Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Good morning, Senate Agriculture back in action here. We're going to spend some time going through Section 10 of our miscellaneous bill. It's the first time that we've had any conversation about it. Just a broad statement about where the committee's been on some of the conversations that we've been having is starting to put a focus on protecting prime agricultural soils in the state of Vermont. This language is going to be coming from Representative Byrd on a bill that

[Peter Sterling, Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont]: he has

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: proposed, it might be a good conversation starter to have within our committee. Again, we have made no decisions about anything other than we are very interested in starting a very broad conversation about what we are going to do at the state to make sure that we will have lands three hundred years from now to be able to grow food and farm in the states. We recognize that the economy of Vermont is an agricultural economy and that we are going to do our part to make sure that future generations can do that. A little bit of long winded, probably got away from what the intent of this bill is, but we do have Representative Bert from the House Agriculture Committee who sponsored this language, and sir, the floor is yours.

[Rep. Greg Burke (House Agriculture Committee)]: Thank you, Chair. For the record, Greg Burke, Senator for Cabinet, Danville and Keisha, and on the House Agriculture Committee. Yeah, thanks for having me this morning. Yeah, I introduced H six seven six seventy seven which is building looks like language from to put in here because of plainest Agville. Yeah, the main intent is that we see some pretty large scale solar arrays going in right now and there's

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: a little

[Rep. Greg Burke (House Agriculture Committee)]: bit of concern about whether or not there's a balanced approach to how that's being done. Making sure that the PUC has all the tools that it should have to be able to do these arrays the right way. You look at Shaftsbury which I'm seeing the project down there. Has received a certificate of public good at this point. It's 100 acres of wind up. So it's going to be covered with solar panels. 35 acres of mature forests that are going to have

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: to be removed in order to

[Rep. Greg Burke (House Agriculture Committee)]: put that in array. The other 65 acres, to my knowledge, is open farmland. When We factor in removal of 35 acres of mature forest and factor in the amount of energy and carbon that's necessary to produce the bales themselves and the frames, the three footers and the entire construction process, you start to wonder, is this actually doing the intended purpose that we're asking from this system, you know, are we producing? How much carbon are we producing in this process? How much energy are we creating past the amount of energy that it takes to actually construct these arrays? And is it worth it after you consider the fact that for the next twenty five years that land is no longer going to be accessible to the citizens of Moab to be used for agriculture, building houses, everything you might use the land for otherwise. Our land is a precious resource in this state for farming or housing, and I know we also need clean energy, but I don't think we're we have a system in place that completely analyzes whether or not these projects are doing their intended purpose. There's no energy on it. There's no carbon on it. There's no taking a look at not being able to crop that land for twenty five years. There's nothing about removing turf wars to be factored in. So the Shasker area project checked all the boxes for the PUC, and that's why it got

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: a certificate of public goods. We're the

[Rep. Greg Burke (House Agriculture Committee)]: ones who decided what those boxes are.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: So that's what this bill's about. Now there's a slide show, does that support with what you're talking about or is it something that you want to go through now or? Do I have a slide show? Did you have a slide show as far as all that? And that was in support of this bill or in opposition to this bill? In support of the bill. Okay is that what your statement is and that's what you want to talk about today? Is there any more that you want to add to that before we move on to the slideshow?

[Rep. Greg Burke (House Agriculture Committee)]: There's plenty more details I could add to it.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: The floor is yours, sir, so whatever you want to say.

[Rep. Greg Burke (House Agriculture Committee)]: Yeah, in terms of an energy audit, the bill has that written into it, and then I believe you can pull that into your language as well. You know, it requires, you know, some independent licensed professional do that, and it's cradle to grave, so it's starting where they're manufactured, how much energy goes into the production of the panels. How many of you have heard about how much energy goes into the creation of solar? I mean, if the idea is that we're generating clean energy, and why don't we have numbers on how much energy it takes to actually what's the energy payback time? How long it takes for that panel to produce the amount of energy it took to create it in the first place? And then what form of energy was used to create When you made solar panels, they're also made in China, and they're made using energy from coal. Now, even there'll be people who would dispute that, but most of the panels that I'm aware of in my research require the use of about a thousand pounds cold per square meter of solar. So either way, we need to know to the best of our knowledge, which is using a license, or a fact, an independent engineer to tell us how much energy is an action to, what's the energy payback time on the solar panel in Vermont, you know? We've got, I've seen all the panels that I drive by on my way to and from here have been covered in a sort of snow for the last autistractically. That's the on the ground reality. Really the bill is about looking at the on the ground reality, because that's the reality that Vermonters live in in a situation with someone, and wanting to make sure we're doing it right, and there are a lot of concerns around it.

[Annette Smith, Executive Director, Vermonters for a Clean Environment]: That would gain something from spending all this money putting it in by the time we're done. Is it in the public? Yeah. Is it in

[Greg Cox, Farmer (Rutland County)]: the public

[Rep. Greg Burke (House Agriculture Committee)]: system. Because right now, the way it's set up is we've been wanting solar in our state with good intentions of reducing our the amount of carbon that we're generating in order to have our electricity. Those are all good intentions, but we need to have a framework in place to show, is that actually happening? And we don't have that right now. That needs to be a part of the process. Right now, it's let's open up the door as wide as we can to produce these solar rays without that framework to actually look at, is this doing what we're asking it to do? So if they're getting the solar rays are lined up, they're getting beat up, they're getting billed, but are they actually doing what we want them to do? Is it in the public good ultimately? That's really the question at hand that still tries to address some of those concerns. With the decision that the PUC made, there is a letter of concurrence given at the end where one of the members of the PUC addresses these very concerns. So they're in, and they're they're coming from the PUC itself. So I don't know if I sent that over to you or not. Believe I did check it out, email. It's last few pages of the decision of the crimes. And as a farmer myself, I want to see our farmland preserved. We need more housing, that's automatically going to take up some farmland. We want clean energy, but at what cost, and we need to make sure we do that right. This bill doesn't, obviously isn't going to ban constructive solar rays, but can we do it in a way that preserves our farmland still? I think there's plenty of opportunity to do that. Our fields are in Vermont, on average size, you're gonna be looking at maybe 20 acres, is the average size field in Vermont. That sure does. Even if they look bigger? They do. Up in Cabot, they're But not that when you have projects that cover every bit of ground on farm, then you've taken out good farms in the process. There's no way around it. But maybe there's pockets of that field that aren't as good, or a little

