Don’t Burn Our Future: Clean Power Now

Jul 19

Does your life run on clean, renewable energy? For pretty much all of us, the answer is no. The cars we drive, the houses we heat, the stuff we buy, the food we eat—all of it depends at least in part on burning carbon-based fuels. And yet burning these fuels is causing a climate crisis that endangers our lives and the survival of future generations. We need to overhaul our energy system, and that’s not something that any one of us can do alone: We need leadership from the utilities who provide us with power. To secure a thriving tomorrow, we need to make it possible today for every single Vermonter to run on renewables instead of burning up our future.

Burning things costs us, now and later

The most effective way to stop the acceleration of the climate crisis—with its overwhelming floods, storms, droughts, heatwaves, wildfires, and other threats to our communities and ecosystems—is to stop burning things. Every day that we burn oil, coal, and gas, as well as liquid biofuels and biomass, costs us.

It worsens climate change, emitting greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere not only when these fuels are used but when they are extracted, processed, and transported.
It reduces our planet’s ability to sequester carbon, when forests are harvested at a large scale for biomass or for replacement with biofuel crops.
It sickens and kills us: air and water pollution from power plants is a major health hazard worldwide.
It weakens the ecosystems that sustain all life, polluting waterways, jeopardizing food production, and impacting biodiversity.
It keeps us dependent on a global supply chain that can easily be disrupted by natural disasters or unrest.
It disproportionately harms those who are already burdened and vulnerable: low-income people; Black, Indigenous, and people of color; and young children.
In Vermont, it causes us to lose about 2 billion dollars a year to giant out-of-state oil and gas corporations whose CEOs make thousands of dollars an hour, while Vermonters struggle to make ends meet.

We’ve known the solution for decades: Stop burning things to generate energy. Clean, low-emissions power has never been more available. But to make it work, we need systemic change to create a local energy democracy by the people and for the people.

How to stop burning things 101

Reduce energy use. Invest in large-scale weatherization, including rental properties. Incentivize public transportation systems to get cars off the road. Make it easy for all Vermonters to replace oil and propane heating systems and gas-powered cars with clean, efficient, safe, cost-saving alternatives.
Build alternatives. Build out new sources of truly clean and renewable energy to benefit our communities: more rooftop solar, community solar and wind installations, and thermal energy networks (which recycle waste heat and harness the temperature of the earth to heat and cool buildings in a highly efficient localized network).
Phase out dirty and dangerous fuels. Stop subsidizing fossil fuel plants and other outdated oil, gas, and coal infrastructure. Invest that money instead in a local energy economy that provides green jobs and reliable power from sources of energy that don’t cost us anything, don’t ruin our future, and will never run out.

Where we are :(

While Vermont claims to be green and renewable, our energy situation is far from clean, renewable, or resilient.

Problematic definition of “renewable.” Right now, our utilities’ energy portfolio (see page 10 of this report) relies heavily on (a) large hydropower, which no other New England state considers to be actually renewable (more information about why here and here) and (b) Renewable Energy Certificates, which allow us to claim renewability while still depending on fossil-fuel plants and not bringing any new renewables online. In addition, biomass or “renewable” natural gas are often promoted as viable fuel alternatives when in fact these produce significant, often uncounted, emissions and negatively impact human and ecosystem health (more details here), especially in already burdened and marginalized communities.

Subsidies for oil, gas, and biomass/biofuel peaker plants. Our regional energy grid operator, ISO-NE, subsidizes carbon-based-fuel plants using millions of dollars of ratepayer money. Many of these plants are called “peaker plants,” meaning that they spend most of their time on standby, only firing up when energy demand is highest. We are paying about 15% of our energy bills to these plants so they can produce a few hours of high-emissions, high-pollution electricity every year. Imagine where we could be if ISO-NE invested all that money in renewable alternatives and reducing peak demand, instead!

New legislation. The new Renewable Energy Standard, passed by the VT legislature this spring, takes two big steps in the right direction. The bill, a collaboration between VT’s utilities and climate and environmental groups, significantly increases the requirement for low-emissions renewables, from 10% by 2032 to 40% by 2035. It also doubles the requirement for new local or regional renewable energy, bringing good jobs and clean, local energy to our state and region. Unfortunately, the trade-off was to eliminate off-site net metering, the system whereby people could buy shares in a community solar field and receive credits from their utility for the energy those solar panels produced.

Where we could be :)

The solutions we need are within our reach.

Energy conservation. Every unit of energy we don’t use is a unit of fuel we don’t need to burn. Energy efficiency and conservation solutions like weatherizing buildings can dramatically reduce energy demand while saving money and making people more comfortable in their homes. While Vermont has Weatherization Assistance Programs that offer free weatherization services to low-income homeowners, it can be difficult or impossible for renters to get their homes weatherized. Creating a registry of rental properties is the first step toward a comprehensive weatherization program to benefit renters.

