With the state's final Comprehensive Energy Plan in its last phase, industry groups are making a final push for cheap, reliable energy.
In addition to submitting comments to the Department of Public Service, the Associated Industries of Vermont, the Vermont Energy Partnership and other business organizations held a press conference last week to get their point across.
Their main grievance: The plan focuses on climate change, renewable energy, and efficiency to such an extent that they have become goals in and of themselves.
“Our concern is with any framework for legislation or rules that will complicate things for the economy that will make energy more expensive, less reliable or otherwise raise obstacles to commerce,” said William Driscoll, vice president of Associated Industries of Vermont (AIV), which lobbies on behalf of industry and businesses in the state.
The Comprehensive Energy Plan is in its draft phase. The Department of Public Service has a statutory mandate to create a plan, but the state has not published one in more than 10 years. The current draft plan looks at current energy challenges and use and makes recommendations to allow the state to reach a goal of obtaining 90 percent of the state's total energy needs from renewable sources by 2050.
Driscoll said the plan puts a heavy focus on environmental impacts associated with energy production. The groups claim Vermont already has a clean energy portfolio, and meeting the plan's ambitious goals would create a hardship for business by increasing costs they pay for energy.
About 50 percent of Vermont's electricity comes from renewable resources currently, according to a study by the Clean Energy States Alliance. This comes primarily from Hydro-Quebéc and the New York Power Authority. In-state renewable electricity generation represents about 20 percent of Vermont's electricity use. Nearly one half of Vermont's electricity comes from out-of-state sources.
Driscoll and other business advocates worry the amount of money Vermont plans to spend on renewable energy and efficiency measures will make it more difficult for already struggling businesses as they will inevitably bear the brunt of the financial burden through electricity rates.
Vermont already imposes an energy efficiency charge that funds efficiency measures, and the state earned a first place ranking for electric utility-sponsored efficiency programs this year. Increasing the amount of energy the state will get from renewables and increasing efficiency measures will costs hundreds of millions of dollars. This totaled nearly $40 million last year.
According to a study by the Public Service Board released in October, shifting to 75 percent of the state's electricity from renewable sources would cost somewhere between $135 million and $294 million more than the current scenario over a 30-year period time period.
According to the comprehensive plan, the total bill impacts for renewable resources amount to $292 million over 20 years: less than 0.2 cents per kilowatt-hour. Comments submitted to the Department of Public Service from the Vermont Energy Partnership claim the overall cost needs clarification because “it is difficult for a layman to assess the 'bottom line.'”
The partnership also criticizes the plan for ignoring the possibility of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant continuing offering reliable, cheap energy. The nuclear facility's future is unclear since its future operation depends on a pending federal court case. The plan does not include any pending projects before the Public Service Board either.
Asa Hopkins, director of energy policy and planning for the Department of Public Service, said the department's statutory mandate to create the plan is to keep costs low. He said the idea of the plan is to create a model that will provide insights for policy makers. Therefore it is more a matter of modeling potential scenarios than a firm mandate. Hopkins said the plan focuses on energy efficiency because this will save money in the long run.
“One main takeaway is that an efficiency-first perspective pays off big time,” Hopkins said.
According to a model in the plan, every $1 million spent on efficiency is projected to produce $0.54 million in gross domestic product, and $0.86 million in wage income.
One idea reflected in the plan, Hopkins said, is the plan to bring electricity bills down with efficiency, which will provide savings that can go toward investing in cleaner energy.
Another focus of the plan is to shift toward more local renewable energy sources, which will allow for money spent on energy to remain within the state and also benefit the Vermont economy by creating jobs in the state to maintain and build in-state renewables. One study cited in the plan by the Rand Corporation and the University of Tennessee found that if 25 percent of all American energy were produced from renewable sources by 2025, the country would see 5 million new “green” jobs.
As for the estimate costs in the comprehensive energy plan and recent Public Service Board study, the basic idea is to use them within the model to compare one approach to another. The basic idea of the plan, Hopkins said, is to analyze a number of different inputs and scenarios that will give policy makers a handle on what matters.
While industry groups held a press conference to voice their concerns over the plan, environmental groups applauded its ambitious goals.
Ben Walsh, a clean energy advocate with the Vermont Public Interest Research Group, said, “the bottom line for us is: this is the responsible thing to do.”
Walsh said the idea of 90 percent renewables by 2050 is a laudable goal, and the state should be getting there even faster. VPIRG's comments focused on building more local energy projects in state.
Johanna Miller, energy program director for the Vermont Natural Resources Council, called the plan a “job creator.”
She said there is a false premise that the environment and the economy are at odds when it comes to energy policy and that cleaner energy will create jobs and help the environment.
“We can't continue on with old outdated models of powering our lives,” Miller said.
She said it is refreshing to have a comprehensive energy plan that recognizes the importance of shifting to cleaner sources of energy. Miller said she understands that developers are reticence to make investments in thinks like efficiency and renewable energy sources because they are expensive up front, but investing in these things will save money in the long run.
Miller said VNRC's concerns with the goal were that it lacked enough specificity as to how the state would reach its goals.