 Good morning. Today is Wednesday, January 18th, 2023. This is the second session of the Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee, and we are meeting this morning with Professor John Erickson from the University of Vermont. We're going to make a pitch. I've been reading in the last several weeks his brand new book, The Progress Illusion, reclaiming our future from the fairy tale of economics, and so it's a great read, beautifully written. Thank you. A lot of data, a lot of great stories, artfully expressed. Who could ask for more? No, I seriously highly recommend it to people. And the reason I spoke with Professor Erickson before Nassim would come in, as we frame up our work on the Affordable Care Act, we're talking about trying to modify the economics around heating in Vermont. And so part of the reason we're in the predicament we're in is that we live in an economic paradigm that doesn't value treating people equally and doesn't value treating the environment with respect. We externalize costs all the time to our debtors. So that was the thing I was pondering and then I read Professor Erickson's book. Yeah, it's over the years, many times, and I thought it'd be a great opportunity for us as we really dig into this bill to round ourselves in an economic perspective that I think will help us make sense of the bill. So that's my take. But the floor is yours. We have an hour and a half. I saw that. Wow. It's such an honor to have so much time. Thank you. Well, we're delighted that you were willing to give us time. And before we start, I would also like to make sure that we all know each other here at the table. So let's go around the table and start at the center. Hi, I'm Rebecca White and I am fortunate to be in the Windsor County District. Perfect. Okay, thank you. My name is Rebecca. I'm a large county. Your spray has been carried. And Watson, the Washington District? I did McCormick and I represent Windsor County with Senator White. She already stole your thunder. She often does. The floor is yours. Excellent. Okay. Well, thank you so much for having me. It's really an honor always to come to both Senate and the House. So, yeah, we're talking today about the Portal Heat Act. So I prepared some notes. Maybe I can offer you some initial thoughts for 20 minutes or so. And then I'd love to leave lots of time for discussion. So I've been working on energy and climate economics and policy for three decades. So I was reflecting on this last night. I was thinking, oh my God, I feel like Bill Murray and Groundhog Day. Every year coming into the Senate and the House and talking about these themes. And seeing some progress, but certainly by no means fast enough or far enough. Well, I'm thrilled that this bill is being taken up. I do look at it with a critical eye of, you know, what are we doing? And how can we make it better? I had asked you to look at the bill pretty much. You did. Not just here to talk about some great jobs you've done. Yeah, and I know you spent a lot of time on a similar bill last year. So I also don't want to just repeat things that you've already heard. I think you've all heard much of the framing and the arguments and the need for something like a clean heat standard or an affordable heat act. So I thought that I'd frame my discussion first and foremost about our economy's path dependence. Our economy is hooked on fossil fuels. And really what it's going to take to break what we sometimes call carbon lock-in. And how this bill could help our state in particular break free from a really, in my view, again 30 years of working on this, a debilitating fossil fuel dependence that is limiting our state's economy, unfairly burdening our low and moderate income households, and polluting our local and global environment. So lock-in is something I've given a lot of thought about because it's easy to describe why lock-in exists. It's really difficult to describe how to break the lock-in. So carbon lock-in occurs when fossil fuel intensive systems, which we have here in the state of Vermont, much like the rest of the U.S. and the world, indeed, that is still on 85% fossil fuels for all global energy supplies. I always like to remind people of that. This is a heavy lift. How fossil fuel intensive systems perpetuate, delay, and or prevent the transition to low carbon alternatives. And I think that's the key. When I look at a bill like this, I'm always in that mindset. How do we break this dependence? How do we get beyond the perpetuate, delay, and prevention of the transition to low income alternatives? Again, thinking like Groundhog Day, like, we've been here before, year in and year out. Study after study after study, happy to provide you with some sources, shows that existing energy infrastructure, existing energy infrastructure, already jeopardizes international climate goals, right? So we're in a situation where we need to be retiring existing energy, got a carbon-intensive energy infrastructure, not adding more of it. Study after study after study shows that the predominant fossil fuel infrastructure is inefficient. It's costly. It's subject to wild price swings, as we know in particular this last year. It's dependent on a global supply chain. And that global supply chain, all you got to do is turn on the news and you'll see that it's entangled with the politics and atrocities of the geopolitical system that is tied to oil. So yet this fossil fuel-intensive system persists. So despite people like me doing three decades of research, it persists. In Vermont, specifically to the thermal heat sector, what we're talking about today, carbon lock-in comes in many forms. There's capital expenditures, right? From trucks to pipelines to building infrastructure. In households and businesses, lock-in starts in the basement very often, right? With the oil or fossil gas furnace, hot water heater, plus all the inefficiencies through the years of building construction. That kind of keeps us stuck on carbon. That's the very well-known lock-in. You know, when you buy a new system that uses fossil fuels, you're often committing to 20, 25, 30 years on that system before you get off of it. And that's a really important context to keep in mind. There's a kind of lock-in that comes from rent-seeking, what we call rent in economics, right? It often comes from concentrated industries or monopoly industries or oligopoly industries like the fossil fuel industry. That's spending a lot of money to keep their profits, right? To keep us on fossil fuels. So the oil and gas industry concentration and control has created what we'd call energy burdens. Has created the dependencies of low and moderate income for monitors on fuel for heating, fossil fuels for heating. And the most profitable industry, I would say in history, has the funding to keep this going, to perpetuate this dependence. And this has been some of the hang-up in our own state. The framing of a bill like this, to sort of frame it as, you know, this hurts instead of helps low-income and moderate-income remoters as part of that kind of rent-seeking behavior that comes from the fossil fuel lobby. Lock-in comes from capital ownership characteristics, right, which in a fossil fuel economy are highly concentrated. And a fossil fuel economy go to the capitalist class that holds assets like rental apartments and has no incentive to reduce fossil fuel dependence if the renter is paying the energy bill. And that's a major challenge in a place like Vermont. So misaligned incentive structures I think about in terms of fossil fuel lock-in or carbon lock-in. There's many other forms. Lock-in from workforce experience and resistance to the uncertainty of new anyone who's tried to get a contractor and try to shift them from a fossil fuel system to, for example, electric heat pump is challenging because there's a worriedness of newness and a lack of training and experience. And there's lock-in from culture. Culture, like certainly my generation, raised on fossil fuels, raised on a model that's usually where Senator Brett externalizes costs, right, doesn't keep those costs here. Like the cost of the system largely, especially in Vermont, we're not a fossil fuel state, are born on other people and on the future. So you all know this. Lock-in persists though because of an economics we call it increasing returns to scale, right. There are scale economies the bigger you get the cheaper the system becomes and this is a huge part of the fossil fuel industry. There are learning economies. The more rich you have with something, right, the more locked in you get to it. This is a big part of scale economies. There are network economies. The more that your system is connected to the information of other systems, right, the more tied you become to it. And a lot of that has to do with our workforce in a place like Vermont. So lock-in persists because of state and federal subsidies. Tax dollars are given to oil and gas companies through the pocketbooks of low-income Vermonters, right. So this is something to really, really keep in mind. Every winter, right, we see these price spikes. We see low-income Vermonters really struggling to continue to heat their homes with oil and gas. And we get federal dollars to offset that cost, which is a pass-through to the most profitable