Community solar. Community solar is another potential solution to the current energy crisis. One successful example lies in the Ten Stones Community Solar Collaborative in Charlotte. Ten Stones, a collaborative housing community in Charlotte, originally faced challenges in their attempts to transition to solar energy. Whether it was limited space on roofs or financial barriers, community members were left frustrated by the process of pursuing solar alone. However, Vermont’s group net-metering law allowed members of this community to join together and share a 24kW solar array. By allying with groups such as Real Goods Solar and finding reliable financing sources, this community has been able to transform the way they receive energy, with project payback expected in 10 to 12 years and the solar array ultimately viewed as incredibly productive. This collective model could be implemented in communities across Vermont so this benefit is shared statewide, but will require the utilities’ cooperation to do so!

Thermal energy networks. These networks are utility-scale infrastructure projects that connect multiple buildings into a shared system that can recycle waste heat and use the temperature of the earth to provide efficient heating and cooling. New York State has passed legislation requiring gas utilities to start laying thermal pipe systems as well as, or instead of, gas pipe systems. According to the US Department of Energy, the ground-source heat pumps used in these networks can reduce energy consumption by as much as 72 percent compared to standard equipment.

Eliminating carbon-burning peaker plants. Retiring Vermont’s carbon-burning peaker plants is not unfeasible. In Massachusetts, similar shifts have been made with the creation of the Office of Energy Transformation (OET). One of the OET’s first focus areas will be “decarbonizing how we meet peak electric demand,” specifically seeking alternative solutions to peaker plants. While work still needs to be done to prevent the use of biofuels as an alternative, the discussion surrounding peaker plants marks a change in the mindset on how energy is produced. These same discussions could be happening in Vermont to support both our economic and sustainable development as a state.

Ratepayer protection. Investing in community-oriented renewables will be far less costly in the long run than continuing to rely on fuels that burn. And we can also ensure that no one has to shoulder an unfair financial burden in this transition. For example, the New York State Senate has passed legislation to protect ratepayers from high utility bills. The NY HEAT Act specifically caps utility costs at 6% of income for low and middle class households, limiting potential hikes from the utility companies as the state moves away from natural gas. This act, along with others surrounding the NY Public Utilities Commission regulations, prioritizes the financial boundaries of New Yorkers when it addresses utility costs that have come with the shift to clean energy.

In Vermont, a ratepayer protection study is underway, and our legislature can use it to enact a similar statewide program in the 2025 session.

Send the bill to those most responsible. Vermont’s new Climate Superfund Act empowers the state to seek reparations from those most responsible for creating (and profiting from) the climate crisis: the fossil-fuel companies.

New business models for utilities. Nations and states are implementing alternative business models for utility companies to create a more equitable distribution of costs and an overall cleaner energy system. Massachusetts’ water utility has shifted to a tiered rate system for water payments across the state, creating a simple, efficient system that results in rates that are more affordable for low-income customers. In Germany, the energy business model has shifted to prioritize battery storage, which can limit the peak load and overall lower electric costs for consumers. These same strategic shifts could be considered by Vermont's utilities to support both a more just distribution of financial burden and a move toward renewable energy statewide.

Our asks

We ask Burlington Electric Department to:

Drop the plans to expand the McNeil Generating Station
Plan to shut down the McNeil Generating Station and the Burlington GT Peaker Plant in the next five years and replace these with energy conservation and efficiency measures and solar, wind, heat pumps, and thermal energy networks.

We ask Vermont Gas Systems to:

Stop promoting “renewable” natural gas (RNG), liquid biofuels, biomass, and hydrogen as a “clean” alternative to fracked gas and oil
Stop the purchase of any more of these fuels moving forward
Stop investing in any more burning infrastructure or fuels
Leave the American Gas Association

We ask Green Mountain Power to:

Incentivize community solar for their customers
Continue to incentivize battery storage for customers

We ask all electric utilities to:

Provide clean solar and wind electricity to their customers
Invest in solar- and wind-powered heat pumps and ground-source thermal energy networks to keep our buildings cool during heat waves and warm in the winter without burning fuels
Support ratepayer protection policy to ensure everyone can afford their energy bills
Subsidize demand-response to reduce energy use, especially at times of peak demand

We ask the legislature to:

Enact community solar procurement
Enact a ratepayer protection program
Enact a landlord registry as a first step toward a rental weatherization program
Refuse clean heat credits for RNG, liquid biofuels, biomass and hydrogen in the Affordable Heat Act.