Pay No Attention to That Billion Dollar Price Tag!

House Ways & Means Chair admonishes committee not to consider massive cost of Renewable Energy bill to ratepayers.

The House Ways & Means Committee took a short break from their frantic attempts to spackle over the disaster that is the estimated 20 percent plus property tax increase – an “unintended consequence” of previous legislative fiscal incompetence and/or indifference about what things cost – with a briefing on H.289, An act relating to the renewable energy standard.

The gist of this bill is that it will move forward the date Vermont utilities must, by law, source 100 percent of their electricity from “renewable” sources from 2032 to 2030. It also forces the utilities to buy a bunch of that electricity from politically connected donors to the majority party who happen to be in the renewable energy business. (See: Conflicts of Interest in the Renewable Energy Standard Working Group.)

The original daily agenda of the W&M Committee featured a walk-through of H.289 by legislative council, followed by an overview of the fiscal note (how much the thing will cost and who pays for it). Weirdly – or perhaps not so weirdly when you consider how these people operate -- part two of this double feature was scrapped by the Chair, Emilee Kornheiser (D-Brattleboro).

In an awkwardly delivered explanation, Kornheiser went over the top to set parameters about what could and could not be discussed regarding this bill, “I don’t know if we’re going to have time to make it to the fiscal note today. We probably won’t. [She didn’t.] But what I do want to sort of preface this with is this is an incredibly complex bill with huge implications for the state, and the potential to do a lot of good in our – for our climate and for our climate resiliency. [No, it doesn’t.] However, our jurisdiction over this bill is like the narrowest of threads. Um… and so, I am hoping that we can all do our very best to just look at the implications of the revenue to the state…. I just want to say our jurisdiction and I’m hoping the testimony we take is really just going to stay narrowly on the revenue to the state. We have enough going on around here without taking on stuff we don’t need to take on.”

Translation: NO DISCUSSION OF THE BILLION DOLLAR PRICE TAX THAT WILL HIT VERMONT ELECTRIC RATEPAYERS IF THIS BILL PASSES WILL BE ALLOWED!

And since that time, the Fiscal Note has been scrubbed from the JFO website, and all references to it on the Ways & Means Committee website have also been erased. Luckily, I just happened to get a screen shot of it before it evaporated into the ether. (Scroll to the end to see the whole thing.) Here are some highlights:

Fiscal Impact. The bill would have direct and indirect fiscal impacts on Vermont. JFO estimates the direct fiscal impact to the General Fund would be about $11,000 in fiscal year 2025 and would grow to about $950,000 in FY 2035 [emphasis added]. Increased costs come from electricity rate increases on top of increased rates already expected under “Business as Usual” in the absence of the bill.

Indirect fiscal impacts. The indirect fiscal impacts described below, relative to “Business as Usual,” would occur under H.289….

• …. Slightly higher state revenues but slightly lower GDP growth, particularly after 2030, than in the absence of H.289.

• The slightly slower growth rate of Vermont’s GDP is based on two effects: economic activity would increase a bit faster due to renewable energy investments, but Vermonters’ growth in consumption would slow slightly as electricity rates rise and their spending power declines.

In a separate report done by the Public Service Department (albeit relying largely on the same data source) came to the same conclusion:

Incremental cost estimates for H.289 are driven by increased power supply costs, and increased transmission investment caused by Vermont based generation. The PSD roughly estimates these two areas to cost $1 billion to Vermont ratepayers.

So, what this means is that Vermonters are going to have to endure higher taxes, a weaker economy, and an extra BILLION DOLLARS worth of higher electric costs. All Kornheiser and her colleagues care about is the fact that this will result in “slightly higher state revenues.” The BILLION DOLLAR impact on constituents, however, falls into the “stuff we don’t need to take on” bin.

Is this sticker price worth it to satisfy whatever virtue-signal bragging rights these lawmakers think they’re going to get from changing their 100% renewable energy mandate by two years? (And, cough cough, to ensure that already wealthy Democrat donors in the wind and solar business are the only ones in the state enjoying increased economic activity?) That, of course, is the question nobody’s allowed to ask, because the answer is NO.

A better question to ask at this point would be how much is the current Renewable Energy Standard costing Vermonters in terms of electric rates, higher taxes, and lower economic growth, and should we scrap the whole thing?

This Just In: One of my crack investigators in the State House got official word that the JFO report that was pulled from sight is being “revised”. There is tremendous political pressure – as should be evident from this story – to hide the costs of these “green” programs from the public and get this bill passed without transparency or accountability.  It will be curious to see if the revisions reflect VPIRG, EAN, et al talking points. Bets?

• Rob Roper is a freelance writer with 20 years of experience in Vermont politics including three years service as chair of the Vermont Republican Party and nine years as President of the Ethan Allen Institute, Vermont’s free market think tank.

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