the same time that we're meeting it's going to have to catch it as a posted after the fact YouTube meeting. So with that it's today is Thursday May 28th just after 10 o'clock this is a meeting in Senate Natural Resources and Energy and we're digging in this week on Global Warming Solutions Act and I appreciate that we had we're getting some excellent help from a number of people with thinking our way through the the issues that we've been uncovering just for our guests today we have had a detailed walkthrough and discussion with legislative counsel on the bill delegation rulemaking cause of action and then yesterday we spent an hour plus with A&R hearing sort of a counter proposal and they raised some issues and now we're turning to the treasure trove of informed people that are in the state to help us learn some more. So with that Ms. Duggan good morning good to see you again. Good morning. And we're aiming for roughly 20 minutes of witness knowing that we go a little bit with questions but we should work out just about right. Great well thank you very much for the opportunity to testify this morning for the record my name is Jen Duggan and I'm the director of conservation law foundation Vermont. Prior to joining CLF I was the general counsel of the agency of natural resources for three years. CLF strongly supports this bill which we believe provides a critical foundation and framework for both cutting climate pollution and building community resilience. I want to thank you for all of your work to rapidly respond to the needs of Vermonters during the COVID crisis. I have been incredibly impressed with how quickly the Senate has transitioned to virtual operations and I know from speaking with my colleagues and other New England states that the transition has not been as smooth everywhere. And I also want to thank you for continuing to make action on the climate crisis a priority this year by passing S337 and S185 and taking up the solutions act. You know for me I think and for many people this pandemic has demonstrated that we are both intimately connected with the global community and heavily dependent on our local communities at the same time. And the same really holds true for the climate emergency. And even in the midst of the pandemic Vermonters believe climate action must be a priority and just this morning I shared a letter from over 40 businesses and organizations and more than 600 individuals thanking you and members of the committee for your work on the COVID-19 crisis and S337 and 185 and urging the Senate to pass the solutions act. As we rebuild from this pandemic climate action can help accelerate our recovery and provide a pathway to a stronger Vermont. I want to start off by putting the solutions act into context and two points in particular that are important. First there is an urgent need to act on climate. I think we all agree and Senator McDonald as you noted yesterday we should have done this 20 years ago. Working groups and commissions have studied this issue for decades while failing to lead and we're not on track to achieve net zero by 2050. We have no binding plan to get from here to there. We have an obligation both to do our part to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and take action to support our vulnerable communities who are already feeling the impacts of climate change and the pandemic has really exposed the extreme inequities and safeguards for our communities and at the same time it's created an opportunity for us to be intentional and course correct. We can transition to a carbon-free economy and make long-term investments in climate resilient communities that address these systemic inequities. We can't continue to let vulnerable communities fall even further behind. Second action on climate and investments in community resilience bring significant economic public health and environmental benefits. We can grow the economy. We can create jobs, save healthcare dollars, improve public health and improve the quality of our natural and working lands through strategic climate action. The economic opportunities and public health benefits that addressing climate and resilience bring to the table is even more important as we work to rebuild our economy after the pandemic. You know as you noted yesterday Senator Bray we can rebuild to a more equitable and durable economy than the one we had going into the pandemic. With that context in mind I want to talk about why the Solutions Act framework works. There's a reason that Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York and Maine already have similar laws on the books. Massachusetts for example is on track to achieve reduction requirements and all of the economic opportunities and co-benefits that come with climate action and I think the committee is going to hear more about Massachusetts experience in greater detail from David Cash later this morning. Vermont is not blazing a new trail. In fact we are lagging behind and that really shouldn't be acceptable to anyone especially when we have the highest per capita emissions of any New England state, New York and Quebec. So the Solutions Act framework works and here's why. First it requires an all-hands-on-deck approach to an all-hands-on-deck emergency. You know I have found it somewhat ironic that a lot of the conversation up to this point has seemed to be about who should be taking the lead on tackling the climate crisis. Is it the General Assembly or the Executive Branch and really you know the fact of the matter is that we need everyone. We need legislators, we need the Executive Branch, we need private companies, individuals all pulling in the same direction if we're going to avoid the worst consequences of the climate crisis and that really is what H688 requires. Second the Solutions Act requires state action and leadership from both the General Assembly and the Executive Branch. We can't meet this challenge any other way. Private sector leadership, market-based solutions and individual action are all important but in order to maximize and direct these efforts we need binding reduction requirements and the right regulatory framework in place. Third it requires strategic coordination across state government. The mitigation and adaptation work we have to do as a state it crosses agencies and sectors and it's going to require a diverse mix of strategies. One of the things that I have found most troubling these past few months is that the state does not even have a comprehensive inventory of the climate and resilient actions we're taking, what we're actually accomplishing with this work and whether or not it's cost effective. There's also currently no framework in place for ensuring that the climate action that we are taking is equitable and it doesn't leave our rural and other vulnerable communities behind. The Solutions Act creates a formal framework for strategic and coordinated state action and investment and it requires that strategies that the state moves forward with they're equitable and they meet the needs of our rural communities and this is even more important now as the state grapples with the inequities and economic impacts from the pandemic. Finally the Solutions Act works because it creates an accountability framework to achieve net zero by 2050. The health of our communities on the front lines of climate change and the health of our children and future generations is at stake it's that simple and goals are just not going to cut it. Our failure to act over the last several decades shows that we need binding requirements and hard deadlines in place to avoid the worst consequences of climate change and we have to be able to hold the state accountable if climate pollution requirements are just ignored. The cause of action provisions that are included in the Solutions Act are really a necessary backstop in light of what is at stake and a repeated failure to take action. The Attorney General who would be defending these lawsuits has voiced his full support for the bill and the need for individuals to be able to hold their government accountable in the courts. It's also important to note that these provisions are narrowly tailored to get the job done and no more so the remedy is limited to a remand back to A&R to do a rulemaking. In other words A&R is required to just comply with the law. The state's not on the hook for financial penalties and the plaintiffs don't receive any monetary damages and I want to briefly address the recovery of fees and costs for individuals since A&R has proposed to eliminate these provisions and there's a really important policy rationale here. These types of provisions attempt to address the imbalance of power between individuals in the government and ensure that everybody has access to the courts. There's no accountability if an individual that's been harmed doesn't have the resources to get into court and the provisions in the Solutions Act strike that balance between the need. Jen we can't hear you. Oh it says I was muted by the host. How diabolical.  