industry on the planet. So that's also a kind of frustrating part of lock-in. And then there's ongoing regulatory capture of decision makers by the fossil fuel industry, industrial agriculture, international supply chains, and all the beneficiaries of the status quo. So when I think of this as an economist, I think about who benefits from the status quo and who pays the costs, okay. I don't see low-income and moderate Vermonters benefiting from the status quo. I see them and their children and their grandchildren paying the costs, largely on influences outside of the control of Vermont. So again, anything that has to do with climate change legislation or affordable heat or electrification of our energy systems is about bringing the benefits and costs of those systems to our own state. So how do we break free from this lock-in? Well, here's a bit of the critique of the bill. There's some immediate things that other states and municipalities around the world are thinking of. And that's to avoid any and all new carbon infrastructure investments. I already mentioned that, you know, once you buy a new carbon system, you're locked in for the foreseeable future. So there's this idea of retiring current but also avoiding new, including so-called renewable natural gas, green hydrogen, and other very, very small sources of liquid fuels that reinforce the current system and at best avoid some greenhouse gas emissions from existing landfills and dairy farms. And at worst, kick the can down the road of the necessary reforms in our industrial systems. This is a big challenge. The bill, as you know, follows a kind of cap-and-trade logic. But the task of hitting a declining cap over time becomes more and more and more difficult if we're also continuing to put new carbon assets in place, right? New carbon assets that through this declining carbon intensity calculation in the bill, we have to retire in the foreseeable future that are going to become more and more difficult to retire as we become locked into these new assets. So these new assets occur alongside the relatively low-hanging fruit of efficiency improvements and retirement of existing sources. So I want you to kind of keep that in mind as I go through this. The immediate task is to really avoid any and all new carbon infrastructure investments. Short-term, that's immediate. Short-term, efficiency of existing assets, particularly through weatherization, avoided fuel costs and avoiding new capital costs. We shouldn't be switching to, for example, electric heat pumps in very inefficient homes. That makes no sense, right? There's lots of chicken and eggs here. You know, we really, I mean, the whole idea of net zero ready is that you make your home in this situation, the transportation system, your heating system, your electric system as efficient as possible before you do the conversion or as you do the conversion. So I'm always looking for ways of like, is this comprehensive enough? Are we really thinking of the full kind of system perspective of the energy system? And are we aligning things with efficiency improvements? Medium term, retirement of existing carbon infrastructure. I think this goes without saying, but again, I'll make the point that if we're retiring existing infrastructure while adding new infrastructure, we're making our lives more difficult down the road. So I do see these kind of heat credits as different beasts in the sense of how do they offset existing infrastructure versus how are they offsetting the addition of new infrastructure. Long term, there should be no long term, right? There really should be no long term. We're out of time. We're already late to the party. So allowing liquid and gas fuels to artificially extend the carbon infrastructure, I think really needs a second look. And this is rising some improvements between the bill this year and last year's version, right? I really sort of take seriously the kind of lock into liquid and gas fuels in general. So this bill does address some of the low hanging fruit of efficiency, weatherization, electrification of thermal loads, but it does still brand better than last year on biofuels and thermal energy efficiency improvements. Sacrificing some lock-in, especially to expanding fossil gas industry and by further encouraging things like industrial farming systems, further stretching out-of-state supply dependencies, further financing out-of-state economic development by sort of staying stuck into the current energy system. So this is the context of carbon lock-in. And now I just want to provide a few more specific comments on some key features of this bill, particularly changes since last session's version and potential areas for improvement. Any questions on just the framing or should I dive into a couple more specifics? Okay, good. So three points I'd like to make. One is around affordability, one around carbon intensity, and one around economic development. The economic development piece is kind of implied in the bill, but I think in the framing of this bill, that's a huge piece, right? The economy of the future, not the economy of the past is how I see this bill as being framed. So first, affordability. This is the right focus. This is the obvious focus. I know you all are going to get heat for all you just renamed it. It's the same bill as last year. I've already seen some of the op-eds, but this is about centering equity and centering affordability, right? A fossil fuel future is not affordable. I mean, let's just start there, okay? It's dependent on outside forces. It's dependent on highly variable fuel costs, right? It exports the rents of fossil fuels outside of Vermont. It's a losing bargain for a non-fossil fuel economy like the state of Vermont. You all know this. Affordability focuses on energy burdens, and that's the right focus, right? We've seen the studies. Vermont Law School has a great study out, Efficiency of Vermont. I think the two versions of a study on energy burdens, where we're trying to understand the percent of household income that is spent on energy services. So this is that kind of lock-in that we see particularly amongst our low and modern income neighbors. This energy burden is highest among low-income and moderate. It's highest among rural households in old housing stock. It's higher amongst the renting class throughout the state of Vermont. It's especially acute because of the aging building stock in Vermont and the above-average, I said, state, but in New England, on fuel oil dependence. So this is where I get that kind of Bill Murray drop-off day moment, right? It's like, how many more winners do we need to go through talking about high fuel oil prices, potential supply restrictions, further subsidies to the most profitable industry in human history? How do we break that path dependence? Yeah, please. So one of our challenges, I mean, we're starting with due diligence. I'm trying to really analyze what's going on, how this bill would interact with current systems and what the consequences would be. You know, that nothing holds such a whole thing. Yes. There's also kind of a puzzling thing that goes on. As we look at a system that's currently not affordable for people, I was saying to you that I have been informally chatting with people over the last year about, well, how's it going by keeping your house warm? And people are saying, well, it's $2,000 to $4,000 more than two winners are coming before this price plan hit. And yet, when we talk about this work, we are regularly challenged around the notion of we're not actually going to help on affordability. We're actually going to make it worse. So I'm puzzled over how do we accurately speak about the affordability of the current system versus what we're aiming for? And I'm not sure why it's so hard to get the message out that what we're proposing isn't genuinely moved towards greater affordability. Well, that's why the comprehensive approach is really important and it's implicit in this bill, right? If you're home and you're stuck on oil for your heat and you don't change anything, you don't weatherize, you don't take advantage of state programs, you don't take advantage of incentives to finance on-bill financing, right? And you just stand oil for the foreseeable future, right? With and without this bill, you're on an affordable path, right? Because the future of oil is anyone's guess and it's always that way. Prices could go low, prices could go high, prices right now depend on, you know, wars in distant places. So affordability is, if I continue with some of my points, because this is exactly the point I want to make, like why do we hang on to the notion that fossil fuels but any stretch of the imagination is an affordable energy pathway? You guys make that distinction between a pathway and the current system. And I think that's also important in terms of framing of this legislation, right? We're talking about instituting a pathway to get off fossil fuels. Households that decide to stay on fossil fuels, with or without this bill, that's an expensive pathway. That's an unpredictable pathway. That's an unreliable pathway, right? When folks all around them, especially outside the United States, are already off that bandwagon altogether. One point I want to make about fuel oil, and this