Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Speaker 0]: We're live. Three point one. Okay. Welcome everybody to House Energy and Digital Infrastructure. It is Thursday, March 12. And we are here this morning to vote on H-seven 18, an act relating to building energy efficiency. And then we're going to move right from that discussion into a discussion and I think a probable vote on our committee bill about the Joint Carbon Emissions Reduction Committee. So that's what we're doing this morning. And I'm representative Kathleen James from Manchester.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Scott Campbell from Saint Johnsbury.

[Rep. Richard Bailey]: Richard Bailey, memorial two. Chris Morrow, Windham, Windsor, Bennington. Michael Southworth, Caledonia two. Bramstepper, Howland, Rutland Four.

[Rep. Dara Torre (Clerk)]: Dara Torre, Washington two. Laura Sibilia, one two.

[Speaker 0]: Great. And in the room?

[Rep. Dara Torre (Clerk)]: Dara Torre,

[Speaker 0]: Super. Okay.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Also, I have another question.

[Speaker 0]: Oh, sorry.

[Zachary Morrow (UVM Affinity Service)]: I'm Zach. Zachary Morrow from the Affinity Service at UVM.

[Speaker 0]: Thanks for being here. And, yes, and Bram Kleppner.

[Rep. Bram Kleppner]: Bram Kleppner, Chittenden, Thirteen Burlington.

[Speaker 0]: Super. Thanks for calling in. Rep Campbell, do you wanna just give a quick little howdy ho? Here we go.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Sure. Yes. Thank you, madam chair. We are talking about page seven eighteen. This is draft 3.1. We've made a number of changes to over the course of the session to try to be accommodating as possible to the agencies that are involved, that is the Division of Fire Safety, Office of Professional Regulation, and Public Service Department in particular, in order to find a path to stimulating more compliance with energy codes, through market mechanisms, not not through enforcement. And the this this latest version changed the, funding, we talked about the other day, change the funding from tapping a a special fund, the thermal energy and process fuels fund, RGGI revenues. Instead of doing that, we're we're positive that we we take some money, or appropriate some money from the general fund to fund, improving the, residential contractor registry and making it sort of raising its visibility, making it much more user friendly for for cuss consumers and for contractors. And and that was the major change. There was also a change regarding the the energy education modules that have been in in the statute for a number of years and that are required, professions registered at the office of professional regulation and trades that are licensed through vision and fire safety. So we had we had a conversation about all that, and that's where we are. Appreciate Okay. Taking this out.

[Speaker 0]: Super. And it'll go from here to oops.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Yes.

[Speaker 0]: Okey doke. So at this point, let's get some motions going.

[Rep. Laura Sibilia (Ranking Member)]: We'll move that we approve draft 3.1 of

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: H seven eighteen.

[Rep. Laura Sibilia (Ranking Member)]: H seven eighteen, an act relating to building energy efficiency.

[Rep. Dara Torre (Clerk)]: Favorable. Wait. No. First, have

[Speaker 0]: to do the straw poll. I move that we approve

[Rep. Laura Sibilia (Ranking Member)]: draft 3.1 to h 17.

[Rep. Dara Torre (Clerk)]: Great. Okay. So just a step we've been omitting. Yeah. Come to my attention.

[Speaker 0]: Dara's gotten deeper into the rules. So Mhmm. Strombold, all in favor? Okay. All opposed?

[Speaker 2]: Graham on that.

[Speaker 0]: Oh, Graham Strappolt. To this is our little first step to basically approve the okay. You

[Rep. Bram Kleppner]: you didn't hear my thumbs up. Okay.

[Speaker 0]: So I did not. Alright. So

[Rep. Dara Torre (Clerk)]: favorable. Next motion.

[Rep. Laura Sibilia (Ranking Member)]: Sorry, just needed my phone to stop listening to me. I move that we report H-seven 18 favorable with amendment.

[Speaker 0]: Great. Okay. Alright. Yeah. I'm with the next speaker.

[Rep. Dara Torre (Clerk)]: Representative Bailey? No. Representative Campbell? Yes. Representative Allison? No. Representative Quattner?

[Rep. Bram Kleppner]: Yes.

[Rep. Dara Torre (Clerk)]: Representative Laura?

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Yes.

[Rep. Dara Torre (Clerk)]: Representative Dara? Yes. Representative Southworth? No. Representative Torre? Yes. And Chair James? Yes. Okay. Six. Meeting zero, and the reporter of the bill is?