No, no, no, no. Oh no. You are talking about the fees and costs that if there's a harm to an individual how can they get a remedy? Okay great so the provisions in the Solutions Act they strike that balance between the need for government accountability and protection of the state from lawsuits that are just brought in bad faith and there is precedent for these types of provisions in Vermont. You know the Vermont Public Records Act for example has a very similar provision and it allows successful plaintiffs to recover their fees and costs if a court determines that an agency has unlawfully withheld records. You know the same goes for the the state agency if a plaintiff brings a lawsuit in bad faith you know that's frivolous that doesn't have any merit and these provisions are also common in many federal statutes. So I want to I want to take a few moments also to speak to some of the committee questions that have surfaced these past few days about the role of the General Assembly in the Solutions Act and I know that you've already heard this from Mr. Martlin but I just want to emphasize again you know that the delegation executive branch in the bill is constitutional and the bill preserves the General Assembly's traditional role as law and policymaker. So keep in mind that this plan is going to be a mix of mitigation and adaptation strategies and it's going to include both legislative and rulemaking recommendations. You know we need to do all of the things in order to get there so it's going to have a mix and you know if the recommendations involve an expansion of authority if they involve new taxes fees or appropriations that is the sole authority you know of the General Assembly and the General Assembly would continue to exercise their traditional oversight over rules that that ANR might promulgate as a result of the plan and the General Assembly you know would be notified early of the rule recommendations in the plan itself and again when the rules themselves are drafted they make question climate council members or agencies about the rules and can object to rules that are not consistent with an agency's authority and at the end of the day the General Assembly has the last word you know that you all can always pass a law to invalidate clarify or amend a rule and I've been following you know some of the conversation about the potential for legislative approval or a check-in before the plan recommendations are implemented but my read of the bill is that this oversight is already built into H688 and you know I agree with Mr. Martlin that requiring approval of the the plan or the rules in that plan is problematic for a couple of different reasons and one you know from a procedural perspective there couldn't be a simple up or down vote of the plan it would have to follow the same process as any bill and you know keep in mind that any recommendations that are in the plan that involve new authority taxes fees or appropriations would follow this process anyway so you're already on that track you know for the same reasons requiring pretty you know approval of the plan it would significantly delay rulemaking and an our would not be able to meet the deadlines in the bill and time really is of the essence here I also agree with Mr. Martlin that requiring approval of the regulatory measures in the plan could raise separation of powers concerns and you know finally and I think this is you know maybe most important the framework and the solutions act it's the floor there's nothing in this bill that would prohibit the general assembly from passing laws to address the climate crisis to do things faster to do things sooner that is still certainly able to be done the solutions act is just the floor and the framework to make sure that we get to net zero by 2050 one other senator campion Jen Jen would you prefer I wait until the end no I'm happy to take questions now at the end whatever is easier so one of the things we've been we've been grappling with and you've talked a little bit about it and you might want to wait until the end is you know should there be a way sort of like I keep to be honest keep going back and forth around getting the legislature to come back and have some kind of approval with the plan put forward and just kind of keep that in in the back of your mind as you're you're continuing to talk that's you know yesterday I felt better about about the whole thing when we were you know when we were talking about yes the people the administration others the people will be held accountable but I still wonder if there's a if in terms of our responsibility as a legislature some reason for us to to have some kind of kind of check in that's you know I totally understand that concern you know I think that it depends on what kind of check in that you're really looking for I think that there are built-in check-ins in terms of providing you with a plan the ability to have oversight into what the council is doing as often as you like all of the traditional oversight that comes with rulemaking and then anything that is going to be new authority taxes or fees that's going to come to you all as a body so that is the ultimate check-in nothing is going to move forward right I'm wondering if if the plan itself if just seems to me that if the plan itself has something in there that we believe um I don't know for whatever reason isn't effective isn't as good a policy based on what is happening in the state at the time what we're hearing from constituents another way to get at something is there not a reason for us to review and approve the plan well I I think that you can effectively have that kind of oversight and authority because you nothing is going to move forward that's new authority taxes fees and then there's always the ability of the general assembly to um to to weigh in early on rulemaking but always to pass a law that would effectively invalidate or amend that rule there's something that you don't like in that rule at the end of the day you will have the ability to pass a law to modify that and the concern with having approval having the general assembly approve the plan before uh the you know the the rulemaking moves forward is you know from a procedural perspective that there's really not a simple way to do that and the general assembly and I think you know mr. martlin spoke to this a little bit um but it's not there couldn't be an up or down vote so you would you would have the plan that would go through the same process as a bill there would be opportunity to do amendments you know it's not guaranteed that it would be approved or didn't you know pass at the end of the end of the session and the time that that would take would really um impact a and r's ability to meet the deadlines and the rules um so from a it's a procedural and a timing perspective that makes that problematic and at the end of the day um nothing is going to move forward unless the general assembly blesses it anyway if it is involving new authority taxes fees or appropriations and then there's always the ability um if things go really haywire you know in terms of a rulemaking if if there's not the ability to influence it early to actually pass a law to invalidate it good points okay thank you that's helpful senator gray did you have a question yes thanks uh the thing I wanted to check