relates to what you're saying, Senator Bray, I'm not sure this is widely known, but we think of a barrel of oil. There are multiple products that come from a barrel of oil. When we refine a barrel of oil, it's like a recipe, okay? The biggest thing we get is gasoline. The second biggest thing we get is fuel oil. As long as the fossil fuel industry still has a good market for gasoline, which they do with a foreseeable future, and a shrinking market for fuel oil, which they do in most of the rest of the country, they need new fuel oil customers to get rid of a product that they can't do anything else with, right? Fuel oil comes from a barrel of oil, as does kerosene, as does jet fuel, as does all those higher value products, right? So the fossil fuel industry needs states like from hot in order to sell fuel oil, right? That's really an important aspect. It's a big chunk of what comes out of the refining process. So there is a relationship to transportation here. So my point, how can anyone argue that a fossil fuel future is an affordable future? Affordable heat must mean reducing thermal energy demand through weatherization, improving heating efficiency, electrifying loads to a decarbonizing grid. That's the key, right? We don't electrify a load to a carbonizing grid. We electrify loads to a decarbonizing grid. Affordable heat is perfectly aligned with our state's greenhouse gas goals. So this fits hand in glove with the Global Warming Solutions Act. Affordable heat keeps more money in state, okay? This is where some of the nuance of affordability comes. If you could recycle more of that money in state, you're helping our tax base, you're helping our job base, right? You're helping all of these things that are a little more challenging to measure that when folks like the consultants who worked for the Agency of Natural Resources last year built an economic model for the state looking at low carbon options, they're trying to capture all those multiplier effects, what we call multiplier effects in economics. Affordable heat builds our future economies, workforce, climate resilience, okay? And this is where I understand that in a bill, we're trying to create some flexibility knowing that you don't have a lot of time, right? Knowing that you have targets to hit in the Global Warming Solutions Act, right? But some of that flexibility is built in because of current workforce bottlenecks, right? So there's some chicken and eggs that are going on here that we have to be cognizant of. And most immediately, affordable heat capitalizes on, and I can't stress this enough, new monies from the Inflation Reduction Act, right? There is a huge opportunity here. Understanding the need for flexibility, it is frustrating to see kind of a three-year ramp-up phase, but I am excited to see that the work starts right away. Like, I think this month, right? Like if this bill is passed into law, the kind of credits that can be accumulated start now. So it's not like we're waiting for the PUC and these other government agencies to get their ducks in a row. This is an important aspect of the current bill. But our state has a habit of leaving federal dollars on the table. I hope we don't do that with the millions of dollars coming through the Inflation Reduction Act. I don't want to be in this committee. I'm sorry, but you all seem like nice folks, but I don't want to be here two years from now, five years from now, 10 years from now, saying why is the Vermont legislature continuing to steer through the rearview mirror, right? And as disappointed as I was to see this not be passed into law next year, I am encouraged that we're taking a second chance. Again, I can point to the legislature. There are many studies to cite about economic, equity, environmental benefits of this transition to affordable clean heat. You say that again. Economic, the affordability piece. Equity, particularly the folks on this bill, on putting low income households, modern income households first in line and environmental benefits, of course, because the framing of this is contributing to the Global Warming Solutions Act. You don't need to look any further than the Vermont Pathways Analysis Report 2.0, which I think was delivered early in the session last year, prepared by consultants for the current administration, for the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources that showed savings over the timeframe of this legislation in the billions with a B, okay? Net savings cost so much to implement, especially the new infrastructure improvements, the savings that you get back just in terms of energy savings, not even counting the externalities, the avoided external costs of the current system. And again, in the state government study, much of that directed at low and moderate income households. So this framing, Senator Bray, of unaffordability is just, I don't know what it is, it's brownwashing. I guess it's the word for it, right? Because it's not even greenwashing. Weatherization alone, I'll just stress this again. The chicken and egg things here is a goldmine for household savings. Again, you just look at our own state government work. The Vermont Department of Health found that a 10-year economic benefit of weatherization in both energy and health costs, sometimes we forget the health costs of weatherized homes, comfortable homes, well-heated homes, well-ventilated homes, is nearly three times greater than the initial expense, okay? Three to one cost-benefit ratio on weatherization programs. Combine that with the fact that we're getting weatherization dollars from the federal government, I mean, it's just, this is an investment in the future economy of Vermont, right? I mean, this is an unparalleled opportunity and it all comes down to breaking this lock-in that I've been discussing. Okay, second point, carbon intensity and third point, economic development. Dive in anytime, please. I teach at UVM, I'm used to getting interrupted. So cost-benefit of health savings is being three to one. On average, yeah. Yeah, so that's... I just want to make sure that I understand that. So you would save three times as much as your extent. You get back to terms of benefits in terms of energy savings, health care cost savings. So again, not even getting into the fuzzy math around externalities like the social costs of carbon. If you start adding that and you get five, 10, 20 to one ratios, right? But just those costs that are incurred by the household, right? The Vermont Department of Health found a three to one ratio. And that report talks about what's the average cost of weatherizing homes and what are the benefits and dollars that come from energy savings and health care cost savings. There's a huge literature on those health care cost savings on the costs of our most vulnerable communities in particular. I mean, you all know what it feels like to perhaps begin a drafty, unventilated, crappy space, right? It's not so good on the physical and mental health. That's a big part about this. We're not doing Vermonters any favors by keeping folks on fossil fuels to heat the outdoors, right? Through drafty homes. So this is specifically for weatherization? This, that Vermont Department of Health study was specifically for weatherization, yep. Yep, because we've got past legislation that set weatherization targets by year with goals and we haven't met them, right? So part of this bill, I think, is trying to ramp up on goals that are already in place for the state of Vermont. Again, Groundhog, you all are great at setting goals where I always see the challenges, where are the standards, where are the accountability? And now I see requirements, which is at night and day, night and day. There's some really interesting health related work along the same lines in Central Vermont Hospital where there were people who were coming back in who I think were pulmonary issues repeatedly. Right. And they ended up prescribing weatherization for the homes and it turned out to be cost-effective to go do a deep retrofit on the home of people with weatherization, proving indoor air quality and it just delivered pure health savings right off the bat. And so they've written scripts for weatherization. Absolutely. And one of the things I'm hoping we can do over time is get a Medicare Medicaid waiver that will allow that kind of script to become a normal procedure. Yeah, these are all those uncounted benefits that we often ignore. I mean, I've got firsthand experience with this. My brother and his family just moved here from Colorado. Climate refugee, tired of the wildfires, spent all last summer, he couldn't go outdoors with his kids because eyes would tear up and couldn't breathe. Said, we're moving back east. And of course had a really hard time finding in the front of the home but found a rundown old house in Lincoln, Vermont, right? That desperately needed weatherization and everything else. So we got the contractors in line, got everything in place, took a few months but before the winter hit, he had a weatherized home, he had a wood stove put in, he's still on an oil burner. So that's his next step, right? But first do the weatherization and sort of tackle, get off the oil piece. And it's just extraordinary to me to walk in his house and see the before and after, right? And