Update on S.5, the Affordable Heat Act (AHA)
You may have heard that the VT House overrode the Governor's veto of the Affordable Heat Act. While 350Vermont chose not to actively oppose this bill, we also did not actively support it. We have grave concerns that its promotion of biofuels will enable the greenwashing of our heating sector and divert us from real climate progress.
At the same time, we want to take a moment to acknowledge and thank you for the incredibly hard work so many of you did on this bill as we tried to make it a truly effective piece of climate legislation. Despite the bill’s final form, we have succeeded in changing the narrative on biofuels in Vermont.
When the AHA was first introduced as the Clean Heat Standard in 2022, no one was talking about how it would keep us hooked on burning carbon-based liquid, gas, and mass biofuels, fracked gas, and hydrogen. Thanks to our advocacy and that of our partners, proponents of the bill put in place some safeguards to reduce the risks from these biofuel and hydrogen sources. That was no small feat, given the incredible political and corporate momentum behind these fuels!
As a result of this work, many more people in Vermont understand:
why liquid biofuels, RNG, and biomass are harmful solutions to be minimized at all costs;
how the powerful develop climate policies in our state;
what we are called to do to reduce these risks and change these power dynamics.
The safeguards in the bill as it passed include:
Giving the Public Utility Commission (PUC) the jurisdiction to go beyond the standard, limited model in assessing the carbon life cycle and other impacts of biofuels
Requiring calculations of fugitive greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions from biofuels processing and distribution
Requiring that the carbon intensity score of biofuels decrease over time
Giving the PUC the responsibility to define and oversee the safeguards
Even with these safeguards in place, however, the AHA opens the door for so-called climate solutions that actually lead to higher GHG emissions and more social and ecological damage. The problems with biofuels are well documented. And the PUC is not designed to put climate, ecology/biodiversity, food productivity, and the well-being of low-income and BIPOC communities above corporate profits.
The AHA functions similarly to the current Renewable Energy Standard by allowing carbon-emitting and socially and ecologically destructive electricity to count as renewable. We are seeing in real time how difficult it is to fix the Renewable Energy Standard because of the powerful opposition of the utilities.
But all is not lost.
But all is not lost. We will continue to build support for solutions that will decrease energy-bills for the long haul, solutions that won't rely on growing, transporting, and burning carbon-based fuels to cut emissions. We will continue to show up with an increasingly large number of people to comment, testify, and protest. We will work to defend the integrity of real climate solutions. We will educate the general public about the problems with biofuels and the effective solutions that are available to us.
It is unfortunate that we will still need to put energy into keeping this new law from being counterproductive on climate. But as much as possible we will work to promote truly just and effective solutions in the same breath.
We say, power to the people and onward.