in about a little bit so right now say the bill passes those uh aspirational goals become hard target hard goals in in statute um a and r already has ample rulemaking authority right I mean it would seem as though even prior to having a plan they've been in a position already three plus years to have started making rules that would achieve some of these same goals so I'm you know I'm trying to sort out to what degree are they really waiting for a plan to arrive versus they already have the authority if they had the interest in moving something um I appreciate that the taxes and fees part comes back to us but you know seems as though they have a lot of authority already uh we're questioning whether or not they might need additional authority and we could grant that but I would like to think they they could already do a lot of this work I'm not saying absent the bill like we don't want to move the bill but absent the bill they could still do a lot of this work is that not correct well I think that's why this bill is necessary um you know the the a and r and other agencies have you know fairly significant authority right now to address emissions and other and resilience um and that's not happening um you know I think that there it's there are a lot of reasons for why um the agency may not be exercising the authority that it already has but the bill puts in place those deadlines to make sure that we are moving forward um you know everyone will still have to work together um in order to make this framework work but there is an accountability framework that's built in that will you know require that and our exercise some of that authority um there may be good reason you know the council may decide you know and our could potentially promulgate a rule to do x and reduce carbon emissions but we actually think that it would be better um you know because of equity or cost effective reasons for a new program to be stood up you know by the legislature and new authority so there may be valid reasons why um the council may recommend new legislation versus just having and our move forward with a particular rulemaking this i need to just interrupt you for a moment because jude needs to interrupt the committee for a moment yeah thank you um i i need to identify the caller with the last number 197 good morning mrs ashlyn doi on from the treasurer's office great thank you and the person with 191 person with this is ashlyn again i believe that's the treasurer okay thank you all right we're good so we're getting zoom bombed by the treasurer that's yeah right so i so i think that you know there you might be able to take a sledgehammer um to get you know carbon reductions but by requiring this really diverse thoughtful council um to go through this process and require them to think about strategies that have co-benefits that are equitable um you know i think that we're really able to um maximize both carbon reductions and you know building a stronger economy and creating that community resilience so there there's an importance there and having a diverse set of folks think about okay how can we cut climate how can we build community resilience in a way that doesn't leave communities behind and that's equitable and gets us the most um is most cost effective so thank you very much i am guessing we could come up with more questions unless someone has sort of a burning last question um i'm keeping an eye on the clock can we um we'll need on to mr duval hi senator bray i had a few more thoughts um is it okay if i take just five more minutes and i'll try and wrap up really quickly can we go a little faster than that but um sure yep i just want to make a i will go i will take three minutes um and i really appreciate um the time um i just want to talk briefly about a and r's proposed um amendments you know they are just not workable they undermine key components of the bill for a lot of different reasons one it cuts out meaningful participation by this diverse set of legislatively appointed stakeholders and technical experts by giving the executive branch complete control of the climate council and the plan's recommendations um the council is not required to stand up critical subcommittees to ensure these recommended actions are equitable meet the needs of our rural communities and invest in our agriculture and forestry sectors if those topics are important and i think everyone understands that they are then they should be required by the bill um and the accountability provisions are gutted you know there's no cause of action for failure to meet emission reduction requirements until 2050 and their proposal would eliminate the fee provisions that ensure for monters have equal access to the courts so i would just strongly urge the committee to reject these amendments and to please you know support the bill okay so a very quick question uh very quick question and response we we have a model that's floating out there that came up again yesterday was we have a clean water board it's led by the administration then has an advisory panel we did the act 250 commission there was a commission and then there was an advisory board so um what is it about having and um you know if we're gonna hold an administration accountable then one i think like a reasonable thing for them to say is um well then let us be in charge of the activities so that if there's a failure we actually own it as opposed to we were just merely present but outvoted by a council that we somehow didn't agree with you know so how do you so what's your thinking on that well i think that your comment um earlier senator bray around why there has not been an exercise of authority that the agency already has is really on point here um this is really about everybody working together to pull in the same direction um and so it's not just about the executive branch we need that um diverse set of folks that you all would appoint to hold the executive branch accountable and coming up with the best solutions for climate action and so you know in our from my perspective it's really critical that the executive branch does not have complete control you know over the climate council and the plan recommendations they have significant you know there's a huge number of um agencies that participate in that council and they will have um a lot of control but i think it's important that the folks that you all would appoint also have the ability to vote and shape um the recommendations okay great well we're not voting the bill out today so we'll have a chance to talk with you again as a committee um and so thanks again for participating thank you and i appreciate the extra few minutes thanks so much there's never enough time i realized that so good morning mr deval thanks for joining us i'm hoping you can uh share some thinking with the committee you know i think particularly one of the things you helped us with last january which feels like three years ago was looking at the the basic shape of emissions curves and what our trajectory is and and how this bill could be used to uh reshape that trajectory i don't know that everyone's memorized for instance the paris agreement targets etc great well thank you very much chairman bray and senators of the committee for the chance to talk with you this morning um again my name screen share ability thank you thank you jude um for the record my name is jerry duvall executive director of the energy action network and i am going to go ahead and start sharing my screen just one moment so just a quick reminder for folks who may not remember energy action network consists of over 200 member businesses organizations from across vermont and is supported by a small backbone staff that commits to serve to be to serve as a trusted and neutral convener of that network we commit not to taking positions on pieces of legislation uh before the general assembly so i will not today be lobbying on behalf of or in opposition to the bill before you our role is really to make sure that the state's energy and climate conversation is grounded in the best available uh data and analysis to have to help inform an evidence-based policy conversation the main way that we do that every