all the weatherization work was put into an affordable monthly payment, right? That is equivalent to all the savings. Exactly, exactly. So the financial arguments have been there, the motivational cultural arguments are really the hard part to get over. The answer to what I'm going to ask, you've all was embedded in what you've already said. Yes, please. But I'd like to sort of just frame it. We hear angry emails, angry confrontations from constituents. Yes. We read letters to the editor and editorials. I know how I answer this. I'm just curious how you answer the argument. Everything would be fine if we just had energy independence, if we did not stop the pipeline, if we drill baby drill, if we just have more petroleum. Right. Okay, and you environmentalists, just you care about your agenda, you don't care about working people, okay, with your environmentalists. Sure, sure. How do you address that? Because there is a culture war, class warfare argument that's made, and it's totally focused, but getting at it is hard. Well, the right in the sense that Vermonters benefit from a fossil fuel industry that imposes costs on other people in other places. Right. So if you're in North or South Dakota, if you're in Wyoming, if you're in Oklahoma, you're in Texas, right, and you're building your whole economy on a non-renewable resource, and it's depleting that faster than we've ever depleted these resources in the past, going back to old retired wells and fracking them with chemicals, right. Squeezing every last little piece of oil out of Shellrock in Canada, building new pipelines, right. This is all to keep the fossil fuel industry in place. It's all short-termism. Take climate change off the table, right. So if they don't want to say, you know, this is our responsibility, our share of the problem, we all need to contribute, so we can make those arguments quite literally until the cows come home in Vermont, right, and they often don't go anywhere. But staying on fossil fuels, and we'll never have a fossil fuel industry in Vermont because our geology says so, right. We'll always be at the end of the tailpipe of the U.S. and global fossil fuel industry, right, getting the scraps. I mean, we were the last states to get, you know, on the natural gas bandwagon, and by the time we were saying it's a transition fuel, every other state was like, transition's been over for a while now, right, we're trying to get off this, not add new pipelines. I mean, we could go into the geology of fossil fuel and what's left and what's peaking, right, the fact that an oil well back in the good old days of the 40s and 50s would last 15, 20 years. An oil well today lasts on the order of four to five months. That's how fast we're depleting what's left. If you take oil depletion curves and stack them on each other, right, we used to get this much oil from one well, now we get this much oil from a thousand wells, right. So this is the kind of math that I think the average vermonter doesn't appreciate. This is the kind of math that is really hard to understand if you just want to go to the pump and fill up, if you just want to pay for your oil for the winter, right. If you just don't want to think about the energy system. But I don't know any vermonter, correct me if I'm wrong, that wakes up in the morning and goes, I can't wait to pay my energy bill, right. I can't wait to write that big fat check to my local oil supplier, right. All of this makes sense for economic reasons. We don't have to get into the environmental reasons. All of this makes sense for economic reasons in terms of savings, in terms of control, right. The Affordable Heat Act is part of a trend towards decentralizing our energy supply, our energy system, and creating more control and more capital ownership of a Vermont energy system, right, versus just exporting our energy dollars from the state to make a very concentrated industry more wealthy than it already is. I was tempted to sort of bring in studies of inflation because that's not everyone's mind, right. And the fact that 60, 65% of inflation can be attributed to profits, increasing profits, not maintaining increasing profits. Yet again, you turn on the news and everything, left media, right media is pointing to higher wage rates as the source of profits, right. So there's so much framing that goes on to keep us locked in to fossil fuels that I think the average citizen in Vermont is being duped. I don't know how it's to put it. Thanks. Thank you, Chairman Brick. I would love your perspective on something that comes up very frequently with younger constituents, which is, what is the acronym? You know, I'm... Yes, exactly. Which is I'm... I'll be gone, you'll be gone. Yeah, this is where we're beyond the point. And I think that that's the one that strikes me the hardest is because it's difficult, I think, for folks who are considering the future of our home here in Vermont and already starting to make space for adaption and not prevention. So I'm wondering if you could tell us kind of the answer to two questions, which is, one, how do you answer that question when people... I mean, as a professor, you probably deal with that constantly and the hopelessness that comes with that. And then, second, there are conflicting international reports that tell us that we have actually gone past the point, or we're so close to it that it feels like we actually won't meet those requirements or those goals in other places. I'm thinking of the idea that in seven years we're gonna hit our point and that's where we've gone too far. We've been saying seven years for seven years. Yeah, so that's... I'd love to understand the answer to those two questions. Yeah, yeah. It's challenging. I mean, it is debilitating, right? To kind of buy into this idea that, again, often comes from the framing of it's too late. So why bother, right? Why make... The framing is often tied with why make sacrifices when it's already too late? Well, flip that on its head. What is the sacrifice of transforming our energy system to have more control locally, more jobs in our communities, right? More benefits, tax benefits, and otherwise of the energy system that is homegrown in Vermont. I think of this in terms of the movement for healthy watersheds, the movement for healthy food sheds, and now the movement for healthy energy sheds, right? This is ultimately about relocalizing our energy system to capture the benefits, right? To capture the economic benefits of a new labor force, of a new job force. My students at the University of Vermont are going into energy jobs, are going into renewable energy sector, right? Students at Vermont Tech, in particular, one of the most popular fastest growing majors there is around weatherization and solar installers, and there's a lag, but that workforce is coming online, right? This kind of move towards relocalization. I think a lot of our young people saw this for the first time in their lives with the pandemic, right? As we were forced to stay at home, to stay in community, to reconnect with neighbors, of realizing that quality of life doesn't stem just from, this is a big theme in my book, doesn't stem just from consumption, but from relationships. I hate to be a geek about this, but this is about creating a relationship with your energy system. Right now, I don't have much of a relationship with my energy system, right? Pay my bill, fill up my car, right? Don't think about it. So this is about creating a relationship with you. This is about, I mean, I love the framing that this is gonna hurt the mom and pop fuel dealers, right? This helps them move from an oil dependent carbon lock in no future industry to an energy service company, right? To move their labor force and their training away from oil burners and gas burners to electric heat pumps, to weatherization, to diversifying their portfolio. So again, if we think of this in terms of building strong community oriented energy sheds just like we say building strong community focused food sheds, right? Building strong community focused water sheds, right? That's a future when I talk to young people that they can buy into. And they're like, you know what, if the world is going into hell in a hand basket, we're in Vermont, we're doing something different. Yeah. And I think that's why people are moving here. I mean, you're right. We have to pay attention to adaptation. We have to pay attention to climate resilience. But you really think we're building stronger resilient communities by depending on fossil fuel supplies from distant far from places because the supply chain shortages and the geopolitics of this stuff is only going to get uglier as the world doubles down on trying to stay on carbon. Yep. Thank you. Yeah. Yes. Are you done? Sorry. You're going to be in my sandbox now. I asked you to get on my sandbox. No. I asked you to get on my sandbox. Okay. All right. I have made an argument for years, and I'm wondering if you have research on it, which is what you were saying throughout, the mom and pop propane company may be not selling propane selling, and that may be not selling propane burners, but selling the fuel pumps that are heat pumps and so on. Yeah. Yeah. Well, what I talk about is if you look at what is owned by tobacco companies, they kind of saw the