Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Representative Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Good afternoon. This is the House Appropriations Committee. It's Thursday, 03/12/2026. It's about 2PM, and we are here to hear Bill H740 from the Committee on Energy and Digital Infrastructure. And we appreciate your flexibility and willingness to come back this afternoon. We got a little behind this morning, so it just seemed a lot easier. We're happy to give you a little attention now. If you want to introduce yourself and tell us about the bill to start, that'd be great.

[Ellen Takowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Ellen Takowski, Office of Legislative Counsel. So I'm here on H740. As voted out of House Energy and Digital Infrastructure, it was draft 2.3. It's a very narrow bill. What it does is extend ANR extend and clarify the agency of natural resources existing authority to make rules related to the greenhouse gas inventory and registries. So for quite a while now, the agency of Natural Resources has been producing a greenhouse gas inventory and forecast. They have existing authority in 10VSA five eighty two to adopt rules for their greenhouse gas registry. This is adding specific type of rulemaking authority that the agency has asked that they believe that they need, specifically to have comprehensive greenhouse gas emission reporting program that covers all emissions, including fuel suppliers, which are not currently under their other reporting rules. And so it will be a program that covers suppliers of transportation and heating fuels and other types of fuels. They shall adopt a rule that at a minimum requires reporting on the types and volumes of fossil fuels sold by sector for transportation, residential, commercial, and industrial, and to do this by zip code, municipality, or however practicable. So they're going to adopt a rule and also create a database for where the reported data will live. So then there is an appropriation in section three, as well as some positions at the agency. The appropriation in this bill is for $500,000 to draft the greenhouse gas reporting rules, develop the database, as well as support the staff that will need to collect the data and manage the database. And so there will be two additional permanent environmental analyst positions at the agency for that as well. And it is specific as a base appropriation.

[Representative Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Okay, great. And I think representative James, Chair James, will probably get into the details about all of this beyond just what is an olefins. So maybe that would be the better time for your question. That'd be great. So I think unless we have a clarifying question, don't leave. But that's So thank you very much. And Scott from Joint Fiscal has also been patiently waiting for us.

[Scott Moore (Joint Fiscal Office, Legislative Finance Manager)]: I'm very patient for you all, Matt. Good afternoon, Scott Moore, legislative finance manager for the Joint Fiscal Office. As Ellen just mentioned, this bill does come with a $500,000 appropriation to the base above what would already be given to ANR. And Ellen did mention two permanent positions for this environmental analyst. Doing the math, that number would come out to be estimated $185,000 to cover those two positions in FY '27. Now going forward, as the permanent positions in FY 2829, and '30, it's hard to know what that cost may be because there could be pay act raises, etcetera, etcetera. But for FY twenty seventh, that estimated cost be an additional 185. So a total of $685,000 will be added to the budget from this bill.

[Representative Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Okay, so we didn't in the bill, it didn't say the dollar figure for the positions.

[Unidentified Member (House Appropriations Committee)]: Don't you usually put that in the bill? I'll get you, Ellen. I would assume it was part of the 500.

[Representative Wayne Laroche (Member, House Appropriations Committee)]: Is it?

[Representative Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: It's included. Went over that. Introduce yourself.

[Representative Kathleen "Kathy" James (Chair, House Committee on Energy and Digital Infrastructure; Bennington-4)]: I'm sorry. Representative Kathy James, Bennington Ford District. I did talk to Secretary Moore kind of at length about their $500,000 request base, and that includes the two positions. So I've got a bunch of notes here on what that

[Unidentified Member (House Appropriations Committee)]: Okay, why

[Representative Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: don't you join us at the table?

[Representative Kathleen "Kathy" James (Chair, House Committee on Energy and Digital Infrastructure; Bennington-4)]: Okay, sure.

[Scott Moore (Joint Fiscal Office, Legislative Finance Manager)]: My apologies, Madam Chair. Was seeing impression this would be two additional positions not included in that 500.

[Representative Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Okay.

[Scott Moore (Joint Fiscal Office, Legislative Finance Manager)]: So, no still stands

[Representative Wayne Laroche (Member, House Appropriations Committee)]: in that.