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: It's me.

[Speaker 0]: Alright. So I'll leave it to you guys to notify the clerk and do all the things, and the bill is off to appropes. And so we'll see it on the notice council or calendar, and then it'll be referred to appropriations. And thanks for all your hard work on this, Scott, you. Over many

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Can we say goodbye to Bram?

[Speaker 0]: I don't know. Bram, can you hang around for the joint committee discussion?

[Rep. Bram Kleppner]: Yes. I can.

[Speaker 0]: Okay. Great. Let's move on. We've got on our website, let me find it. Maybe it's in today's folder. Yes. No.

[Rep. Dara Torre (Clerk)]: Alrighty. Let's see here.

[Speaker 0]: Okay. Alex Mhmm. Yesterday at 05:12 p. M, Ellen emailed us the committee the first draft of the committee bill. Mhmm. This is the joint carbon emissions reduction thing. Mhmm. And I've I've sent that to the committee, so everybody should have it in their inbox, but I don't see where it's posted. I see it. Okay.

[Rep. Bram Kleppner]: Is is that the number on that? Is that not It's

[Speaker 0]: 260765.

[Rep. Bram Kleppner]: 0 DR0765 is under

[Speaker 0]: There it is. I'm sorry. Sorry. Sorry.

[Rep. Bram Kleppner]: 311. Draft 1.1.

[Speaker 0]: Yep. That's it. Alright. Thanks, everybody. It it was there. I thought those were two drafts of the

[Speaker 2]: lines.

[Speaker 0]: Oh, they're too many bill.

[Speaker 2]: But I just said five zero nine.

[Speaker 0]: That was an email from yep. So as long as you've got draft 260765, draft 1.1, dated Chris said 03/11 at 02:42PM. That's it. Alright. So, Ellen, I think is not she's not available yet, but I I mean, I can walk us through it. So you can see the purpose. We're updating the name, the makeup, the duties of the Joint Carbon Emissions Reduction Committee. We talked quite a bit about the stat the section of statute that created the committee. And so you can see the changes we made there. We added and energy oversight to the title. So it would now be called the Joint Carbon Emissions Reduction and Energy Oversight Committee. We kept it at five members from the House and Senate each, but we knocked out appropriations for reasons that we can go over now. Ellen had testified to us that was on the committee at the time when when they were actively looking at the allocation and spending of the VW settlement money. And that's that's no longer relevant. And a lot of the policies that we consider or move or talk about in these areas tend to be heavily policy oriented oriented, not have general fund appropriations. I'm comfortable with this. We added energy and digital infrastructure. So that leaves from the house energy, commerce, environment, and transportation was one at large. Then on the senate, we'll see what the senate thinks about this. They very well might change this around, but we have economic development, natural resources, and transportation, and then two at large. And then we stipulated that not all appointees should be from the same political party. We, instead of may meet, we have shall meet at least five times during adjournment. So just a reminder, this is a committee that may meet during the session but shall meet during the off session. So provide some continuity and kind of cross committee, cross house senate oversight work during the summer and fall. We knocked out ledge ops because sorry. I can't remember what Scott said. They're ceasing to exist or something. We added doing fiscal. And I asked Ellen to check into that and make sure it was correct. And then after our discussion about the duties, we lead now with concerning the future of energy generation and sighting in Vermont. And then also include the previous charge, you know, we didn't take that out, of reducing or overseeing carbon emissions from Vermont's electric residential commercial buildings and transportation sectors. And that is it. Yeah.

[Rep. Laura Sibilia (Ranking Member)]: I appreciate the addition of the duties language. I would not be able to support this with the emissions language in there for Vermont's electric sector. We could either take that out or take out the whole thing about emissions for the electric sector.