handwriting on the wall probably 20 years ago. They're not in love with tobacco. They want to sell stuff and get paid money for it. Sure. And they sell all sorts of stuff that is not, they've got capital. Right. And they use their capital to buy stuff to sell. That's not tobacco. They diversify. And it seems to me that in theory, the purveyors of fossil fuels ought to be able to do that as well. Well, this bill, I think rightly so, directs this as far up the supply chain as you can get. The point where oil or gas comes into the state, the oil importer, right? The gas importer. That's where you find the most concentration of the industry and the highest profits. Right. Most concentrated part of the industry and the highest profits. Right. And then it's up to way up the supply chain to interact with folks that are down at the distribution and sales to create the energy credits that start to reform the incentives of the system. Right. And force the folks up the supply chain right now who have no incentive whatsoever with these kinds of obscene profits to change their business model. They all have advertisements about investment in solar and when it's minuscule when you look at their portfolios. Right. Especially in the U.S. This is not the same at other energy companies in other parts of the world that are rapidly diversifying their portfolios because they see the right end on the wall. For whatever reason and I've got mine in the United States, the fossil fuel industry is quite embedded with the political class and it continues to be so. This is all about breaking the chains or breaking the lock in. This bill does a one small part of trying to do that. It seems to me the main focus in a capitalist economy the main focus of the capitalists they've got some capital and they want to invest in stuff that will make them more capital. Right. And so it works. I don't think people have an emotional or spiritual or ethical connection that it has to be patrolling or selling. They could sell pretty much anything that people are going to buy. Well short term, long term, right? Short term quarterly profits sell patrolling you're going to make a lot of money. Long term viability and resilience it's a different story all together. I presume that bucking whip manufacturers do not stop. There's a great literature great literature on socio-technical transitions in fact that talked about when we moved for example from horse drawn carriages to automobiles how much resistance there has. Right. When we move from biofuels to fossil fuels how much resistance there's always resistance. This is all very predictable in a socio-economic system that has highly concentrated power and profits. Very predictable. Right. So that's why I framed my testimony in terms of lock-in. Right. Because you know I'm always thinking of like again coming here year after year after year after year and seeing lock-in persist and how this bill is one of the first attempts to sort of break it at its source which is fuel imports into the state of Vermont. Wow. So the other two points I want to make are around carbon intensity and economic development. Can I ask a question before we go on? Are you anticipating that the controlling industries will see increasing stranded costs in the future and how will those play out? I mean that's a huge thing in the finance and banking industry. Banks are waking up faster than the petroleum industry who finance further oil exploration further oil development and are talking this language of stranded assets, right? If the world's nations really get into an emergency mode and start to instead of just incentivize demand but restrict supply you're going to get into a situation with a lot of stranded assets and that's going to trickle down from the very top down to places like Vermont. Right? So financial consultants have used this language of traditional standard capitalist financial consultants are talking about stranded assets, right? I'm actually giving a talk to a Wall Street firm about their environmental social governance portfolio one of the biggest investment bankers in the world that wants to talk about stranded assets that wants to talk about carbon locking that wants to learn from this book which isn't the playbook for staying in the status quo it's the playbook for pushing against the status quo. And will people who are still using fossil fuels feel that in higher costs I'm just wondering how what has to take amount to those types of fuel as those industries run into stranded assets and problems? Yeah, I mean the cost of fossil fuels in supply side restrictions is only going to raise the price of fossil fuels and Vermont is being at the very end of the supply chain we're going to get harmed the most I mean it's that simple but we're not talking about restricting fossil fuel jobs in Vermont by getting off the fossil fuels because the fossil fuel jobs are few and far between they're in dealers and gas station attendants they're not fundamentally part of the Vermont economic model or the economic brand I should say states like Wyoming where my son lives all hell's going to break of this right because they're tax based their economic model their job base are based on an extractive industry model so they're going to have the biggest challenge with the stranded asset phenomenon Wyoming news this weekend Wyoming news this weekend Wyoming news it was going to ban electric vehicles trucks I think yeah oh my son really? well it was yeah it was just by 2030 by 2035 right they picked a California dating no banning the sale this is the political playing field right so California is banning internal combustion engines Wyoming's banning electric vehicles and the rationale is to preserve the fossil fuel industry absolutely yeah you know have you ever been in the high plains not Jackson Hole but the high plains it's so windy no there's a lot of wind they're going to use that man this is the biggest part of the locking phenomenon right is this regulatory capture this politically capture you know if I were giving this testimony at a senate committee in Wyoming it'd be a very different hostile environment because it's the idea of trying to hang on to last little scraps of a dying empire of a dying air I mean we're really at a kind of point we have been for some time of a kind of post-industrial transition a post-oil transition and the little tiny small state of Vermont has an opportunity to take the lead because in a way it's easiest for us right because we're at the end of the pipe we're not at the front of the pipe like Wyoming is our politics is different the fact that this bill didn't pass last year just still keeps me up at night and the fact that it's it's not more non-partisan also keeps me up at night it's like why how could this possibly saving Vermont money saving energy helping build more resilient households and homes getting off of fossil fuels how could this be a partisan issue but that's why I'm not in politics maybe this time maybe we'll have smoother sailing so carbon intensity this is another I think change right between the bills is to really try to put some guardrails on the attempt to kind of keep fossil fuel infrastructure in place by quote unquote greening the liquid and gas fuel supplies I'm thrilled as Senator Bray knows because we've talked about life cycle analysis and it's important I'm thrilled that this bill continues to put front and center the idea of life cycle greenhouse gas emissions per unit of energy life cycle as with last year's bill is the right approach I have testified on this before particularly regarding fossil gas expansion interstate and the misplaced focus in the past of the public utility commission end of burner emissions right again that's old thinking it's dishonest thinking it doesn't look at the full greenhouse gas profile of our fuel source from cradle to grave a life cycle approach in this bill is further enforced through the language of fuel pathways so I really like that it's really important again to be thinking of pathways this isn't about saving a buck tomorrow this is about saving money over time and all the analysis that's been done for the state you see the billions of dollars of savings as we hit the global warming solutions targets over time I understand there's a compromise here because the bill does allow for some near term flexibility on liquid and gas fuels but as this committee knows this is a slippery slope that does relate back to carbon lock in so I think we want really honest about what we're proposing here this flexibility amounts to kind of industry relief and again an industry with record profits through clean energy credits generated by and I want to understand this better by thermal efficiency of existing carbon assets and introduction of so-called renewable natural gas and green hydrogen to fuel mix so let me take those three things on efficiency of existing assets renewable natural gas and green hydrogen while improved efficiency of existing carbon assets may be clear does reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the short run in my view it also contributes to further technology to lock in that's why I frame this as lock in so you're getting it's a kind of one step forward two steps back proposition especially and this is why I