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: bit steeper, or whatever, you know

[Rep. Greg Burke (House Agriculture Committee)]: what I'm saying? Or you can preserve the vast part of that field, can have solar at the same time, but when you're looking at, when a project is getting to a 100 acre scale, there's no way around the problem where you're going to be covering farmland that is our best farmland in the state. But if we scale it down, and we look at doing it in such a way that, you know what, if you've got 100 acres to work with, that's awesome. 20 acres of it is a better site for solar because we're gonna leave the other 80 acres for the farm.

[Sen. Joe Major (Vice Chair)]: Now, are you exclusively talking farm and plant? Are you?

[Rep. Greg Burke (House Agriculture Committee)]: Primary ag soils, which if you look at the definition of primary ag soils, it's

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: pretty

[Rep. Greg Burke (House Agriculture Committee)]: much anything else. That was a factor. Because our prime ag, if you're actually looking at prime ag soil, that's a very small acreage in our state relative to the rest of the soils. Like my farm doesn't come up as prime ag because it's too steep in spots, maybe it's a little bit, the ground's a little bit more moist, but prime ag is like perfect conditions for cropping. Our state doesn't have a ton of Primag, but it does have a lot of time. I can produce beautiful crops on my farm, although it doesn't come off as Primag. We just had our agency of agriculture, it's the expert on development in ag soils, parts of it's actually 15, he and was talking about the numbering stuff for the soils that goes, they go from one to he talks about one through seven, you know, being the the least profitable soil essentially for farming and planting the best. So that's all mapped out. Already three NRCS we have. Yeah. Have we've used this earlier. Last week.

[Greg Cox, Farmer (Rutland County)]: Yeah. Last week.

[Rep. Greg Burke (House Agriculture Committee)]: So My main intent with introducing the bill is to bring a look back to situation.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Okay. Well, think we've gotten through that part of it. We'll go down to the witnesses as they go. You're more than welcome to stay and listen in. If you got any comments after, we've got people in here from all sides of hill. You're more than welcome to stay and listen in and comment after. Appreciate it. So thank you for representing it. Appreciate it. And we're gonna move on now to is it Annette Smith?

[Annette Smith, Executive Director, Vermonters for a Clean Environment]: My name's Annette Smith. I'm executive director of Remoders for a Clean Environment, which is a small grassroots organization founded in 1999 to deal with a billion dollar natural gas pipeline project for the Port Sherbrooke and Bennington Counties, which most people don't remember. So I learned an awful lot about energy and natural gas and my view of operating with solar. I may be the only person in the room today who's milk to cow this morning. This

[Rep. Greg Burke (House Agriculture Committee)]: morning. This

[Greg Cox, Farmer (Rutland County)]: morning.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Morning. Was ready to go go after that.

[Annette Smith, Executive Director, Vermonters for a Clean Environment]: Since 1987, I served on the border for Vermont for many years. I got applications. Judge Solar Sites, I would like to the happy. What you're seeing on your screen right now is the site of the only 20 megawatt solar project built in Vermont, which no longer looks like this because there are no longer accounts on it. So what I'm going to do is take you through a lot of information. And I was in the room when Ryan Patch presented about the loss of farmland, so I got to see how quickly one can go in here. But I'm providing information with links to things so that you can follow-up later because we have been following the renewable energy development in Vermont for many years. And I have created a document that is about 11 pages, and it contains all of the videos and photos and information that we have gathered since 2012 to the Electric Generation Siding Commission, the Solar Siding Commission. There was a solar siting task force, so that report is in there. It has one very small section on agriculture. So it's making the agency a party by writing, but pretty much they didn't really deal with agricultural lands. And there's also a link to something I call grid solar, bad solar. And that was created for Vermont Law School class. And it was not my judgment. We went through with the students and we talked about, is this a good site? This is not a good site. The professor said it was very valuable discussion. I'm not aware that that conversation is happening anywhere else. And when you look at it, it says standard offer price, 30¢. Some of these are still getting 30¢ a kilowatt. So this happens to be from 2015, so there's nothing newer in it. But it is a, if if you just want to review sort of the history of solar projects in Vermont going up to a certain point, there's a lot in there. So there, if you have nothing else to do on her. We have site visits, have few technical hearings, we have evidentiary hearings, we've got photos of the Vorvo site under construction, videos. So I wanna break this down in terms of the size solar projects we're seeing. There's the utility scale, which is generally the less expensive. The standard offer of that program is over, but it had a cap of 2.2 megawatts. And then there are the net metering and 500 kilowatt projects that there were a lot of 500 kilowatt projects, and they were probably ones that we got contacted about the most. We assist people in participating in regulatory processes, having a say in what goes on in their communities and holding corporations accountable. So one of the reasons we did all of that video recording was what are people saying? So some of the best meetings we heard were very early on, like there was a good public presentation by the developer in Sudbury. And as people asked questions that I've heard now over and over and over again, why this site, it's absolutely gorgeous agricultural sites. Why here? Why doesn't it benefit our community? And I think that's been the biggest surprise for me, is I expected renewable energy development to be done in a way that was sort of like taking my off grid system and building it out from a community level. And instead, it's been just helter skelter where the land's available, where and, you know, wherever they can enter it to lease agreements or contracts. And so it's entirely developer driven and does not really have a a community component. And that was what was so interesting to hear people saying, well, we want to be a part of this. We, you know, we want solar. That there's no question for buyers who want solar, but they've been very disappointed overall in how it's been done. So I'm gonna go through the different types of projects. The the There are four twenty megawatt projects that were bid into Connecticut RFP, and they got contracted with solar power and the maintenance people. The first one, one in Ludlow got built. It started out being a ranger solar project at Raman, Maine, then they sold to NextEra. NextEra is one of the largest renewable energy developers in the country and also the recipient of some of the most subsidies from the federal government. The other one is by the Drohler being owner of the development of Deerfield Moon Project. Brandon was permitted, but it was withdrawn by the company after it got its permit. Randolph was proposed and there was a community meeting. And the fourth project, I forget where it was, it was up in the Northeast Kingdom. Because of the Shia grid issue constraints, it never went any further. This is the blood load project. And what you're seeing in the upper photo is one part of it that's all on that prime axilla. And then if you the the lower left there, that was the forest. So they they cut 42 acres of forest. They had to do blasting. And so actually, some of the areas that don't have solar were the more they're statewide and not defined. What was on the prime axle before it was being exported? It was, at one point, might have been potato fields, but it was hay.