[Scott Moore (Joint Fiscal Office, Legislative Finance Manager)]: The $185,000 would be the potential cost of those two positions.

[Representative Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Okay, and as part of the 500,000 Is that right? Is that anything else we need to know on the money part, Cath? There representative chance, madam chair? I

[Representative Kathleen "Kathy" James (Chair, House Committee on Energy and Digital Infrastructure; Bennington-4)]: have a bunch of notes on the $500,000 request. So I guess I don't know what level of detail you would like. But the $500,000 base

[Representative Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: But let's see if I have a question about that.

[Representative Wayne Laroche (Member, House Appropriations Committee)]: Well, question is on the money. Dollars 185,000 for two positions. Dollars 185,000 is not my

[Representative Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Happy year. It's not

[Representative Wayne Laroche (Member, House Appropriations Committee)]: a year. It's not a year. Okay. It's not going be permanent positions.

[Representative Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: That is the proposal I understand. So let's hear what James says about the money's going to be used because she has talked with ANR. I have talked with ANR.

[Representative Kathleen "Kathy" James (Chair, House Committee on Energy and Digital Infrastructure; Bennington-4)]: So it does come out to two FTE. And so where we and or I came up with the $500,000 was just your general 150,000 per FTE placeholder. So salary, benefits, fit up for laptops or something. So I checked in with JFO a little bit and said, are we accustomed to seeing $150,000 for an FTE? And they said, yeah, we are. So two FTE, that's the $300,000 in ongoing base costs. And then there's also $200,000 in platform maintenance and third party verification, so compliance. So that's how they came to the $500,000 Now, I'm going to really get out over my skis now talking to a props. I'm a little nervous. But originally, there had been 500,000 base and 300,000 one time. Secretary Moore says they no longer need the 300,000 one time, that if this money gets approved, if the 500 base gets approved starting in July, it's going to take them a while to hire. And using those vacancy savings, they can start doing some of these early startup costs. And so some of the costs that would have come later, they'll have the money for. So long story short, 500 ks base is all they need. They don't need more one time next year. That will cover this program going forward.

[Scott Moore (Joint Fiscal Office, Legislative Finance Manager)]: Madam Chair, just to clarify, on the 150 versus 185, because this bill does list specifically the environmental analyst five, we can go and look and see what the actual pay grade would be for that specific position. So therefore, addition is because of the specific pay grade 24, step one, step two.

[Representative Kathleen "Kathy" James (Chair, House Committee on Energy and Digital Infrastructure; Bennington-4)]: How Okay. About that? So,

[Representative Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Rep. James, do you want to talk a little bit about the purpose of the registry? We have the bill, but you tell us the reasons and why it's needed and all of that kind stuff.

[Representative Kathleen "Kathy" James (Chair, House Committee on Energy and Digital Infrastructure; Bennington-4)]: I do want to talk about that. Consider state whatever you want. Okay. So I came before the committee on pitch day or shark tank day or whatever to talk about why I think this bill is so important. And, I wanna reiterate that point to you now with even greater passion, if I possibly can. First of all, we talk a lot in this building and all across the state about affordability. It matters. And I want to tell you that the long term future of energy on this planet will become more and more and more affordable and sustainable, not to mention healthy, when we are able to make a transition to renewables. They are cheaper. So how do we get there? Where we bog down time and time again, rightly so, is on the cost of that transition. Okay? So it's, can we spend a penny to save a dime? We know we're gonna save the dime. Where are we gonna get the penny? And we fight in Vermont, and we fight in every state, and we fight at the federal level about the penny. And I'm not saying a penny doesn't matter, and I'm not saying $500,000 is a penny. But I'm saying if we keep stopping the argument at the penny, we will not get to the sustainable, affordable energy future that the rest of the world right now, by the way, is forging merrily ahead on, and we are getting left behind. Vermont's economy is getting left behind. The American economy is getting left behind. So there's not much that I can do sitting here today to fix what's happening in DC or to fix the global energy economy. But I can tell you that we can create effective policies here that help low and moderate income Vermonters if we have the data we need. So I'm going to go ahead and say clean, heat, Let's just all take a minute. Let's just all take a minute to breathe. There are policy ideas that are great ideas that hit a brick wall because we don't know how to design them properly. And I think we were all here for the many years that we've tried to move forward a clean heat standard. And that is DOA right now, so don't That's

[Scott Moore (Joint Fiscal Office, Legislative Finance Manager)]: not where we're going.