year is through an annual progress report for vermont where we compile federal data work with state agency partners to give us a lay of the land and a tracking of our progress towards the state's energy and climate goals and so i have three main messages that i want to share with you that i think are highlights from this year's report that bear on the global warming solutions act that you're now considering number one is that meeting the targets in this bill is possible we have the technology and the know-how to do it and in some ways it's not that much of a lift at all meeting vermont's commitment to the paris climate agreement would be the equivalent of us getting down to the per capita emissions levels of new hampshire and we are seeing a flourishing of the key technologies and best practices that can enable us to get there every year the second is that doing so meeting these targets is a massive opportunity for economic revitalization and resiliency in vermont and i'll get more into that and then the third is that the only states provinces or countries that we have identified anywhere in the world that have achieved significant emissions reductions while improving their economy have either set an economy-wide cap on emissions as quebec and california have done or have passed mandates requiring emissions reduction targets to be achieved as massachusetts and new york have done so let me take each of those in turn so we focus on looking at the peer-reviewed research in terms of the the techno the proven and available technology and the best practices for emissions reduction this is known as our path to paris model it is not a prescription you could get to the paris emissions reduction targets which require a 20 at least a 26 reduction below our 2005 emissions levels by 2025 in different ways you could move one of these bars up or down but if you did you'd have to you know adjust other bars this works all together um and what what we're seeing is that a number of these technologies costs are declining and there's an opportunity for them to go to scale with the right policy and regulatory framework and and the right market signals so one of the things that we added in this year's report was a request to the agency of commerce and community development to do an independent economic impact analysis of what it would mean for vermont if we hit these targets for the green the transportation sector and the orange the thermal sector over the next six years that research was led by economic research analyst ken jones and the broad findings were that if we were to achieve them we would see um we would prevent the loss of a built more than a billion dollars leaving the state we would achieve net consumer savings of nearly 800 million dollars and we could increase in-state investment by over 300 million dollars this is sometimes surprising to folks because for a long time the conversation about the economic impacts of meeting our energy and climate goals has been asking the wrong questions it is said what is the cost of the transition instead of saying what is the cost of the status quo and when you look at the cost of the status quo versus what the energy transformation and the improvements in resiliency we can achieve over the next six years it's really driven by two things that get you to such impressive numbers like this that come from the agency of commerce number one is an understanding of the dollar flows of our energy economy on average over the last decade vermont has spent about two billion dollars a year vermonters spend about two billion dollars a year on fossil fuels for transportation and heating that's gasoline and diesel fuel oil propane and natural gas and when we do that about 75 percent on average of those dollars flow right out of state so we have a hundred percent imported fossil fuel when we spend two billion dollars of it that's a net drain on the economy of a billion and a half dollars leaving the vermont economy in contrast all of the efficient and gary can I ask a quick question yes so two two billion that we're spending in fossil fuels that's across the best transportation homes everything that does not include the electricity sector that's that's spending on transportation and heating fuels great thank you um thank you for that question and in contrast all of the alternatives that um we have identified in the path to paris keep a far larger share of our dollars recirculating locally contributing to local jobs and improving the vermont economy so specifically 60 it's been estimated by the agency of commerce that 60 cents of every dollar that we invest in home weatherization stay and recirculate in state think about what those costs are it's mostly contractor labor uh it varies utility by utility but on average 62 cents of every dollar that we spend with our electric utilities stays and recirculates in state and of course local wood heating also keeps a far larger share of dollars recirculating in state we've understood this for a long time when it comes to our food and agricultural economy but for some reason we haven't made as much progress in understanding this in our energy economy but of course keeping dollars local isn't enough um it's also about the need to save vermonters money especially at a time when we're going through economic challenges and that's the the other side of this coin that is so important you can you can cherry pick or take a snapshot of any point in time of a fossil fuel price but to get a clearer picture it's it's helpful to take a step back and and look over time and if you look at the last 15 years of comparative ways that you can get around or heat your home consistently the highest cost and most price volatile options are fossil fuels that cost vermonters more so specifically in the upper left there you see the cost of of fueling a vehicle with diesel and gasoline generally higher and much more price volatile than the equivalent cost of charging an electric vehicle and that doesn't even start to that doesn't even include the maintenance savings that evs provide on the bottom right hand corner you see a comparison of the costs of different ways to heat homes and buildings again the highest cost and most price volatile over the last 20 years have been propane and fuel oil with the lower cost options being efficient electric heating through cold climate heat pump systems and also advanced wood heating systems so when you combine those two things shifting our energy spending so that much more money stays local with the ability to revitalize and make the vermont economy more resilient and getting people off of those roller coaster price curves from fossil fuels onto lower and more stable cost curves for how we can heat our homes and get around you achieve significant consumer savings as well another thing that i want to point your i know that i have a limited amount of time so i'm just going to kind of point these out and if there follow-up questions you know we we can go there but this is this data directly from the agency of natural resources greenhouse gas emissions inventory it shows our historical emissions broken down by sector the color coding you see transportation and thermal being the greatest sources as you well know and these green dots show the path that we'll need to get on to meet the targets that the state has set and that you're considering in the global warming solutions act one of the things that we did for this year's report was to look at all of the greenhouse gas emissions inventories that if you go back to that last slide for me okay great i just want to snap there we go thank you welcome so one of the things that we did for this year's report was to collect all of the state greenhouse gas emissions inventories from across new england and new york and quebec which we have through data through 2016 and what we found surprised us it is that vermont has made the least progress towards our commitment of any of those states we have the highest per capita emissions in the in the region um and we're the only state that has seen an increase in emissions in our emissions baseline since 1990 this often surprises people because we have been