[Peter Sterling, Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont]: It was

[Annette Smith, Executive Director, Vermonters for a Clean Environment]: hay, yeah.

[Sen. Joe Major (Vice Chair)]: So it was a farm?

[Annette Smith, Executive Director, Vermonters for a Clean Environment]: It was a farm. Yes. Was a and you've got this picture in the front of the cows. So I have a couple of pictures of cows that somebody sent me, said, This is what it needs to do for me. I see. So the Brannan project, when we went into the site visit, the person who went with me said, boy, this should be a state park. This is gorgeous. It was three beautiful hayfields right next to the outer creek. And that project did get its permit and then it was withdrawn not very long ago. They gave up the contract to sell to Palatinx District, Connecticut, and they gave up the CPG. The Randolph one insisted, this would be mile or two south of Vermont Technical College, and it consisted of about 40 some acres of forest on the west side of the road. And then this forest, this agricultural land that you can see was in some sort of crop crop, a big barn, and that was on the East side for the road. In general, these sites are chosen because of its location in terms of mix of the grid. The other big companies that we've seen, companies in this income industry, point commodities, big point commodities is out in Connecticut. They have a, let's say, checkered history. There's some limited information about them further on. They proposed two twenty megawatt solar projects and one fifty megawatt project, the Shastbury project, which you'll hear from Jesse McDougall about, is on appeals from Oxford Court that it was permitted. Sheridan One had absolutely no Nobody went to the public here except for this. And we went to the site visit, nobody else did. Absolutely gorgeous agricultural lands. The Patton one is, there's been activity on the town level, but nothing has been flying in So both Shasbury and Ferry and still have to go through getting those from our permits from AMR. So there's still more permitting to do. They they were bid into a Connecticut RFP, but they weren't chosen. So these two projects, these three projects, have had completed their ISO new lunar action studies, but they have not got a market for the trial or otherwise. But they got their CPGs anyway. This is a Schaffnery solar project. Everything you see in Aqua Rock is climatic. They have proposes to cut 42 acres of forest, four acres of cover, 64 acres of agricultural soils. It is on a sloping north facing hillside. And we did a site visit there that was just extraordinary. It's just one of those places you go and feel after feel after feel of gorgeous agricultural. And they're planning to cut all all the way to parts, everything you see there, just take it all down. And there is a water line that runs through it too, because they're planning to do with this. Okay, good. All right, Brian, for you, that, so who owns this land? Bought it. They it. Okay, yeah. So the next era ones appear to be on mixed land, I'm seeing part of the leases. I mean, that's an issue that I see, that these landowners are not protected. They are, there's nobody that oversees these merchant energy leases, and I worry about farmers getting taken advantage of. I've been contacted by some of them, things starting from that. The Derry Haven project covered acres. It's beautiful flatland, half of its hay field, of it. It looks like it was planted, perhaps in corn, but from the site visit, might be planted in soy now. That's the site plan for the project. It involves a street crossing that's gonna need a federal permit. And they've got its permit. Nobody's appealing it. It'll the other thing I should mention is the area south of there, they're they're rebuilding a substation. And so not long ago, a very large solar project, I think four or five megawatts, was proposed there. So once once you get the infrastructure put in place for these big projects, they can create the pathway for the bigger projects. Is a site plan for the PAMP projects. It's apparently about 300 acres. And I put in the WCAX story and watch it this too, and hear what the local discussion was about. We are, in a sense, sitting ducks for these types of projects because there are regional RFPs that have drawn out. And I got this from the Department of Public Service. This lists six of them. The first one, the Connecticut one I checked on, and none of the big projects were bid in yet. So it looks like they may be bid into these others, but there's it's very hard to track. I did also look at the ISO New England Q, and the only ones that are in there are the three point commodities projects. So nobody else has gone to get interconnection study for one of these big projects. I think those those studies do take time. Then we have the tier two updated renewable energy standard. And so this shows in megawatts the anticipated increase if it had been the old RES as opposed to the new RES. I testified on this and said, I think that it's irresponsible to do this without talking about siding. We have not had the discussion about signage. I've been saying this for years. Please, can we talk about how to do siding? Because we're we're letting the developers run the show. And this is a conversation that's long overdue. This is from the Department of Public Services stakeholder group that I was part of. It actually put some acreage in it. So I just got kicked off the stage. I'm sorry. So I'm going to keep talking because you guys have it on your screen. Yep. What is 809? If can try to

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: log back on because we're we're talking from the public. Yeah. But keep talking as you go. Yeah.

[Annette Smith, Executive Director, Vermonters for a Clean Environment]: So Whichever scenario you look at, it's looking at something like 2,500 acres, 22,025. And then there's the next slide shows what was shown recently in It's going off. Your slide's going off. Can't get back on? Okay. I'm trying to Just try it.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: You're

[Annette Smith, Executive Director, Vermonters for a Clean Environment]: also not listed now as a participant, so you're gonna get that Yeah. I got kicked off the state house WiFi this happened before. It should be on now. Okay. I'm gonna try this again. So the the change in the definition of single plant may be enabling two side by side five megawatt projects, which means that they don't need to go through the ISO New England Interconnection Study, and they can build 10 megawatts, which would be roughly half the size of these 20 megawatt projects. So instead of 80 or 100 acres, we're looking at 40 to 50 acres. Alright, Linda, you should be able to let me in.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: You like the chair? There's one over here. He's been on the way on the MPD.