[Representative Kathleen "Kathy" James (Chair, House Committee on Energy and Digital Infrastructure; Bennington-4)]: That's not where we're going. Nobody needs to come and collar me in the hallway. But, you know, we try to pass a thoughtful policy that's not gonna be regressive, that's not gonna jack the price of fuel, that's gonna help low and moderate income Vermonters weatherize their homes or put in a heat pump, and we get stuck on where are we gonna get that money? And then when we have debates over controversial topics like the clean heat standard, we have people hauling out their napkins and hauling out their envelopes and scribbling on the back to say, well, gee, we think this is gonna raise the price of fuel $4 a gallon. We think it's gonna raise the price of fuel. We don't know. It's gonna be terrible, and policy ideas die. So the greenhouse gas inventory that we have right now is not sufficient to build deep detailed, responsive, thoughtful policy that works for Vermonters. It's just not. It's super high level. It is not and I I know folks have have claimed this. This is not data data that's readily available for free. If it was, we wouldn't have this bill. So the greenhouse gas inventory and the data that we can get from the tax department and from the DMV is high level statewide aggregate data. And you can take a look at it right here, and I'll take a look at it for you. It's the number of gallons of heating oil, kerosene, and propane sold by month.

[Ellen Takowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: For the whole state.

[Representative Kathleen "Kathy" James (Chair, House Committee on Energy and Digital Infrastructure; Bennington-4)]: For the whole state. So That's not helpful. Okay, we do better than that in this building. At least we try to. So what this bill proposes is to gather sales data. Okay? So this is data that fuel suppliers readily have at their fingertips. They are already reporting it to tax. Okay? So this gathers sales data from our fuel suppliers across the heating and transportation sectors. Those are the two sectors in our economy that contribute the most to air pollution, to carbon pollution. Heating, transportation. That's where our carbon pollution is coming from. Those two sectors of our economy right now are totally unregulated in terms of sales and pricing. So if you wanna ask, you know, ask why we're doing so much better in the electric sector, it's because that's a regulated sector. K? Nobody's controlling the price of gas at the pump except for the war in The Middle East right now. Okay? So we need data across these unregulated sectors, and all we're asking is that they upload sales data to a portal. And if that's too heavy a lift, come on. So they're going to upload it to a portal, and it's going to gather this data by type of fuel. That's really helpful. We already have that. By supplier and by ZIP code. And that is really valuable. So I'm I could keep going. I sense from the chair that I need to stop.

[Unidentified Member (House Appropriations Committee)]: Well, you keep going, but I

[Representative Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: would wanna get some questions in that may that will allow you to keep going too. Sure. Go ahead, Wayne.

[Representative Wayne Laroche (Member, House Appropriations Committee)]: So the tax department has data. So why can't you use the data?

[Representative Kathleen "Kathy" James (Chair, House Committee on Energy and Digital Infrastructure; Bennington-4)]: So that is a great question. In the memo that it put out in December, ANR and the climate office explained why this policy was so important and why it was one of their top 10 priorities for our climate action moving forward. And they explained that there are two ways that we could get this data. One way is called ANR just called it standalone reporting. And that's the path we envision in this bill, that ANR will stand up its own portal, and people will upload to text, they'll upload to ANR slightly different data to ANR. So the other way was called reverse harmonization, and that meant getting it from the state agencies that are currently gathering it and see if it's sufficient. ANR decided that wasn't the way to go, but the I think the beauty of this bill is that this bill doesn't design the program. It gives ANR the authority they need to design the program through rulemaking, and they've told us that they'll continue to explore reverse harmonization and whether they could just get it for tax. But at this point, they're not convinced that I think they've had less success maybe in the past with getting data from tax. So it's not off the table.