we've we've heard in it's true that we have uh managed to successfully reduce emissions from our electricity generation sector and you see that here since 1990 the challenge is that that decrease has been dwarfed has been swamped by the increase in emissions from these other sectors especially transportation um this is another way of looking at our emissions broken down by sector i'll note that the presence of a policy and regulatory framework has that that you have been instrumental in has driven this bar even lower so these are the numbers from 2016 agency of natural resources and public service department have shared the data in terms of our emissions from electricity generation through 2018 it is it has gone from about 800 000 metric tons in 2016 to less than 200 000 metric tons in 2018 as a result of the res you have successfully driven down the of the renewable energy standard you have successfully driven down emissions from electricity generation in vermont and use by about 80 percent the challenge is that we do not yet have the policy and regulatory framework and tools to to tackle the elephants in the room which are over here um and you know when when we talk about vermont having the highest per capita emissions not having reduced since 1990 the chief culprit is the transportation sector and the main driver of that is that we have higher vehicle miles traveled per capita than any state in the region this number has increased yet again the latest number from the v-trans state energy profile i believe is nearly 11 900 miles now and we're seeing purchasing decisions of vehicles that that don't help meet these goals either the last point i'll make is that is what i started with is that we have not yet found a state province or country that has successfully achieved emissions reduction goals while improving their economy unless they've done one of two things one is set an economy-wide cap on emissions as cobec and california have done or require emissions mandate emissions reductions economy-wide like new york and massachusetts have done vermont has done so with the electricity generation sector but it's only covering what was eight percent now maybe is lowest two percent of our overall emissions from the electricity uh sector and i'll say that in closing we have a phenomenal opportunity to make rapid progress towards these goals because we have something that no other state in the country has which is no matter how you measure it either the cleanest or among a small handful of the cleanest electricity sectors in the country um and by cleanest i mean lowest emitting so every time that we are able to move to heat water with a heat pump water heater or do space heating with cold climate heat pumps or add an electric vehicle instead of a fossil fueled vehicle we get a greater bang for our buck a greater emissions reduction from that action than any other place in the country because not only are we replacing a dirty oftentimes less efficient uh fossil fuel engine or boiler or furnace with a more efficient electric motor we're also drawing on and benefiting from the lowest emitting electricity in the country so once we start to see the the market transformation in the uptake of beneficial electrification in the transportation and thermal sectors we can make really rapid progress because of the progress that we've already made there is still more that we can achieve but because of the progress that we've already made thanks to your leadership uh with the electricity sector and here's just a graph that that shows what that has looked like post passage of the res the decline in emissions from our electricity sector um with that i am going to um pause and see what questions i may be able to answer well uh thanks again for um really very helpful concise and clear easy to read a massive distillation of energy data that's what you've been in the committee before and we appreciate you coming back to remind us of where we are and and what the opportunities look like and i appreciate too that you've also added in um you know the economic impact setting we the phrase that we've been using for several years the clean energy economy has sort of drifted out of focus a little bit in the last several months so um i think it's important that you're reminding us of it that it's right there and with that 62 this year is 337 and the third step i hope next year that beneficial electrification is something that i hope that we will really pick up the pace on um so i'm mindful of the clock we have a speaker who's coming in during a tight window um so unless there's a committee question i would just thank mr devile for that very helpful thank you and we'll go to mr coward he's not on the call yet senator okay well that's uh we have david cash from 11 to 11 30 so i think roughly 15 20 minutes uh with mr coward will dovetail just right but if when he arrives if you'll flag me down in case i don't notice i'm showing up on the screen thank you again devile thank you good morning mr coward okay can you hear me all right perfect all right um i'm happy to be here in such good company it's it's great to talk about these topics for the record i'm richard coward with the i'm a principal with the regulatory assistance project which is a global nonprofit based in vermont we work on energy and climate policy around the world we've advised governments states provinces nations are really all over in terms of my background i'm a lawyer who was for 12 years chair of the public utilities commission in vermont so really familiar with a lot of these topics uh for the past decade most of the past decade i've been directing a program on climate and energy in the european union so i've worked with a number of european countries that are leading on a lot of the things we're talking about and i for six years chaired the electricity advisory committee of the u.s department of energy um among other uh tests that i've taken on over the years and i have a long association with efficiency vermont and um well want to make clear that today i'm not speaking for rap or for efficiency vermont or anybody else i'm just giving you my own thoughts i don't have to tell you um how important the climate agenda is and that the coronavirus crisis doesn't change this we still need to flatten the climate curve while we deal with the crisis and as we emerge from the crisis but i'm going to echo thoughts you've you've heard from others that a smart recovery plan from the current economic crisis can help put the economy back on its feet while we make real progress on the longer term climate agenda and i really would urge you don't miss this opportunity to emerge from the current economic crisis with good policies that would address our economic longer term economic and climate needs as you've heard from others there are many elements to the solution set and your committee has worked on um worked on a number of them and heard about many of them uh at the top of my list you know we haven't changed at rap efficiency first uh renewable electricity and decarbonizing heat and transportation and in addition of course the transition must be fair and and special attention must be given to disadvantaged communities rural households and and communities in need in addition we now know that public policy has to address resilience and adaptation um not just carbon reductions so you know this bill addresses all of those points and i really i want to start by commending the drafters and the house for giving you something that has a lot of positive elements uh in it but i think it's helpful i hope it's helpful to the committee if i also address some reservations um as i said rap works all over the world and pretty much everywhere we work we see the growing gap between climate ambition and climate action and so it's obvious that we need structural mechanisms to create more direct links between ambition and achievement um we've had the debate for decades now about carbon pricing economists argue that well the way to bridge that gap is just to have a carbon price and i you've perhaps heard us in the past we don't agree we think prices are good and our direction can be directionally