made this distinction early on with new carbon heating infrastructure new that would require extraordinarily high fuel prices to incentivize early retirement right if I'm a heating consumer in Vermont today and I get a new oil furnace most efficient best in brand best in class in the market great it's more efficient than what I could about 10, 20, 30, 40 years ago right but it locks me in for me to retire that um takes an incredibly high price of oil that we won't we won't see incredibly high and by I mean like 150, 200 dollars a barrel in order to retire those new assets within the short term so this is where I want to be really clear on the bill explicitly blocks credits from switching from one fossil fuel to another so that I think that was in last year's bill and stays in this that's great but it seems like switching from one oil furnace to another is permitted so that that's that's the kind of lock-in that I wish we could avoid but again I understand the kind of near-term flexibility but just recognize that you're looking at 20, 25, 30 year lock-in by replacing that old inefficient boiler with a new efficient boiler absolutely less greenhouse gas emissions but over time the opportunity of that switch the opportunity like with my brother right now old oil burner in the basement of the house you just bought the opportunity is not for him to put a new efficient burner in and say I got the oil tank I've got the oil delivery I've got my local oil supplier the opportunity now is to go to Ohio to go to back up he's at a position where he can make that capital decision and in fact capital decision is more oil but more efficient yes he's going to save money yes he's going to reduce greenhouse gas emissions but yes he's locked in 20, 30 years that's the question thank you Chairman Bray and this may be a question more for you or potentially Ellen because I also am concerned about that my understanding is a lower amount of credit for making that switch so ideally they would be gaming it out and not making that choice unless it was absolutely necessarily we're talking about a system that the cost I'm thinking of older buildings that have the the ducting and the work that it might actually you're trying to balance out could we put a heat pump in every room kind of thing so I feel like we do answer for time though yes so you're locking so you're locking in the business or the homeowner into an oil furnace right but over time you're saying hey speed this up retire this thing sooner right and so that's the challenge right that's why it's a one step forward two steps back it's like you're making the retirement of that new carbon asset even more difficult in the future than the present the present moment right now retirement I've got an old oil furnace I want to get rid of it and get off fossil fuels right if I lock into a new oil furnace 10, 20, 30 years down the road when those carbon intensity requirements have dropped a lot it's becoming costly costly err to retire that asset so again it's a trade off right and I think I'm told that lawmaking's like making sausage so I understand and I think the reason I'm comfortable because we don't give a lot of like the weight of making that choice versus actually spending more money as a fuel dealer or someone trying to meet your credit requirements you actually would be more incentivized you'd get more bang for your buck if you made a deeper investment understood so I appreciate that point and I it's helping us achieve like the 20, 30 targets quicker and on time but it's making it more difficult to achieve the later targets that's the point I'm trying to make I hear you so it's that needs to be understood maybe there's tradeoffs that happen in other parts of our fossil fuel portfolio and our carbon portfolio that help offset that well and it's also the part of the challenge is that that new boiler by staying on fuel fuel source that's going through in this rationing carbon-intensity carbon could become more expensive over time right savings made so it's a tradeoff for the homeowner as well and this is maybe part of the education roll out of this is because you're sort of saying short term you're going to save money long term this doesn't look so good this doesn't look so good every oil burner every home is a upcoming replacement cost that homeowner has and to the extent that they could use the money to do the replacement of the before they have to replace it was something that is more efficient and less carbon-intensity fuel using is that's expensive they already have and you know if you choose to spend it on a different heating source that money has to be spent anywhere has to be spent anywhere so the question is long term operating costs upfront capital costs all these systems have upfront capital costs for low income and modern income for monitors on bill financing you know grants inflation reduction act money there's more money available to get off oil than to stay hot and there's lower operating costs over time if you make that capital decision now to get off sorry to interrupt secondly reading last year or so or even more of insurance companies and people that have low capital investments writing off their current fossil fuel investments realizing you're going to take a loss on the future and writing them off now to avoid bigger losses and problems this is part of the asset they're also doing a kind of regulatory calculation and seeing that you know if we take for example our international treaty obligations seriously there's a regulatory risk of early retirement of fossil assets that's going to cost the fossil fuel industry money yeah that's why the banks are particularly interested in this because they finance all this stuff yeah so it's banks and insurance that are trying to fossil fuel industry reform right now and where are the banks on that that they're still willing to finance and oil yes and no I mean banks and bankers are some of the most conservative creatures on earth right so there is when there's high immediate returns which again there is for example there has been the fracking industry right now under water until we saw these energy prices bounce back up again and so now some of the short term short short termism and bankings alive well again but some of the bigger more established longer looking banks won't fight anymore I mean we're seeing serious financial contraction in terms of new oil and gas exploration in the United States so that that the industry is already shifting because the finance is shifting that's a good news yeah it is good news but again Vermont needs to sort of not be grounded in the past and their economic development model start to be thinking about the future we don't want to be the Wyoming of New England about that sir important could you I'm sorry to change the subject sure a little bit about bio yeah that's my next piece oh yep so the selectability I saw a sort of three aspects one is the efficiency aspect of going from oil to oil so we just talked about that the other piece is to allow credits from renewable natural gas for example I want to be very clear this also contributes to a kind of social technical lock-in because you're sort of saying let's replace and let's make our fuel stock more renewable which is a bit of a misnomer but extending the lifetimes of gas so it has the same kind of short-term long-term because of extending the infrastructure and reinforcing what I would call greenwashing that is happening around natural gas by arguing for the so here's the math they're arguing for the avoidance of methane that comes from already that comes from agricultural landfills instead of saying we need to change agricultural landfill practices to reduce methane they're saying this is an economic community we need to capture methane from an industrialized system and further extend the kind of lifetimes of these so-called stranded assets these carbon assets pipelines and burners and tanks and et cetera that's again I understand the flexibility that's built in here but it's another element of further locking in the Vermont system and kicking the can down the road in terms of getting off these assets can be more difficult in the future that inevitable methane is only inevitable by keeping current farming and waste management practices in place renewable natural gases is expensive if unsubsidized what's on the market now is subsidized so it's again a kind of hand out to try to keep these things going and keep us locked in subsidized in the form of renewable energy subsidized in forms of state and federal subsidies for biogas digesters state and federal subsidies for landfill none of these things happen in the free market they all happen because of subsidizing these new elements often in the name of environmental goals and it's again a kind of one step forward two steps back where the reform should happen is why do we have this farming system already why do we have this waste management system already why are we further encouraging these methane sources in order to green the supply of our gas and the last point is really really important which again I've made on testimony to the Public Utility Commission these are negligible supplies tiny compared to the demand and they never will be big unless we imagine a Vermont landscape