[Representative Wayne Laroche (Member, House Appropriations Committee)]: Steve, my thinking of this is that if the data exists and can be shared electronically between the other agencies, then it's merely a matter of aggregating it into into the system, whatever system they're gonna use to analyze data, store and analyze data. And that doesn't I I wouldn't see why you would need two employees once that once that data was in there. I I can't imagine this. We only have how many places selling in in The States. A thousand? You know, it's not like there's a huge number of of entities that would be giving you data. When that data comes in, goes in there and then they should have standard analyses through each of the years in order to figure out whatever the metrics are that you want to derive from that. Doesn't seem as if it has to be this big and have employees going forward through time that we're gonna have to pay COLAs and insurance and everything else on. So I'm just wondering, have they thought this out well? Have they actually upfront told you why one method would be better than the other or not? Which one would be more costly or not?

[Representative Kathleen "Kathy" James (Chair, House Committee on Energy and Digital Infrastructure; Bennington-4)]: Yeah. And I can share with the community. It's buried somewhere, unfortunately, my foot high stack of papers that are going to become maybe a floor report. We'll see. But the memo that ANR delivered in December talks at greater length about this difference between reverse harmonization and standalone and why at this point they feel like it's not as good. I know it has to do with the quality of the data, the granularity of the data, and whether it would be possible to work it out with tax. Rule making would not rule that out. I will make another point, which is that one of the FTEs is for somebody to run the program, so to run the portal, to run the outreach, to kind of be the person who will run this greenhouse gas reporting program. The other FTE is for compliance. And I think that's interesting because when we stood up, and I realize this is all part of kind of a broken process. But when we stood up the fuel dealer registry as part of the now, you know, extinct clean heat standard, compliance was really low. A very, very low percentage of fuel dealers complied with that fuel dealer registry even though it was supposed to be mandatory. So I think ANR is concerned about compliance.

[Representative Wayne Laroche (Member, House Appropriations Committee)]: I mean if they have to report to the taxes and the tax department is making them comply, If the data that the tax department is collecting isn't quite all the data that you need perhaps you could have them modify the tax collect, the data collection.

[Representative Kathleen "Kathy" James (Chair, House Committee on Energy and Digital Infrastructure; Bennington-4)]: The data that tax is getting.

[Representative Wayne Laroche (Member, House Appropriations Committee)]: What they're getting, so that you didn't have to create something new as far as compliance is concerned. ANR has a whole compliance position already. So why would they need another person to do this when they have compliance officers there now?

[Representative Kathleen "Kathy" James (Chair, House Committee on Energy and Digital Infrastructure; Bennington-4)]: Yeah, I guess I would come back to the question or to what I said earlier, is that ANR has said that they'll continue to work on this path and if that's the result of the rulemaking, then that's the result of the rulemaking. I don't think ANR would have an interest in making it harder, more complicated and more expensive if there's an easier way. But for now, that's not what they're recommending.

[Unidentified Member (House Appropriations Committee)]: Yeah, thank you. I was going to ask you the same question about the records because it seemed to me somebody must have the records already just for their sales. But we did, I don't know, dollars $708,100,000 we gave to the Treasury's office a couple of years ago to do something to stand up the requirements for this. What happened to that report and why is that different than this? Is it duplicative? Or was it a totally different report? I'm not sure what report. Different report. That was for

[Representative Kathleen "Kathy" James (Chair, House Committee on Energy and Digital Infrastructure; Bennington-4)]: the oil Oh, for the Climate Superfund? Yes. That's a different bill.

[Unidentified Member (House Appropriations Committee)]: However, the PUC did do a report.