correct but they don't provide the silver bullet we need different kinds of actions in different sectors and as you just heard from um Jared we have to look at these sectors individually and figure out how to address emissions in each of them so i'm i'm also now going to echo some things you heard from Ms. Duggan a clear high level mandate for change with measurable targets is really necessary we can't just say oh we'd like to do we'd like to reduce emissions we really need mandates and we need to hold our own feet to the fire as it were we need an analysis of options and planning based on analysis and we need sorry excuse me i'm sorry excuse me david cash has joined the call oh okay hi david good morning everybody independent public voice that speaks truth to power and so we really need to um we need to look for ways to create that independent voice because we've we've just seen we've been talking about this for so long with without creating a voice that is empowered to do that and it needs to have continuity and persistence so many of our climate plans have been these short run affairs that just disappear now there are models for how you can do this and um in deference to mr cash i'm just going to skip over that for the moment but i want to point out a limitation um models that sorry mr coward sorry to interrupt and just uh um for air traffic control so everyone doesn't struggle with what are we doing with the clock let's plan to go till about 10 after and then we'll switch over to mr cash and mr cash as i understand it you can only be with us till 11 30 correct that's right that's correct it well if if you like i can just pause here let him go and come back and continue our discussion after that work for you you're all very convivial and flexible if you would if you want to do that mr cash yeah i think that's fine yeah he's got a limited window and i'm at home i mean i'm at home too but my window is limited i do a many other zoom meetings please go ahead so good morning mr cash i was just leading up to what to talking about the other jurisdictions that have processes like this so great exactly right great okay and since you haven't visited with our committee before um if you could just give us a mini bio people will know uh you're asking uh you're asking me for that is that correct okay great well excellent it's uh it's wonderful to be with you thank you senator bray for inviting me again and and it's uh as i'm sure it's true for everybody kind of odd to be here in this setting although i like to see that we have some cows with us in the meeting today and um in the last time that i was with you was uh it was much colder out but at least we were in person at the state house so i'm david cash i'm currently the dean of the john w mccormick graduate school of policy and global studies at umass boston i've been there for five years and prior to that i was in massachusetts state government for 10 years two years in the governor romney's administration and eight years in governor patrick's administration and i held a wide range of positions in environment energy uh some of them sometimes my portfolio was extremely broad and covered things like fisheries and forestry and parks and other times it was much more narrow focusing when i was uh i was both commissioner of our department of public utilities and commissioner of our department of environmental protection at different times so my portfolio was more limited during those times but always had a focus on the intersection of environmental policy energy policy and economic development always going with the theory that wise environmental policy um can strengthen the economy uh and vice versa uh we never sort of bought into this notion that there's always a trade-off certainly there can be but that's not we don't feel like that is um a given um and just for the purposes of this uh of this hearing i was on the ground floor of the development and negotiation with many partners here in vermont with the regional greenhouse gas initiative uh that was during the romney administration and patrick administrations and then uh in the patrick administration was on the senior team or the architect of our global warming solutions act and numerous different kinds of legislative and regulatory efforts that went to support the ultimate goal of greenhouse gas emissions uh while protecting the environment and growing the economy so um i hope that i can be helpful i totally understand that vermont is a very different context with different um legislate you know legislative um foundations and different organizational structure different economy etc i totally get that and um so i know that uh not necessarily uh what worked in massachusetts will work here but maybe there are some lessons that uh that can be uh moved to to hopefully end up with vermont having a successful passage of this act and implementation of it um i also do want to note again kind of parkening back to the kind of bizarre time that we're in right now just the uh what i've been hearing i have friends in vermont who are very happy with how vermont has approached the covid problem i know that there's been way fewer uh incidences here than in massachusetts we've been struggling quite a bit and just want to give hats to the folks who've been protecting uh your citizens and anyone who's traveling in or out of vermont so thank you for that so um senator bray i know that that you had asked me in in one respect to focus on the kind of rules the development of rules following the global warming solution act i'm happy to focus on that i've had um as i've gone through the text of the bill uh it has definitely made me think of some of the ways that our global warming solutions act uh was successful and what some of the shortcomings are so uh senator would that be an avenue a productive avenue for me to go down right now uh sure sure and i think just for the committee sake you know there's an interesting question too that the act was in place i forget like nine years before it was remanded back to an r for rulemaking so a lot of progress was made with solutions act sort of in targets in place but no rules having been done so it it's a slightly puzzling thing to observe from outside and uh if you can address that in your remarks too that would be helpful sure and i think we actually had a similar kind of problem there there was ambiguous rule writing that was uh required in our global warming solutions act at the same time that that act was passed there were at least two or three other bills that were passed at the same time the green communities act which did have a variety of rulemaking responsibilities that were seated in the line agencies primarily department of environmental protection and the department of energy resources regulating the renewable energy and but in the global warming solutions act i i guess here's one of my take-home messages says having kind of lived through the drafting of the legislation and then the attempt to do craft rules partly of which were ambiguous which which led to a supreme judicial court case in which in fact the state lost uh because the state was maintaining while i was there that we didn't have to do the kind of strict emissions reduction rules that conservation law foundation was uh claiming that we had to do and we ultimately lost that that case so clarity of of rule responsibility in the legislation i think is critically important but i think one of the things that that one of the lessons learned is thinking about rule writing in tears so i did note that in the in the bill the the secretariat has the responsibility for rule writing to hit the emissions targets that are laid out for 2020 2030 and 2050 emissions targets now i was left a little bit confused because of what little i do know about vermont i know there's also the line agency your your analog to the department of environmental protection so the environmental ethnic department of environmental conservation has the kind of air regulatory arm so i was curious of why that line agency didn't have that responsibility and all of our rule writing it's the line agencies that have that responsibility so that's a that's a