[Annette Smith, Executive Director, Vermonters for a Clean Environment]: Backing business. All right. So then these I might tell you about projects, and these are the things that we're seeing what we are going to be seeing a lot more. And the Lowell project is a very good example of they upgraded the substation to enable the wind turbines to not be curtailed so much. Now there's capacity substation. It happens to be farmland that's been in agriculture for more than a number of years. It would take about 33 acres of the 44 acres. The town of Lowell was close to it. There was no community outreach in advance. Vermont Electric Co op says they got to meet their res requirements and they're going to need more contracts like this. Now there is another one going on in a gravel pit that they can cut down and dry. So there are other sites. And so for instance, Senator Collamore, you're familiar with the Rutland, Diamond Run Mall. For sure. And it's about to be demolished, and they're about to put up a super wall. We have nothing that requires them to put solar panels on those parking lots or on the roof. Well, they obviously could, but unless they ask them to. Instead, we have a, right next door across the River Tracks, have 4.4 megawatts of solar that went on a forested site that resulted in a 46 acre cliff. So what do we do? Why are we doing we have solar projects all around Home Depot and nothing, but not on the parking lots. Like when I was called. Yeah. Yeah. I got a picture of that. So in the concurring opinion of commissioner Cheney, and there's a link to it, so if you don't have it, you can get it there. She said that the Shoxbury Solar Project is more being she says she recognizes substantial developments necessary. However, it only narrowly complies with the criteria. I actually think that it doesn't comply with the criteria they could have turned it down, but they they made that decision. So but this is saying we need we need better standards. Now I'm I'm here not just about fields but forest too. And in her concurring opinion, talked about the loss of forest and forest conversions. And we do have a chart on that from that that was provided in the Shaftesbury Solar Discovery. And you can see on the left, it gives the acreage in terms of forests to be cut, and on the right, the size of the project in kilowatts. I have not seen anything similar that has this kind of detail for agricultural fields, but I think that should exist. If it doesn't, we need to we need to see the exact projects, the amount, and then then it makes it possible to actually go to the map and take a look, for instance, at where is it and where's primagged soil. So one thing that's interesting is Vermont has primag soils, and that's in green on this map that I'm showing. But this is Rebel City, and you find this in certain communities that they're built on primag soils. So a total of how many primag soils we have does not tell you how much it's available. You take out this built landscape here, there's not a lot of available prime ag. Because I was on the regional planning commission for more than a dozen years, we reviewed a lot of solar projects. Rutland County has a lot of solar projects, and many, many of them are dramatic. Unnecessarily, there are some that are well sited and are they're up in landfill by the high school, for instance. But the cutting forests for solar, this is from ANR that I've I've put in here. And as a result, in that metering, they placed limits on how much forest you can cut for a net metering project. That has not been done for these larger projects. So that's one of the things that's we need to talk about it. How do we ensure that we are getting the carbon benefits from the forest and the lifecycle analysis and all that.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: I think you're gonna, I'm gonna allow you just a couple more minutes to I finish up your think you're making the points that you want to make. I'm gonna get some other I don't wanna cut into other people. So is there anything else that There you'd really like us to

[Annette Smith, Executive Director, Vermonters for a Clean Environment]: is, all right. This is very important. We heard Representative Byrd talk about twenty five years. This is from the Randolph Planning Commission public hearing, where former Commissioner of Public Service, Chris Rutland, said, I don't agree this should ever be considered a temporary thing. You guys need to think about this as a permanent impact. And toward that end, I've never condoned the idea of decommissioning fund as well, because I don't think it's ever decommissioned. And I agree with him. These projects are forever. He said you need to think about these like any other type of development like the housing development. And I assume you're familiar with this part of the statute. Senator Mark McDonald explained to me what this is about. Is something that that he was concerned that solar projects, once they were taken out, industry could come in and say it's an industrial site. He wanted to make sure that it happened. That's what that's about. I've provided links here to forest and fields, solar siting issues. Especially, the concern the agency of agriculture is just entering the stipulations, as are all the state agencies. And if you read the stipulation, are just all the state agencies are not even engaging in the PUC process. They come in, they enter into these agreements, and there's not even an opportunity to question. Oregon, Pennsylvania, Ontario have placed restrictions on solar for climate development. There's a rule Tipping and Aragon that's very useful. There's a couple of big pieces from American Farmland Trust and another organization about prioritizing protecting farmland. This is not a unique issue. It's going on all over. These are the elements of the current solar siding process and the proposed paradigm chain for solar siding. And there is your Rutland High School with the solar canopy for the parking lot and a rooftop. We can do this, but we need incentives for the build landscape and disincentives. All the rest of this is the useful information, but I do have specific comments on the bill, and that is to move what is after 10 BSA Section 142 up. And the reason is because the upper part says that we'll not have an undue adverse effect. The lower part says, and give due consideration to. We want to not have an undue adverse effect, not due consideration.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Fair enough. Very compelling testimony, very complete. I just want to make sure we get everybody in. Any questions for Annette as we move on? Nope. Answer, Brandi. Annette, thank you. Please look further at the rest of Peter, I'm sorry, Brandon. Is awesome time. So good time at the end, so It's okay. Absolutely. So we have Greg Cox or Jesse McDougall. Who would like to go first?