[Representative Kathleen "Kathy" James (Chair, House Committee on Energy and Digital Infrastructure; Bennington-4)]: The PUC did a couple of reports. Are you talking about the clean heat standard? Yeah. So the PUC, and this was sort of unprecedented, when we passed the clean heat standard in the second time in Well, I guess we didn't. We did last it the first time. We passed the clean heat standard the second time in twenty twenty four

[Unidentified Member (House Appropriations Committee)]: twenty twenty

[Representative Kathleen "Kathy" James (Chair, House Committee on Energy and Digital Infrastructure; Bennington-4)]: three. In 'twenty three, we built into that bill a sort of unprecedented check back. And I just want to reiterate, this bill is not the clean heat standard. But happy to talk about this other thing. So we put a check back report into the clean heat standard. And that basically did two things. It required the Public Utility Commission to do a very comprehensive sort of exploratory draft rule making process, to look into every aspect of the clean heat standard to try to get a handle on costs because we didn't have the data that we needed, and also to look at the logistics of it. Like, how would this really work for Vermont? So we built that check back into the bill, and we also put language into the bill that said that the clean heat standard could not proceed without legislative approval. And what that meant was, and believe me, I remember talking with Ledge Council about this many times. What that meant was the introduction of a brand new bill, testimony in the House, testimony in the House, passage by the full legislature, signing by the government. So that robust report came back from the PUC on 01/15/2025, at the very beginning of this biennium. We held a joint hearing with my committee and with Senate Environment the day after the check back report was issued to hear their findings. And what the PUC reported was that the cost of the proposed clean heat standard would not have been $4 a gallon. It in fact would have been $08 a gallon, moving to $0.58 a gallon ten years out. But also, that they didn't think the clean heat standard was a good idea for Vermont to do as a standalone program, that it was too complicated for Vermont. And so with that report in hand, that we received at the very start of this biennium, we're now two days from cross crossover. No one has introduced that bill. No one has taken testimony on that bill. The PUC has formally stopped working on the bill, and all of those staff are gone or doing other jobs. So I think that's what you're probably talking about.

[Unidentified Member (House Appropriations Committee)]: One follow-up, please. The other thing that's why I recall when we were across the hall is that one of the things that constantly came up, and you sort of referred to it earlier, is that regulated electrical sourceit's not a fuel, but it's a source. It needs fuel to generate electricityis more cost effective than the unregulated. And one of the things that I remember way back when we had the CBPS Green Mountain Power discussion is that there are dockets at the PC all the time for electric rates. And I'm not sure I've ever seen a docket go down on electric rates, whereas oil or gas or whatever goes up and down depending on all kinds of things that, like the situation right now, it's going to go up. But previous to that, it's gone down. It goes up, it goes down, it goes up, it goes down. I'm just curious, if you've got electricity as your power source as your alternative that you're looking at with a variety of fuels that produce this product, and it's always going up, how does that become a more economically viable alternative?

[Representative Kathleen "Kathy" James (Chair, House Committee on Energy and Digital Infrastructure; Bennington-4)]: I want to make sure I'm understanding understanding your question and how it relates To the cost of power.

[Unidentified Member (House Appropriations Committee)]: To this bill. The cost of power.

[Representative Kathleen "Kathy" James (Chair, House Committee on Energy and Digital Infrastructure; Bennington-4)]: Okay. So I think you're asking me, if I look to the future, and I think it's beneficial to move away from fossil fuels and toward more renewable fuels, I think what you're saying is, and that's going to drive more electric demand because people are going to be driving EVs and maybe putting in heat pumps, but the price of electricity keeps going up. And so how does it all come out in the wash?

[Unidentified Member (House Appropriations Committee)]: Yeah, how does that save money? I mean, understand that it's an alternative. We're all very thankful for electricity. But, know, I mean, we have closed our nuclear power plant, which was extremely cost effective. And there is now rumblings of trying to use nuclear as an alternative, which is there's no emissions. How is the electric costs going to be variable and adjust if we're saving money and it will go down? As opposed to the unregulated, going up and down by market forces.