question that i had and i'd be curious what an answer to that is but the other point is if you think about these tears that that there should be an overarching rule writing responsibility in the secretariat or in the department that requires the state to hit economy wide greenhouse gas emissions targets that makes total sense what i think could be added strengthened is that mirror responsibilities or parallel responsibilities in other line agencies may be equally important so for example when i was the commissioner of the department of public utilities we actually felt hampered because there had not been similar kinds of emissions reduction target requirement rule writing for our dpu so we were not able to institute some of the rule writing that particularly in the second administration the last four years of the patrick administration you were hoping to be able to do there were cases and i'll explain a couple of these cases where the department of environmental protection not only has air responsibilities but has waste responsibilities so the parts of our climate change that we're focusing on waste we're able to be implemented through writing within our dpu on the way side so for example we put you put together a organic waste ban and associated regulatory structures that went along with that that could address the greenhouse gas emissions from the waste stream in one particular way but it was only because our dpu had the rule writing authority to do that we also did not give appropriate authority to our department of transportation we all know that transportation now is the largest single sector and without a department of transportation having a rule writing ability i think that may difficulties down the road that is again you have that overarching statewide greenhouse gas emissions reduction but if the line agency responsible for the particular emissions sources doesn't have that same authority or it doesn't have that same requirement those are two different things obviously um then there could lead to two uh conflict between agencies or actions in one sector that make it very difficult for the whole state to to reach its um to reach its goals so in looking at the at the vermont bill which has a very kind of clear articulation of how the climate planning process happens and the outputs of that climate planning process in terms of suggested legislation regular regulations etc i don't think it it um requires the agencies that will be responsible to for each of their sectors to do the same kind of rule writing that might be necessary why don't i stop there with that summary and have and have you take some q and a on your i think you're muted one quick question is there is uh and you're in a good position having been in and out of government and in massachusetts especially so one of the questions that's been discussed in the last uh a couple days has been the degree to which they're the the structure of the council so is it 22 people all gathered together to write the plan or is it the administration because ultimately they're going to have the responsibility of executing that should uh deliver the plan but they could work with you know 22 uh advisors or more you know in order to have the expertise present but it would leave the executive branch sort of quote unquote owning the plan and then owning the implementation of that plan it's just seems like a clearer um lines of authority and and lines of responsibility as opposed to this bigger tent so we don't want to get stuck on that but we're we're trying to sort out how do you have so many unelected people responsible for writing a plan that is actually going to drive legal uh legal yeah i mean i again having having been in the executive branch um for 10 years and how we did it in massachusetts i would lean toward the the council being driven by the executive agencies and that the that the stakeholders and other involvement in the council is critically important critically important to make sure that as we move forward actions are taken that don't hurt sectors that opportunities that particular members of different stakeholder groups have to for the clean energy future are tapped into that voices are heard so people aren't left behind i mean there are many many different reasons to have stakeholders at the table and have their perspectives uh brought to the table and that of course would make it easier once the plan is done that there's sort of baked in bio from sectors that might be that might be impacted and i will say you know we always very specifically had for example our manufacturing um association at the table now it led to lots of fights and there was a lot of disagreement but we never wanted to be in a situation where they'd be able to say uh you know you you didn't have us at the table you never heard our voice and there's no question that our policies and regulations were better for it too so it wasn't just a political thing it was like we did better rule writing because the manufacturers were at the table and they could say no no no wait a minute if you're going to have this requirement this part of our sector will be hurt um uh in an unfair kind of way and we figured out how we could resolve that and um so so the council very important um to get the right information at the table to make sure there aren't unforeseen consequences in particular sectors and to make sure that there's political volume but at the end of the day i would see the authority of the council the executive agencies um and maybe we could just circle back to that sort of puzzle or puzzlement for me uh which is you know the bill passes in 08 but rules don't get written until after that uh supreme court ruling that remands it to a and r uh nine years i think nine years after so what was going on that um in a way you'd say well the the main tool never came out of the toolkit uh for almost a decade but massachusetts made progress was it the the mandatory how do you explain how yeah it's a great that's a great question and it's sort of that uh the answer to that question is what made us think um that we would not lose the case and that was the many other regulations that we did whether it was about energy efficiency or renewable energy that was specific to the line agencies um were very effective and you know it was it was it was very it was hard to argue and could not argue that had we had the umbrella regulations in we would have gone faster like there was no question in our mind that all of the you know in a way remember i described the umbrella and then the line agency was below it we focused on this and they were very very effective and um you know in a way the umbrella was not um was not necessary in those first years so um and and in fact we had argued that our the the rules requirements for energy efficiency were enough to hit the greenhouse gas standards that were in our bill and that's one of the things that we argued and um again in retrospect i would say you want both however because what if those rules had not worked what if the rules that the rules done at the line agencies had not been effective and um and in the same way why you don't want just an above one without the line because it'll be very hard to get the specifics of the transportation sector the building sector the energy sector etc the manufacturing sector would be hard to get the specifics right if you're only looking at it at an overarching bill does that does that help answer you that that uh question mark sure i mean it's my from reading my sense too is that you had uh government aligned so at the executive branch correct legislative branch both houses um everyone those stars were all aligned so there was a willingness to um make progress yes use multiple multiple tools yes rely on the rulemaking to drive the state's progress that's that's exactly true and then add in another really important political jurisdiction and that is cities and towns our cities and towns were very much engaged as well so um that led to a situation in which there was a little kind of political force saying oh wait you're not reaching your goals because cities and towns were they were getting technical support from