Vermont’s Secretary of Natural Resources, Julie Moore, incurred the ire of Clean Heat Standard (S.5) supporters when, in late January, she presented the Senate Committee on Natural Resources & Energy with her estimate that their bill would result in an additional $0.70 charge (carbon tax) on home heating fuels.
Of course citizens need to know the costs to be incurred by the disingenuous unaffordable heat act. Suppressing inconvenient facts is what tyrants first do. The proponents early on cited the rising costs of fuel oil as a reason to push thermal electrification. The inconvenient fact is that the Biden administration did everything in its power to restrict fossil fuel extraction, distribution and refining while being unable to diminish demand (demand is fairly inelastic since there few economically viable substitutes). Another inconvenient fact is that electricity prices are increasing too and will increase enormously with increasing solar/wind deployment. VT emulates California in many of its energy policies and CA electricity rates are already almost twice the national average. The S5 advocates are not telling you that VT faces the same prospects. Energy analyst Robert Bryce presents this conundrum well in his piece “California Screamin”
Of course citizens need to know the costs to be incurred by the disingenuous unaffordable heat act. Suppressing inconvenient facts is what tyrants first do. The proponents early on cited the rising costs of fuel oil as a reason to push thermal electrification. The inconvenient fact is that the Biden administration did everything in its power to restrict fossil fuel extraction, distribution and refining while being unable to diminish demand (demand is fairly inelastic since there few economically viable substitutes). Another inconvenient fact is that electricity prices are increasing too and will increase enormously with increasing solar/wind deployment. VT emulates California in many of its energy policies and CA electricity rates are already almost twice the national average. The S5 advocates are not telling you that VT faces the same prospects. Energy analyst Robert Bryce presents this conundrum well in his piece “California Screamin”
https://robertbryce.substack.com/p/california-screamin