[Representative Kathleen "Kathy" James (Chair, House Committee on Energy and Digital Infrastructure; Bennington-4)]: Okay. I'll take a swing at that. What I meant was, yes, electric prices, they go up. Someone is taking a look at those rate increase requests. And that's what I meant by regulated. So New England has the highest, among the highest electric prices in the country, which is not great. Vermont has the lowest electricity prices in New England precisely because of our regulated structure. So we've got tariff increases coming to the department or the PUC, and they have to be approved. And that is why, in a region that generally has higher electric rates, Vermont has the lowest electric rates of these surrounding states. So will the cost of electricity continue to rise as we continue to electrify? It could, or it could not. One of the things that I think is really interesting about the way energy is evolving in The United States is that there's an increasing realization that demand side management is really, really important. So when we look at Velco, our transmission company, and Green Mountain Power, our distribution utilities, they are working just as hard on reducing electric load. So that's things like batteries, right, so that we can store and release. When you put in a solar panel at your house, GMP now has a great deal on putting in a whole battery wall so that you can generate power, store that power, and release that power back to the grid. So I think there's just as much emphasis these days on energy storage, on things like smart meters, and on reducing our overall energy usage. And I don't have these numbers at my fingertip, but one of the things that I find so interesting is that with the money that we all spend on our electric bill that goes to efficiency Vermont, those efficiency charges, that money has been turned around and invested in measures that have reduced Vermont's overall energy usage through greater efficiency. So I know that's kind of a circular question, but I guess what I'm saying is and again, I can talk about this stuff all day long. The seven forty is gathering information from the heating and transportation sectors, not the electric sectors. So I feel like I did go off kind of down a little side alley, But we're trying to gather data from the heating fuel and the transportation sectors, which don't have any of that kind of regulatory structure around them. So when the price of gas goes up at the pump, our Department of Public Service or PUC is not having a rate case on that. That's what I meant.

[Representative Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Thank

[Unidentified Member (House Appropriations Committee)]: you. Excuse me, but thanks for bringing this forward. I feel like this is a really worthwhile investment today, invest in the future, but piggyback a little on what the representative was saying, I think costs are something to look at. My experience is with my EV I'm spending half the amount of money I used to have gas vehicles to get back and forth. The differential between what you spend on electricity and gas is huge and but it would be interesting to quantify that. The other piece of it is I doubt there's anybody who puts a budget together right now whether it's a family, a school, a business has expected the kind of spikes they're seeing right now and that's because we're dealing with an unregulated industry for gas and oil. That's a problem for me because we're at the mercy of them. So my understanding, from my way of looking at things, appreciate that electric is regulated and as far as the nuclear option, I'm not sure someone's suggesting a nuke on the shores of lake, but I don't know where you put it, Vermont. And I don't think that's a viable option, nobody wants them anymore.

[Representative Kathleen "Kathy" James (Chair, House Committee on Energy and Digital Infrastructure; Bennington-4)]: Yeah. And again,

[Representative Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: guess it's all other conversation. All other conversation. We are not going to we're gonna focus on the bill.

[Representative Kathleen "Kathy" James (Chair, House Committee on Energy and Digital Infrastructure; Bennington-4)]: Like I said, you can I I will sit here all day?

[Ellen Takowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I will and you can And

[Representative Kathleen "Kathy" James (Chair, House Committee on Energy and Digital Infrastructure; Bennington-4)]: I'm happy to do it.

[Representative Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: I appreciate it. I'm gonna let Wayne have one more question here. Back

[Representative Wayne Laroche (Member, House Appropriations Committee)]: on the data. I assume you're getting gallons of, like, whatever kind of fuel. What's the what's the data that you that they told you that they wanna collect?

[Representative Kathleen "Kathy" James (Chair, House Committee on Energy and Digital Infrastructure; Bennington-4)]: It would gather see here. It's in the bill. Fuel sales by type, by supplier, by ZIP code, municipality, or the smallest practical geographic unit. Did I get that right, Eileen? So it's fuel sales by type, so you know diesel versus gas at the pump. Gallons. Gallons, yeah. All types of Gallons sold or yeah gallons yeah.

[Representative Wayne Laroche (Member, House Appropriations Committee)]: Gallons and if it was natural gas or some other gas.