[Greg Cox, Farmer (Rutland County)]: I'm not, I'm not. I'm senior. Hi, Greg Cox, longtime farmer, local food advocate, and started three nonprofits. Rather than trying to relocalize the food system. I know a lot about food. I know a lot about the farm and the land. All the land has value. Ag value, prime ag land, the primary ag land is critical. Land access is critical to young farmers coming into the state. I run a small incubator farm on my farm. I dedicate up two acres of my land, and I train farmers. I bring them from all over The United States. And the thing that I'm probably most proud of is not just feeding Rutland Company folks, but growing farmers. And we now have five farmers in Rutland County that have come through our program. We've worked with Vermont Land Trust. They now have their own farms, if you're talking about demographics and the the grain of Vermont. Each one of these farmers now have a minimum of two children. They are I throw my own competition. Yes. Every dollar spent on local food generates $2.6 in economic activity. Vermont agriculture has forever been changing, and it changes the landscape. But preserving that and conserving that land for future uses, which we don't know about yet, is absolutely critical. And so seeing people, developers come up here, we've seen it try it's a cycle that always comes. Folks come from outside not to live and be part of the community and serve, but to extract. It's part of human nature. Money is the primary drug in this world. You can never get enough, and it will destroy everything around you. You guys are charged with protecting a critical resource. Waterways, wetlands, ag land is critical to our future. And so my last nonprofit, Rutland Commons, Google it. It's brand new. We are looking to bring a incubator farm in larger scale to Rutland County to train young farmers, to bring people from all over The United States to settle here and become what we're trying to remake. At least Rutland, I'll leave other people to take care of other parts of the street, and make it resilient and sustainable. I have solar. I'm pro solar. I have Boardman Hill Farm Solar. Check it out. It received every word possible. It happened in 02/15. It's one acre. There's 42 families that own collectively own that. We petitioned the IRS to give us the 30% tax credit, even though it wasn't on their house. It was weedy land. It was some of the worst, I couldn't grow crops on that land. That is good siding. There's good solar and bad solar. Where should solar really be incentivized? Hard ground, routes, parking lots. That was a good point about the, you know, the Walmart, super Walmart coming to Robin. We need to incentivize that, and we need to de incentivize solar coming onto prime ag land by out of state developers that are here for the wrecks. You know it's just an accounting thing saying we are producing a 100%. No. That's only through paper. We're still importing carbon stuff. We need to be real and transparent about exactly what we're doing and why we're doing it, to the right thing, to the right way, to the right reasons. I've competed on one of these solar projects in Rutland on Coal River Road. We had a contract with the hospital, put it breaks plates to grow fresh produce, feeding people that are sick. Nutrition, food, is the foundation of human potential. And if you wanna deal with healthcare costs, we need to grow our food system. We need to make sure that we get all of those dollars. That land is now under solar, and I agree. Once it's solar, once it has been commodified, it will never go back to ag. We've all seen that in so many different iterations. And people come in, buy, sell the wrecks, sell the project to a hedge fund somewhere else, walk away. They're not here. We're left here. And we're and land has value. Agland has value. Forest land has value. We need to you guys are charged with protecting that value for the folks. Yeah. A farmer can get anywhere from $4.50 to maybe $1,000 per acre. You look in vegetables, and the lowest vegetable per acre is when you're squattish. That's over $5,000 an acre. But our farmers, as you know, we're strapped, we're economically challenged, because we're competing for this this land with with wrecks, which are just paper. And we all want Vermont to be clean. We need to do it the right way. And so I implore you folks. You know me what to make. You're dealing with this legislation. My life is full. I'm trying to do my part. My land is in land trust, transitioning it to my kids, but at the same time, I'm making it available for new farmers. And those new farmers, and Brian, you know many of them. That's how you build a better Vermont for the future, not by selling for temporary gain. What if what if on these large solar projects, what is Vermont? What if Vermonters get out of these projects? That calorie fiber on my farm. Sustainable. It's calories in, calories out. That was some of the testimony that preceded me. What is the value, the inherent value of open land? 15% of Vermont's income or somewhere around there, tourist dollars. Will they come when most of our farmland is covered by solar arrays? That's like, Let's go see the solar array. It's a different thing, you know? Yes. You guys obviously are thinking that, but this is from my heart. Somebody that has invested fifty years of my life. I've been on planning commissions, regional and West Rowland, and we sent out questionnaires to everybody in Westbrook Ballard. They all want armed bands.

[Annette Smith, Executive Director, Vermonters for a Clean Environment]: So everybody just got a question.

[Greg Cox, Farmer (Rutland County)]: What's that?

[Sen. Joe Major (Vice Chair)]: So, Collamore, I'm gonna have to disagree with you as far as you not knowing as much as us. Well, I will I the one thing that I absolutely do is appreciate your passion. And the other thing I I do is in a state that is craving for young people to come, particularly young farmers, I I do commend you for having some kind of program to to do that. This committee, we are racking our brains to try, and whenever a young farmer is here, we applaud. We applaud the representative being a young farmer. I'm 61, so.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Getting older every day. But

[Sen. Joe Major (Vice Chair)]: thank you. Just tremendously compelling testimony as far as I'm concerned. I know there has to

[Rep. Greg Burke (House Agriculture Committee)]: be a

[Sen. Joe Major (Vice Chair)]: balance in whatever we do. And whatever we do, and I think that finding and striking that balance is vitally important, at least to us within this committee. We see shrinking farms, you know, probably people find out that I'm on the agriculture committee, that's the one thing that they bring up. And so thank you

[Greg Cox, Farmer (Rutland County)]: for your testing.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: And I think, Greg, that we've got the just of where you want to be, and I'm and for I don't think this is gonna be the last time that we're gonna have conversations about this, so I'm gonna ask that we bring up the next one. It'll and I wanna thank you very, very much. Jesse McDougall?

[Jesse McDougall, Farmer (Studio Hill, Shaftsbury)]: Hello, can you hear me?

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Yep, yep.

