":"tag-united-states","33":"tag-unitedstates","34":"tag-us","35":"tag-vermont-climate-council","36":"tag-vermont-legislature"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28342\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}