[Representative Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: My type of fuel.

[Representative Wayne Laroche (Member, House Appropriations Committee)]: Propane, like propane gas that keeps stuff going.

[Representative Kathleen "Kathy" James (Chair, House Committee on Energy and Digital Infrastructure; Bennington-4)]: Yeah,

[Representative Wayne Laroche (Member, House Appropriations Committee)]: and by gallon. And then once you get the gallon data, the analysis, you know, get to calculate CO2 based upon if a gallon of fuel was burnt and then what the totals are. Is that what you're doing with that data? Then once you've got that total CO2 calculation, nothing else should calculate just probably CO2?

[Representative Kathleen "Kathy" James (Chair, House Committee on Energy and Digital Infrastructure; Bennington-4)]: Yeah, do you want to go, Ellen? But you can explain the legal stuff, and then I have a more policy based response to why I think this data is helpful.

[Unidentified Member (House Appropriations Committee)]: They break it out when they have gas inventory. CO2, yes, but they address the other elements.

[Representative Wayne Laroche (Member, House Appropriations Committee)]: This is why I'm asking. I'm getting to the magnitude of the effort in terms of the job that someone would have to do. And what what I'm seeing is if you're collecting data on the gallons, the computations in terms of what the CO two is coming out of a gallon of any of the types of fuel that you have is simple. You have a spreadsheet or anything you can calculate by pushing one button once you get the the volumes in there, right? That's not a hard job. So, two employees full time for for all this time. It's not a very hard job. That's what I'm focusing on.

[Representative Kathleen "Kathy" James (Chair, House Committee on Energy and Digital Infrastructure; Bennington-4)]: Yeah. Heard. I want to say one thing, though, about that. And it's really just more of a philosophical or policy. You know, what is the problem and what is the solution? Like, why do we care? And I just want to remind folks around this table that greenhouse gas emissions is a very high level technical metric for how we measure carbon pollution, and it's how we measure progress. It's our yardstick. Right? So we're here, and we wanna be here. But how you get and this is why I care so deeply about this work. How you get from here to here doesn't happen in a scientific laboratory. It happens one Vermonter at a time. It happens when I help a low income person weatherize at home so it's not leaking fuel oil into the atmosphere.

[Representative Wayne Laroche (Member, House Appropriations Committee)]: I understand all that stuff.

[Representative Kathleen "Kathy" James (Chair, House Committee on Energy and Digital Infrastructure; Bennington-4)]: Okay.

[Representative Wayne Laroche (Member, House Appropriations Committee)]: I'm just trying to get the data. I'm not focused on my greater policy at this point in time. I do have my own opinions on it, but I'm not.

[Representative Kathleen "Kathy" James (Chair, House Committee on Energy and Digital Infrastructure; Bennington-4)]: I'll meet you in the cafeteria.

[Representative Wayne Laroche (Member, House Appropriations Committee)]: I'm about that. I'm just worried about what we're going to pay for and whether it's going to be giving us a return on investment. We're a very small state. In the global wide, the CO2 we produce is a pimple on a can't even know the size of the monster beyond. So we're going to be measuring a difference and if we're going to be gathering statistics that are going to give us enough information so that we can determine within 95% probability that we're gonna make a 1% difference in the CO2 and somehow how much data we need. Are we gathering the right data? That kind of thing. So I'm thinking along those lines, and I wanna be able to see a return on investment. Okay. Something that yields something that we're gonna be able to act upon. And if you're gonna say, okay, we're gonna let me use this data. And some certain point in time, if it it goes this way a little bit too much, we're gonna advise actions like this, more electric cars or whatever you're gonna do. But it should be tied to some steps that are gonna have actions that are gonna head you in the direction of whatever your goals wanna be, whether I agree with the goal or not.

[Representative Kathleen "Kathy" James (Chair, House Committee on Energy and Digital Infrastructure; Bennington-4)]: That is so you and I could not agree more Because the point of this data is not to be watching something tick down 1% on a yardstick. It is to be able to look and say, wow, our lowest income county is where they're burning the most kerosene. That is a, you know, that is a

[Representative Wayne Laroche (Member, House Appropriations Committee)]: Well, we would know that now.