[Jesse McDougall, Farmer (Studio Hill, Shaftsbury)]: Thank you for the opportunity to speak today, though I was hoping I didn't have to follow Mr. Cox. He is a hero of mine. I wrote out my testimony today because it's an emotional topic for me. I don't normally write this out. I usually can speak more organically, but forgive me. My name is Jesse McDougall. I'm a farmer at Studio Hill in Shaftesbury, Vermont. My kids are the fifth generation of our family to live and work on the farm. I've spent the last fifteen years working at the intersection of farm ecology and economics. I came to the farm via marriage and when I learned I was a grass farmer, sat down and I Googled what is grass? And when I couldn't figure out how to make money doing it, I sat down and I Googled what is money? That approach of attacking first principles is what informs my testimony today. That and watching the Shaftesbury solar project, which is neighbors my farm bulldoze my town informs my testimony today. I have solar power on my barn. Am all pro renewable energy, but like any, know, solar is a powerful tool, but like any tool, the outcome it produces depends on how it is used. Right? A hammer can build my house and a hammer can smash my thumb and Vermont solar development, I think, has to be in the hands of the people who love, respect and need this landscape. So I want to commend you all on your work for with with S323. It's clear a great deal of work has gone into this and recognizes that Vermont's working landscapes are vital infrastructure. So in my testimony, I won't take long, but I'd like to spend a few minutes talking about the economic pressures I see Vermont's farm farms are facing and then a few minutes on the ecological consequences of losing that land. And because I'm a farmer and don't want to fix things 50 times, like to address root causes. And so I'm going zoom out and take a look at the systems in which we're working so that we can understand if what we're proposing will be effective or not. So I'm sure everybody in the room knows this, but at the national level, The US is $38,000,000,000,000 in debt. The cost of servicing that debt is now one of the largest and fastest growing line items in the federal budget, competing with defense and health and human services and social security and all that. We have three options to deal with that. One is reduce spending and pay it down, which they tried and couldn't do. We can default on the debt, which we won't do. And the third option is print more money and buy our own debt back. So the only the the third option being the only option means that they, the federal government, independent of party or president, the math is now in charge. They have to print the money, inflate the money supply, which when that hits the economy, people will spend on hard and scarce assets, meaning land, right? So, the nominal price of land and farmland is going to go up And thanks to the current use program that decouples property taxes from land market values were protected there. But what's happening now is Vermonters are getting phone calls for their valuable and scarce land from developers, institutional investors, wealthy non farm buyers, people of no intention of farming, any the land and one of those is the solar developers. And for farmers who are already exhausted and undercapitalized and probably approaching retirement, those offers are becoming harder and harder to refuse. And that's what we call the final harvest is when we sell the land for the payout. At the other end of the economy, that's the top down from the bottom up, you know, the prices are going up. So input costs are going up, equipment, fuel, feed, insurance, labor. So it's getting harder and harder to make a living on the land, which is not getting more productive necessarily. And as vital infrastructure moves away or closes down, it becomes harder and harder for farmers to make a living in Vermont on the land. And the point of all this is to say Vermont farms are vulnerable, as you know, and will only become more so as printing of money expands. And the result is predictable, more farm closures and more permanent loss of this productive land. And that's why I think Section 10 of three twenty three is so important and why it's important to legally protect this farmland as soon as we can, you know, by limiting energy development and storage facilities on prime ag soils and in forests, you can meaningfully slow one of the most powerful current drivers of farmland loss in Vermont.

[Peter Sterling, Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont]: Companies

[Jesse McDougall, Farmer (Studio Hill, Shaftsbury)]: that are getting the subsidies for energy development have no upper limit for what they can offer farmers for their land. And so I want to be clear that I view Section 10 not as a fix, as a standalone fix for this, but a necessary first line of defense inside a much larger food security challenge. Limiting the large scale energy development will slow one of the most powerful points of conversion of forests and farmlands into industrial lands. We're operating Vermont farmers are operating in a national monetary system that rewards land extraction and speculation and financialization of land, like using land as a savings account, not as for its utility value. So the pressure's on. And then I'll shift to the ecological consequences of this. So in this, and I'll stick, I could talk for hours about this, but I'll stick with my area of expertise. Soil is not a material like gravel or sand, right? It is a living ecosystem. Every and you know this, every single teaspoon of healthy soil has more living organisms in it than there are humans on Earth. And when these large solar facilities are approved on agricultural soils, the developers propose as was proposed here at Shaftsbury Solar's project that the topsoil is scraped, stockpiled, and later replaced as a as some sort of preservation scheme. But that's not preservation, that's destruction. I mean, is just as it's like saying I'm going to bulldoze stockpile and then replace the forest. These are different scales of ecosystem, but the function of the ecosystem is utterly destroyed and you cannot just move it back later as though it's a material that was displaced. You're breaking the cycles ecosystems in the land. So finally, Vermont farms are not just economic drivers or necessary for tourism or any of that. They are critical infrastructure for the health, stability and independence of our communities. We live in a current moment of relative stability where our long and complex supply chains still function, but COVID obviously showed us how quickly that can change. And in March and April 2020, my phone was ringing off the hook for people looking for food because they couldn't get it out of their grocery stores. And so the capacity to feed ourselves, whether we need it today or not, is not a luxury. It is the foundation of our stability and our peaceful society. Greg Cox knows this better than anybody. His work is heroic and it needs to be protected. So I think that section 10 of this bill is a meaningful step toward protecting that foundation. It won't solve every pressure facing Vermont farmers but it does address one of the fastest and most permanent ways. We're losing productive land right now in giant swaths at a time. So I support the work you're doing and I appreciate it and I'm happy to take questions.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Thank you, Jesse. And just presentations of time, I do have some senators that have appointments at noon and it's not lunch, it's actually meetings. So I'm going to move on and like I said, it won't be the last time that we have any conversations about this but we do appreciate your testimony and I think it was thorough and complete. I want to give the last few minutes to Peter Sterling, Executive Director of Renewable Energy of Vermont. Hope that Mr. Sterling doesn't think that this is an attack on him or whatever. Think we're hearing that there's a lot of people who do believe that solar is viable and renewable energy is as well. But Peter, welcome.

[Peter Sterling, Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont]: Thanks so much for having me back. For the record, my name is Geraldine, Renewable Energy Vermont, and I appreciate your kind words. Mr. Rutland, I do not take any of this personally. I think there's a lot of passion for a lot of good reasons about protecting open spaces and working forest lands and farmlands, and I think people are all coming at us with the exact right reasons. Vermont without working lands without being Vermont.