that's you know thousands and thousands of dairy farms I don't see that in our future anytime soon so this is where the greenwashing comes into play because the advertising around renewable natural gas you think it was going to be a big part of the fuel supply and it never will be again the math doesn't add up doesn't work unless you see a dramatically different future for our dairy and waste supplies Senator Watson so are you sorry I don't necessarily understand a lot of the farming but so would it be accurate to say that practices that in farming that allow for the capture of methane would go up against the practices in farming that would be considered regenerative yes so by allowing methane to generate you're not capturing the carbon on farm in the first place yeah farm has a carbon cycle right so it sequesters carbon produces carbon right so I'd rather see proposals that we're trying to bring that to balance right versus encouraging out of balance system for larger feedstock diets cattle cow diets that create the methane to begin with so by controlling diet I control feeding by going to grazing systems by building soil right these are all things that kind of capture and close the carbon loop on a farm versus less industrialize our system let's import feed right let's be locked into a carbon intensive farming system and oh by the way sell off the worst worst culprit which it is which are really powerful strong methane emissions right so again I appreciate the carbon intensity ratcheting down over time I think that's in addition that's new that's really important so it says we're going to allow for some short-term flexibility for the one or two percent of the gas supply that could potentially be renewable but it has this kind of behavioral effect of greenwashing that whole energy supply and that's the piece that education is going to be really needed thanks wood wood yeah wood chips same issue around wood right we have to be thinking about the carbon cycle of wood right it's just so is wood that carbon is it neutral is it positive it all depends on land management and all depends on demand right if we were to go to wood for all of our heating needs in Vermont right we would need fuel stock that's the size of I did this calculation once Vermont New Hampshire Maine and part of upstate New York so it's all about you know what are you talking about are you talking about supplemental heat as would as complementary heat to electric heat pumps I have electric heat pumps in my home and we have a wood stove that we use for supplemental heat right with wood stove so that you know we're trying to create a more balanced heating portfolio if I were to rely just on on wood heat alone right then I'd probably be out of balance with my carbon impact ten years that the distinction between sequestered carbon and non sequestered wood is part of the natural carbon cycle burning it just speeds it up it speeds up speeds it up but it doesn't and then there are people saying come on carbon is carbon right but we have to think about in terms of carbon payback periods right so you put in a wood stove and you know what's the carbon cycle versus a properly managed lot versus fuel stock that comes from you know high grading fuel stock that comes from really good carbon management plans so all depends on just like with farming it all depends on the carbon management side because it is a renewable resource and over time is it in balance or out of balance with the carbon cycle that's it that could be another whole hour of testimony if we get into wood Does this bill address that? If I'm correct me if I'm wrong you sort of leave you leave wood and you do talk about high efficiency wood and modern modern wood and I think all that's important so I think a lot of this is left to the discretion of the PUC and defining energy credits when it comes to wood because it's a it's a challenging one because you're talking about the life cycle of a fuel creating energy credits around fossil fuels is pretty easy because it's not coming back anytime soon but when we talk about life cycle of a farm or life cycle of wood fuel sources there are assumptions that need to be made I'm also just waiting for the clock is turning up so I would respond to not have so many questions that we go I'm almost done but these questions are great along the way I was worried about not having enough to say so this is good kind of off of the biomass theme I'm just attending the bill and where I feel comfortable with the relationship we've built and the bill around wood is that we're not trying but biomass to create electricity doesn't make sense but I do think there's some real benefits to biomass for thermal and I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about the distinction there because I think people get kind of caught up in the weeds and don't realize that you're telling us that the biofuels aspect of this bill you believe is one step forward two steps back so I'm saying it contributes to lock-in contributes to carbon lock-in it bolsters the if it was just the percentage it doesn't contribute to lock-in much but the image of green natural gas contributes to lock-in a lot so it kind of keeps us in message on fossil fuels longer would you say they do because without rationing the carbon intensity requirement over time it's one step forward ten steps back but by rationing carbon intensity now over time it's one step forward two steps back and it makes again just like I was saying with efficiency improvements it makes the choice to get off fuel stocks all together because you're never going to go to 100% RNG and Vermont you're going to be 1, 2, 3 maybe 5% RNG so you're always so the choice to get off of that in the future is more difficult if you allow that source to be stretched even further so that's one of the trade-offs yeah I think it is definitely a trade-off absolutely one of the trade-offs but yeah to the biomass piece I'm wondering if you could speak to that like the how you feel about the thermal versus you used to get thermal generation yeah I mean for a long time we've known that burning wood for thermal heat and capturing that heat at source right is the more energy those energy units versus burning wood for electricity it again depends on feed stock you know and the management of the feed stock and whether that complements a sort of comprehensive energy system or not you know I mean there's a lot of controversy over the net carbon calculation for the Burlington McNeil plant yeah you know this building this building see it oh I didn't jeez I never wow the carbon complex yeah yeah I mean middlebury college is trying to be net zero and you know they've got some heating heating by wood kinds of things going on so all of that has to do with the fuel stock cycle and there's a lot of there's a lot of debate amongst the experts on this issue for sure for sure thank you again don't just like switch your furnace out and start burning wood and not pay attention to reducing your energy demand because the reality is to get to our climate goals worldwide and even as a state we've got to look at reduction of energy demand significant reduction of energy demands you know below 50% yeah and I think what I hear most from constituents is the leaning on wood because it is something that is proved from major catastrophe so if the power grid goes out you're able to heat your home still so I do see our constituents having some genuine and I think justified fears about moving away from wood because they're worried about the system and the functionality of it in situations that are hard so just conversation with my wife because we lost power for two days in wood stove and we had talked about rigging our electric system to hook up gas powered electric generator right so we were like what do we need we need wood we need heat that's all we need right water okay we have a farm so we stocked up on water before the power went out and it was getting close to whether we were going to get on the river or not start scooping buckets might have called up my neighbor to help me but those are I'm actually holding my question so let me just wrap up really briefly the third one was green hydrogen which is kind of measured offhand in here I'll just give you my quick opinion on this this is also a kind of industry lock-in it's investing energy to make energy to make energy the math on green hydrogen is kind of points to one of the biggest fairy tales of all in the energy system right now most hydrogen at scale currently and into the near future 20 25 30 years out is brown hydrogen where we burn fossil fuels to make hydrogen and using valuable assets like wind and solar to make liquid fuels when we should be electrifying our loads is again there's lots of catch 22s built in there so it's an attempt to stay locked on to locked into a kind of liquid fuel source we're having debates about this UVM right now which is involved in a green hydrogen research project which again if you take the life cycle approach which this bill does if you take a more comprehensive approach to reforming our energy system green hydrogen the amount of credits that are going to be generated in green hydrogen and from hydrogen pretty darn negligible in the near future so maybe it's a belongs in there