Vermont PUC Reconsidering Clean Heat Standard
A Clean Heat Standard being developed for Vermont is overly complicated and would place a burden on businesses and consumers. That is the conclusion of the state’s Public Utilities Commission, rendered in a draft rule for the Clean Heat Standard. The Commission said it would consider alternatives to a CHS.
According to Matt Cota of Meadow Hill, a consultant who produces The Fuel Line, a newsletter for members of the Vermont Fuel Dealers Association, the PUC’s status report on the CHS had the following takeaways: “The Clean Heat Standard, as currently conceived, requires substantial additional costs and regulatory complexity above the funding needed to accomplish Vermont’s greenhouse gas emission reduction goals.”
“The Clean Heat Standard would require establishing a credit marketplace managed by what is likely to be a costly credit platform, the potential for fraud and market manipulation, the appointment of new or varied default delivery agents with administrative costs of their own, and the participation and regulatory engagement of hundreds of fuel dealers and other actors.”
“Our work over the past year and a half on the Clean Heat Standard demonstrates that it does not make sense for Vermont, as a lone small state, to develop a clean heat credit market and the associated clean heat credit trading system to register, sell, transfer, and trade credits.
“Because the Clean Heat Standard introduces these additional regulatory hurdles and costs, the Commission is considering other options to achieve Vermont’s greenhouse gas emission reduction goals for the thermal sector.”
Cota said he would explain these latest developments on Friday, October 4, at 8:30 a.m. Go to CleanHeatVT.com to see how to join the call on Friday, learn more about the Clean Heat Standard, and about opportunities to add your voice to the conversation.