[Rep. Greg Burke (House Agriculture Committee)]: All right. So, let's see. Okay.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: First,

[Peter Sterling, Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont]: why are we even talking about solar and how is it impacting us, renewable energy? Vermont's investments in long term renewable energy contracts and the insulated ratepayers from large spikes that are covered in New England states. You can see in this chart from our Department of Public Service that Vermont has the lowest electric rates in New England. It's pretty much on pace with inflation as this statistic shows you. So there are benefits to going solar. We should all talk about where to site it. I get that. But I'm just saying, the reason we're even involved in this whole hubbub about renewable energy is because, generally speaking, because Vermont has made the regulators in Vermont have made the choice to invest in long term renewable contracts like hydro, nuclear not that that's renewable. Hydro, nuclear, solar, wind has generally kept Vermont's rates the lowest in the region and insulate us from the big spikes that happen when, let's say, there's a warm Ukraine and natural gas prices spike. One other reason, and I know I mentioned this in my last time I was here, but I do feel compelled just to touch on this for ten seconds, is when we put renewables up in Vermont, we are not using these natural gas plants that are in other states and oil states. Okay. There's a lot of different stats on this, but I heard earlier about the carbon footprint. What is the carbon footprint for going solar? Here's something I found pretty quick on the internet from the IPCC, and you can see that while there are types of energy that have a smaller carbon footprint than the solar, hydro, nuclear, onshore wind, none of those are really available to meet Vermont's growing New England's growing energy demand. There is no more hydro coming, keep building built in Vermont or accessible to Vermont. There is no nuclear power coming online the next decade, realistically, and onshore wind is pretty much banned in Vermont. The three types of fuel that we do actually have access to, well, two of them, gas and coal, they obviously have a much bigger life cycle carbon footprint than solar. Okay, so here's a chart that I think is pretty important. So you can see while we have a lot of primate soils, we can discuss how much of it's available and all. I went and I had the time to look at the last three years of CPGs that were granted for solar projects that meet Vermont's, you know, tier two renewable energy distributed generation requirement, and it's been about four seventeen acres are within the limits of the area of disturbance. Let's say you have a five megawatt solar project, that's roughly 25, 30 acres. That's called the area of disturbance. That does not mean that all of the land in that area of disturbance is actually being impacted, meaning the primary impact of a solar array is when you build a road to access it, concrete pads to house some of the inverters and such, then of course wherever you're putting the holes into the ground that hold the solar up. Really, most of these, even though four seventeen acres is within the area of disturbance, the amount of primax soils that are actually being ripped up or things like that is significantly less. In addition, the Department of the Agency of Agriculture and Food Markets has very strict requirements about what you can do on an array on a site with prime Ag Soils. There's weight limits on trucks that can drive over it. There's a lot of things like that. The agency requires people who are putting solar on on AgSOA. So, but anyway, just as for scale, now I can go back farther into probably 2023, it just takes a lot of time, but for the last three years, twenty three, twenty four, twenty five, there are four seventeen acres of land that have been disturbed, that are in the area of disturbance for solar generation to meet Vermont's tier two requirement. There have been two other projects larger than five megawatts, which again are not part of Vermont's Renewable Energy Standard requirement that have been proposed that would impact that would have two twelve acres within the area of disturbance. Those, I'm happy to talk about those, but what we're doing for Vermonters is, to me, the four seventeen acres does not seem like a number that's out of control.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: I think the argument would be it doesn't matter what the amount of acreage is, is that that same four nineteen acres could have put on land that wasn't primary land. That, at the end of the day, is the argument that I would bring and impairments. I can't disagree with much of what you're saying, Peter. I do agree. Again, I don't know the statistics. I don't want to get between, well, one witness said this and one witness said that, all this and all that. We haven't been only in this field for about forty five minutes. Other than that, a lot of conversations. I do believe that we think that you can do your work and do it as effectively by not even being at four nineteen acres. That's all.

[Peter Sterling, Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont]: I would encourage you then to have the Department of Public Service and representatives of our utilities come in here, because ultimately, the utilities decide. They have a real say about if a project moves Obviously, the certificate of public good is granted by the public utility, which they have the 5%. But if the utility if a developer said, I wanna put a solar array on this piece of land right here, and the utility says, we just that is not the right spot for us. It won't interconnect. It'll cost you $2,000,000. It goes away. So utilities also usually are really the first gatekeeper, and you should talk about what the cost of Vermonters

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: would Well, here's what I wanna say. Here's what I wanna say about I don't mean to interrupt you. I apologize. That's very disrespectful. Do not want to mean to do that. We're looking at a farm, largest farm, arguably the largest farm, St. Pierre Farm, that looked to capture their methane and manure, and they were going to power 18,000 homes in Franklin County.

[Annette Smith, Executive Director, Vermonters for a Clean Environment]: Now,

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: everybody loves that, right? Okay. Why shouldn't they do that? Well, the permit cost for them to do that was $2,000,000 Why shouldn't you have those same costs? Why shouldn't you have to bear the same costs that everyone else is doing to get renewable energies? So that's where the fairness is. That's what all this room is going to talk about is fairness of where you're going to be. So that's going to come into the argument as we go here. Yes, we get it. Stay up at primary glance. You have the opportunity to go and do what everybody else. We realize it's going to cost you more money, but it's costing the rest of the industry more money as well. Why wouldn't you be part of that cost where everybody else is paying the same? I don't expect an answer of that. Just meant on statement.

[Peter Sterling, Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont]: I thought, I think one of the benefits, maybe what the safe years are doing with those methane to Chesters,

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: you know, that's That cost is so prohibitively high for them that the company that's doing the project said, We'll never come back into Vermont again, but you guys seem to get around to all of that stuff a little bit, which is fair, I get it, but let's balance some of that out because I think that their ability to do something, to take the methane out, which we all know methane is bad for the environment, but they're going to take that methane out, But it's gonna cost them 2,002 million dollars for a permit to do that and power 18,000 homes. I don't know very many solar projects that are gonna do that, power 18,000 homes, but it cost them

[Annette Smith, Executive Director, Vermonters for a Clean Environment]: $2,000,000 to do it.