but I don't know what the discussion was about including that besides just keeping all the above mentality but you know my comfort around the inclusion of it is that the analysis by the technical advisory group because it is a full pathway great analysis will I hope prevent the system from being you know abused in a way you'll see the full carbon costs in that fuel and we reflected in the carbon intensity on this scale yeah it all depends on how it's made and it has right now it has huge energy intensity so the green argument is we'll use green energy to make the hydrogen right but the green energy itself with burning fossil fuels to make the green energy so we've got lots to catch 22s built into our system as we make this transition have you seen much in the way hydrogen with renewable energy so wind or solar power you know it's it fluctuates that's right you can have a battery to store that power even if it's out or maybe you generate green hydrogen and then that's your way of storing that power and later on you can bring to a fuel cell to generate lightness I mean there's some arguments we made around fuel storage we waste a lot of energy because we have to keep the lights on all the time so rather than turning things on or off all the time we waste energy you take the excess energy and pump water uphill for hydro or do you use it to make green hydrogen you make a fuel stock that is basically like a battery so when you treat green hydrogen like a battery you see more benefits than just treating acid source that we have to use all the time I mean we're seeing some nations like Iceland I'm an adjunct professor of Iceland in part because of all my energy work and they're doing some really extraordinary things in Iceland around trying to be net zero and green hydrogen is part of the formula there but Iceland's a different creature I mean they just poke a hole in the ground and they've got heat so yeah yeah so if we had some volcanoes in Vermont maybe we could get all our kindergartners to make paper mache volcanoes and yes she could my nephew my nephew just made one yesterday so the last point I want to make is just to sort of emphasize the economic development dimensions of this which again the bill doesn't shout about but it's important to keep in mind that this puts incentives for fuel dealers we talked about this earlier to diversify and create new income streams right it's pretty easy to do it all the time right but if you're incentivized to diversify and create new income streams that can only be good for Vermont's future shifting a core business model away from I'm a oil supplier to I'm an energy service company and again we've seen some of the energy service companies do this already I was I've been on statewide councils where they were at the table and talking about our future's not oil be generating the credits that fuel importers need right and are incentivized to innovate cut costs build on current consumer relationships so again this is that sort of we know there's going to be huge cost savings that are going to be passed on to the consumer the argument's going to be made there's going to be extra costs that are passed on to consumers but I see this as all this kind of offsetting each other showed just that that the net is savings and I think channeled is the timing of when those savings are realized yes and that's why things like on bill financing low interest loans are huge right because if you can spread that cost out over time you'll see those savings I get we've historically I don't need to remind you all struggled with incentivizing demand for weatherization and electrification but this bill has elements of supply push a supply push from the dealers right that is aligned with not keeping customers on oil and gas this is huge right this changes the landscape from everything from advertising to workforce attraction to a full service model of maintenance and upkeep that benefits for mod communities I mean I've got one of those solar trackers at my house and I have a contract so it's not a one-shot deal there are service income that's built into all these new energy systems immediate use as I've already said of new federal dollars with multiplier effects on reducing energy burdens developing a competitive internal workforce I'm tired of subsidizing workforces elsewhere and keeping and recycling those energy dollars locally again along the lines of economic development there's potential for more comprehensive approaches I think that avoid or reduce a rebound effect sometimes we become more efficient and it means more energy use but again remoters don't wake up and say I wish I could spend more money on heating my home so there's there's a kind of net savings that and all the studies that I've seen show at the household level that's really important to keep track of this economic development and I'll just make these final two points there's potential for new economies of scale to emerge especially at district heating scales or in community owned systems so I like that the bill sort of signals that in terms of credits right because there's huge efficiencies in economies of scales that can be had by district heating especially in technologies like geothermal I almost want to give kind of bonus points for that but I think it will be captured in the heating energy credits and this is ultimately as I said before about decentralizing the heat sector it's about empowering the energy consumer and it's thinking more like an energy shed that kind of whether we do this by design or by disaster we're going to be relocalizing our energy system so why not capture more of the benefits and the costs today instead of you know forced to do it in the future that was a beautiful line by design or by disaster that was like and people sorry you got me excited but by disaster we'll hurt the most vulnerable people again I don't want to be back here in a couple years the same old story about hey it's another cold winter and Vermonters are stuck on oil and we're taking the subsidies and you know that's by disaster right sort of following the waxing and waning of oil prices is by disaster instead of sort of taking the future into our own hands that's by I can't believe this is not a nonpartisan approach because it helps the average Vermonter there are people who are concerned about how this will build out what the cost implications will be and they are suggesting we should slow down and do studies for another year oh my god and sorry that's on the record I think currently there's a tense study underway okay this is part of the Groundhog Day because I've seen these studies every year I come and testify about the studies and it's just kicking the can down the road how many more studies there's this great cartoon of this person wandering through the desert and everything's dry and nothing's growing and I think they've got Uncle Sam hat on and they're like one more study mentality sorry to interrupt you so no one has even in the current system there's no certainty absolutely so the idea that building a new program acknowledging that it has uncertainty in it for some people I don't even want to start but it ignores the fact that there's uncertainty staying right where we are but it's challenging I mean it's a human nature mindset that's why I said cultural is also part of walking right it's an important part to recognize that there is it's scary to do something new and different and to sort of say but I've always done it this way and a lot of that's in our workforce too right I've always done it this way so my the plumber who built that guy it was the first electric heat pump he did you know he was like you sure you want me to do this like absolutely let's do this so he made some mistakes and we figured it out but now he's doing it left and right this was like four years ago it's like his quarter was business now I would both fuel your around many years stop burning fuel and just a service yeah so I mean I think when we see resistance to a bill like this the question to ask right away is are you thinking short term or long term right I mean are you thinking in terms of your future or your children's future I mean I know we do that all the time next election I mean that's the other part of the Groundhog day is the two-year political cycle in our state you know but boy but the context is different now than around climate energy legislation is the global warming solutions act yeah we have we're out of gold land where we have goals and if we make them great if we don't I don't know at least we tried we're in the mandate now and you all passed that into law I I I suppose you could unpass it but but my short-handed caucus it's it's right right so you're now doing the hard work in the uncertain work of how right how do we do this and this is given that thermal heat is the second biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions in Vermont given that we have a legacy of old housing stock given that we're most dependent on fuel oil amongst all of our New England neighbors right why not start with this approach I mean it's and again from the outside looking in it's a no-brainer well okay we're wrapping up right at noon so thank you very much for coming in thanks for all the questions it was great conversation