[Representative Kathleen "Kathy" James (Chair, House Committee on Energy and Digital Infrastructure; Bennington-4)]: Okay, our lowest income community. And we do not know that now. So to be able to target a policy to really see where people are burning the most fuel, the most price volatile, the most expensive, the least sustainable kind of fuel by town, and be able to say, like, wow, we've two communities right in a row that could really use some targeted incentives. We've got income data. We know those are low income communities. Let's help this town. We we really can't do that right now. You know? Or folks in this community, they're doing fine. You know? They're using a lot less heating oil. They can they've probably already put in their splits and weatherize because they can afford it.

[Representative Wayne Laroche (Member, House Appropriations Committee)]: So you're suggesting that some of the one of the actions that you might be able to take so when you find something like that, that we might be able to change the practices there by subsidizing something that allows, say, poor people at some places that are burning coal to be able to, say, go on to solar or something else like that.

[Representative Kathleen "Kathy" James (Chair, House Committee on Energy and Digital Infrastructure; Bennington-4)]: Yeah. I'd start with weatherizing homes. But, yes, the idea is to be able to build policy that can pinpoint how we can help people. Because if climate policy can't help the people who right now, right now, people who can afford it, they're weatherizing their homes, they're buying EVs, they're putting on solar, they're putting in splits. So climate action and saving money on your energy bills by doing all these amazing things, that's come now something that people can afford it can do. So we're you know, everybody who's got cash can weatherize and put on solar panels and drive around in their EVs, and all the people who get hurt the most by spiking fuel prices are getting left in the dirt because we don't have the data we need to develop pinpoint policies to help the folks who need it the most.

[Representative Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Which will save money because it's targeted and not just blanketed.

[Representative Wayne Laroche (Member, House Appropriations Committee)]: Yeah. Thanks, I understand.

[Representative Kathleen "Kathy" James (Chair, House Committee on Energy and Digital Infrastructure; Bennington-4)]: Yeah, it's really important. And every year, it's going to be so easy to say, we don't have this 500 ks, we don't have this 300 ks, we don't have it, we're not going to do it. And when the pedal really hits the metal and maybe change things change federally, or the time has come where we have political consensus around enacting these kinds of policies, we're gonna say, wow. We don't have the data we need. It's really going to be sad. It is going to be such a lost opportunity. And the more years of data we have, the better policy we can build. So every year we wait is another year that we're putting off being able to do this right. And, it is it's such a lost opportunity because I really do wanna reiterate the world's moving forward, you know, and to build these kinds of policies at some point is gonna seem imperative. It we're gonna we're not gonna believe we didn't do it before. We're gonna be really disappointed we're gonna do it we didn't do it before. We're not gonna have the numbers we need to build the kind of smart policy that I think the legislature is capable of doing. And every year lost that we can't find the penny to save the dime is gonna be a year we spend the dime.

[Representative Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Thank you, Kath.

[Representative Kathleen "Kathy" James (Chair, House Committee on Energy and Digital Infrastructure; Bennington-4)]: On that note

[Representative Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: I think we have got everything we need to know at this point. And if people have questions, we're not going to vote today. But we have all the information we need

[Representative Wayne Laroche (Member, House Appropriations Committee)]: at this point.

[Representative Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: So thank you very much.

[Representative Kathleen "Kathy" James (Chair, House Committee on Energy and Digital Infrastructure; Bennington-4)]: Thank you so much for having me. Thanks for this thoughtful conversation. And always happy to answer any questions. All right. Thank you. Thanks everybody.

[Unidentified Member (House Appropriations Committee)]: Thank you. Take

[Representative Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: care. So committee, we're going go off live for a couple of minutes, and then we're going to come back on live for a couple of minutes after that. James has the spreadsheet for bills as it is, but we're going to do that live. But before that, we have something to

[Representative Wayne Laroche (Member, House Appropriations Committee)]: do while

[Representative Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: we're