[Peter Sterling, Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont]: Alright. And you're positive. I'm just asking.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Yeah, I'm absolutely positively Not the cost of the project. No, no, it was $2,000,000 for the permit. For all the testing. Just $2,000,000 for the permit. So that's the argument. I

[Sen. Joe Major (Vice Chair)]: don't think anybody would say How is

[Greg Cox, Farmer (Rutland County)]: that Dartmouth pushing for class?

[Peter Sterling, Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont]: Defend a process that costs $2,000,000 to help someone who's doing the right thing and providing I affordable power to don't think anyone would defend that. I certainly would. Mean, just for So Oakland only just raises cost of power to Vermont. I'm

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: sorry. I think we're gonna get low on time, but I promise you the

[Peter Sterling, Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont]: time to We do wanna

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: be partners with you guys. We really, really do. I'm going ask you to come into this room every time that we do this because I want to work this out. I really, really do. I want to work it out to where we can all agree that we can keep the push for renewable energies and we can protect our private eye glands and everybody can win. And we want to win.

[Peter Sterling, Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont]: Reading is fun. So I don't read you language in your bill, you'll have it on the record. This states, there's a lot of unnecessary time, money, uncertainty to the existing public utility process, both some of the language in S-three I 20 would also like to just point to the last line that renewable energy projects would be the only form of development subjected to this requirement in their application process for that first part right there. And then the second part, the language in red, if you're talking about the way this is worded now, it seems like it reads to me and others, maybe we're all getting this wrong, but it definitely reads to all of us that this would apply to not just Trimax, any solar array that disturbed five acres or more would essentially not be allowed to get a CPG. That's a policy decision, the legislature can make if they want to end distributed solar of that size. You can discuss that, but again, before you pass a bill with that includes this language and as written, I would really encourage you to have utilities and, you public servicing comment on this language. This would radically increase the cost of what Vermonters pay on their electric bills and things like that.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: We will, I promise you. We will not make a knee jerk reaction. Will never get through this building. Otherwise, we have differences of parties within this building that a couple senators are going to get their lot of advocates are going to come after them. I don't want to do that. I want it to be a decision that we have included everyone and everyone's able to talk about it, and we're not out here with the data against anything. We want to make

[Peter Sterling, Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont]: the right decision. Great. Last slide, just because Senator Collamore asked me about this last time, about solar panel recycling, I just threw in a couple pictures things here. As you can see, Senator Collamore, about 90% of solar panel, or 90 some percent of either aluminum or glass, and that there's these I was just at a conference where these commercial solar panel recycling company, they come in, they take it off-site, they pull out the aluminum, they take out the wiring, they sell that, they take the glass, they grind it up, they make it into this pretty colored glass, they resell. There are things that are when it's time for a solar panel to be recycled, you can see that, you know, it's since it's mostly a little bit of a glass, we have a good idea what to do when it's gonna last right now in this country. Mhmm.

[Annette Smith, Executive Director, Vermonters for a Clean Environment]: And do you have a statistic that when they take the old solar panels down and putting up new ones, or are they decommissioned?

[Peter Sterling, Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont]: I don't have a statistic, but Okay. Take it by My guess would be that most would be repurposed solar. The landowner, of course, has the choice to do whatever they Does he think there's

[Greg Cox, Farmer (Rutland County)]: any data on that?

[Peter Sterling, Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont]: You should ask the Department of Public Service. They would be the experts. I could look into that for Vermont, but the Department of Public has that. But again, the landowner can make a choice. Right. They can decide to put it back into ag, or they can decide to, you know.

[Annette Smith, Executive Director, Vermonters for a Clean Environment]: Well, that's one little bone of contention I had with you when you said, Oh, it's just that it's like, when you watch, and I've gone up Route 40 from to New York to go down to Albany watching massive solar fields go in. And like I said, the solar field, and then you just have the flat, but there's miles of wiring there getting out of the ground. There's miles of, so And that gets recycled. Right, it has to be pulled out. Just, there's definitely misconception I think that that's minor impact, but it keeps

[Peter Sterling, Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont]: Well, what I was saying was that, and I'm sorry if it wasn't clear, that the Public Utility Commission's CPG process requires a report on something that's within the area of disturbance. The area of disturbance is everything that's fenced in, but what I was saying was not the entire part of that area of disturbance is actually taken up by the solar. There's a lot of grass that never gets touched. There's roads, there's the racking, there's some concrete pads for inverters. That's what I was saying, was just saying the whole site of even though the area of disturbance is a larger number than what's actually torn up when you drop the solar array. That's what I'm trying

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: to say. Sorry if that wasn't

[Peter Sterling, Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont]: Thank you for your time. Really do appreciate it. I know I don't like standing between people and their food.

[Rep. Greg Burke (House Agriculture Committee)]: No. No.

[Peter Sterling, Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont]: It's not

[Sen. Joe Major (Vice Chair)]: going be

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: I know. But Before we before we go offline and everybody's still here, I think with the committee's permission, we probably have enough to keep on talking about this. Fair enough. Everybody want to talk about this? So on Tuesday, Linda, what do we say we have a schedule for?

[Annette Smith, Executive Director, Vermonters for a Clean Environment]: Well, we'll end the next month, happens to utilities. So

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: public utilities, and in the meanwhile, what I want to do is I want to get legislature counsel in here, I want to go actually down to the language of the bill right straight down from the top to bottom. Do we have time before PUC comes in on that? We'll do that on Tuesday.

[Annette Smith, Executive Director, Vermonters for a Clean Environment]: Forty five.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: 10:45, yeah. So on Tuesday we'll dissect this some more and have some more conversation. Anybody's welcome. We're just going to go down through and go down through the language and then we'll have BUC come in and chat with them. Everybody good with that? I want to thank everybody for coming in. Appreciate it very much.