[Speaker 0]: Well, I don't wanna take out the whole thing about emissions because that's the title of the committee and the reason it was established. So I'm not comfortable removing that entirely. It shifts the focus of

[Rep. Laura Sibilia (Ranking Member)]: the committee completely. And I apologize. I'm just reading this in. Yeah. But I cannot support an initiative that is asking us to look at the electric sector emissions, which

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: is where we have. I can. So

[Speaker 0]: we talked about that yesterday. Mhmm. And I understand everything you said Mhmm. Which is that the electric sector is already highly regulated. They are compliant with the rest. They are far and away, the closest to the finish line and are farthest down the field on emissions. They are utterly not the problem here. And that our emissions are generated disproportionately by our sectors that are unregulated, which are thermal and transportation. So I get everything you're saying. In my mind, all those facts simply indicate to me that it wouldn't be any kind of logical focus of the committee's work to knock out that word entirely to kind of, it feels like to make a point. It feels like we then, then there's nothing in their portfolio at all to indicate that this might be something they might ever want to talk about. I do feel like you're trying to make a point and I get your point, but to remove it from the charge of the committee completely feels like what if they want to

[Rep. Laura Sibilia (Ranking Member)]: talk about that at some point or understand how that interplays or even just compare and contrast? Yeah. So, I guess maybe I should make my point more directly, which I have not done that. So I think that we need to be concerned about ensuring that we have the baseload power in the state of Vermont. I'm worried about the amount of power, that we need, that our utilities need with the increasing loads. We're doing a lot of work, and thank you for that, madam chair, on h seven twenty seven, which addresses some of those concerns. And what I'm worried about is I think we really need to spend time thinking about that, about generation, about siding, how we bring a new load. And it is my opinion that we have some extremists in our state who would potentially leverage this opportunity to try and shut down biomass, and I will not support that.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: So

[Speaker 0]: I'm still not making the leap Yeah. Between a comprehensive description of a committee's area of oversight Mhmm. And then these outcomes that you're talking about. Mhmm.

[Rep. Laura Sibilia (Ranking Member)]: I I would suggest take emissions out. Period. Yeah.

[Speaker 0]: I'm not at all comfortable with that.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: And I would also suggest that keeping electric in provides the an avenue for talking about nuclear and how nuclear is handled nuclear and is carbon free, so called, in terms of its operation anyway. Actually, think citing does that as well.

[Rep. Laura Sibilia (Ranking Member)]: I think citing also does that for the citing potentially of new biomass, What leaving emissions in for our electric sector does, as I think, provides an opportunity, a legislatively blessed opportunity to say please look at these things.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Well, no. What I'm what I'm talking about, though, is not is not new nuclear, but but existing nuclear. The contracts that the have for the nuclear currently, which has been, like, focused on discussion about, you know, removing that from requiring recs to cover.

[Speaker 0]: I mean I mean, I still think you're you're making a really big leap from statutory charge of a committee to an outcome. This committee can't vote on bills. It has no power. It doesn't approve funding. It's gonna convene over the summer and fall to discuss stuff and we hope deliver a report. So to go from there to thinking that everything's gonna be hijacked, you know, and we're gonna somehow shut down biomass. I mean, this committee has no they can't vote on anything. They can't bring forward legislation. They can't

[Rep. Laura Sibilia (Ranking Member)]: Yeah. I apologize that I just read this draft, and I appreciate the opportunity to share my perspective. And I am I think it's important to have this committee, and I would like to be helpful in making sure that we can pass it. I will not be

[Speaker 0]: able to vote for it at this stage. Okay. Well, it's, in my mind, silly to do something this small and not have a unanimous vote at committee. So we don't need to advance this at all.

[Rep. Dara Torre (Clerk)]: Committee can,

[Speaker 0]: know, be appointed or not.

[Rep. Bram Kleppner]: If we remove the word reduction from the title and just study carbon emission, there's no guarantee that the future energy of Vermont to service growing low growth is going to result in a reduction in carbon. We may require additional biomass carbon, if you will. We may actually have a slight increase in carbon emissions from these sections of the economy.

[Speaker 0]: Yeah, the title of this committee has nothing to do with what the legislature is actually gonna vote on and accomplish in upcoming biennials. So

[Rep. Bram Kleppner]: Just to tell you.

[Speaker 0]: Yeah. I

[Rep. Dara Torre (Clerk)]: mean yeah. I mean, I was just gonna say because we're part of RGGI, like, we're involved in electric emissions related funding that we get at the state. So I I feel like that's an important thing to keep in because it is possible that this committee will be making decisions about or suggestions and recommendations about how to use. Yeah.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Well, why does it seem

[Speaker 2]: to be unanimous? I think it's a you know, if if the rest of the committee is is in favor of it, it's voted out.

[Speaker 0]: Yeah. Why would you struggle?

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: May I request a five minute break to confer with people in my party? Sure.

[Speaker 0]: So why don't we adjourn, And we'll come back in why don't we come back in ten? Okay. Alright. Thanks.