the state to hit some of their goals and as you mentioned that both houses of uh both houses in our state legislature and the executive branch were all on the same page and moving in the same direction okay so in vermont several years ago we passed the planning act for energy uh there every our every regional planning commission has energy targets and then um municipalities have been getting technical support to help write the same into their town plans um they gain a greater level of influence deference at the puc and proceedings if they've done so things like that um uh what are you doing so it's great to hear you reminding us that municipalities are another whole level at which we need cooperation in order to make progress can you say a little more about municipalities yeah uh it's kind of interesting for many of us um when we started the drafting of the of our climate and clean energy legislation the speaker of the house at the time had an idea too of drafting some big piece of the energy legislation but his angle was cities and towns and that's the green communities act and I will admit that we hadn't been thinking along those lines we were thinking kind of state level get a greenhouse gas emission trajectory figure out how to do air quality all of these kinds of things now um when we started working with the speaker's office on this it became really clear that there was a kind of genius to the focus on green communities um again I don't I don't know the structure and and political culture in Vermont but you know we are a local control state so our 351 cities and towns play a really important role um in decision making on the state level and can act as barriers or wind in our sails for state level efforts and so when we um when we kind of embrace the idea of green communities and then try to figure out okay what's the best way to engage communities in this so they have a stake in it and benefits can accrue to them and progress can be made through their actions we developed we designed the green communities program so it was essentially um a uh carrots without stick program that's not true it was a carrots with incentives to get the carrots program so cities and towns had to and by the way regulations had were drafted so the department of energy resources had to draft regulations and come up with the programs about this but it essentially was cities and towns had to meet a couple of targets in terms of um their own facilities um their own energy efficiency planning their own renewable energy planning fleet's planning and things like that and once they hit these standards then state funding would be available to them to um uh to do feasibility planning and then ultimately to uh deploy resources and uh so it became an incredibly popular program and it was something that um you know everyday people could see also because cities and towns were invested in advertising what they were doing were investing in gaining interest in in um the citizens of their cities and towns to move forward with things and um so it became a very nice kind of handing glove um that complimented the regulatory changes we were if we were doing so for example and let me explain that in the moment if we're requiring the utilities to hit a specific amount of energy efficiency targets let's say and then you have cities and towns that um are encouraged and incentivized for them to reduce energy use in their schools and municipal buildings etc then you can see a perfect marriage of city action and state action because then the cities would go to the utilities and say utility we need help doing this to reach our goal and the utilities are happy to do that because that's how they reach their goals as well so it worked very nicely in a kind of this handing glove kind of way and that was all in legislation and then followed up by rule by rule right you're muted again the i'm a dog who's my assistant so i'm trying to train myself to be uh the so in terms of one of the things we haven't talked at all about maybe you could say something the carrots that go to communities and then uh these programs in general funding is always a bit of a bugaboo you know like well how are we going to pay for this so what what advice and thoughts do you have to share with us around the funding question sure um and i probably won't be helpful to say that at the time you may recall it was during the last um great recession and so it was a lot of federal aura funding that was coming to the states uh we still don't know whether that will actually happen in the next rounds of covid um funding there's a lot of people who are pushing for similar kinds of push for renewable energy energy efficiency funding going in stimulus funding but let's say we don't have that the two main sources or the three main sources that we use i believe are sources that you have available as well and that is regi funds the utility uh so so rate payer uh utility support vis-a-vis the energy efficiency programs and then we also had rate payer support um vis-a-vis the uh uh renewable energy programs and those were those were structured very differently the renewable energy one um was a legacy one that is a per uh you know a tiny percentage per um dollar on people's bills um so it's sort of like and it roughly comes out to be the same amount around 25 million dollars per year the energy efficiency one however is a much more dynamic one where the utilities have to reach energy efficiency targets and adjust their rates so that investments can be made uh to reach those targets that is on the order of like 700 million dollars per year um within massachusetts and all of that money goes back to customers residential customers and um residential or commercial customers and immediately you might say well okay so that helps people who avail themselves of the program right so you have companies who use those that funding you have homeowners that use that funding you have rent renters and landlords who use those programs and they get the benefits by reducing their their energy bills um the general market other customers benefit as well because that that serves all of the investments by those who avail themselves of the program serves to lower demand for electricity which lowers the price for electricity so of course if you don't if you're not the one who gets more uh weatherization in your house or changes your light bulbs etc yeah you're not going to save as much there's no question and your bills you know you will see some increase in your bill but you will get some decrease in in your bill as well because it it's reducing the whole cost of electricity throughout the region in fact Vermont folks and New Hampshire folks and Connecticut folks benefit and we all benefit from all of the energy efficiency programs throughout New England because we're all in the same iso market uh oh your your dog uh hit you again center mcdonnell um the um our problem is is not electricity and electricity um changes we're we've gotten pretty good grade on that we're flunking the um transportation and the um and the heat but if my question goes back to the rule writing um the bill before us sets in place a commission that would make recommendations that would then be put into a plan and would go into rule in the event that the council does not come up with plans the fallback position is that the agency um writes rules based on the state's statutory goals um you've testified that um in massachusetts those rule the rules that you promulgated were overturned because the basis of those rules were i believe vague or not specific enough is that correct no we we we didn't draft rules we didn't draft the umbrella rules so our inaction uh was what was at um at issue not that we had done a wrong job and it didn't overturn any of the other rules so all of the things i said we had done rules on energy efficiency we had done rules on renewable energy we had some rules actually on transportation um it didn't negate any of those it just said you have to have an overarching greenhouse gas reduction rule from the entire state that you want to do that's what it forced us so okay so i'm i'm concerned that the council will not meet and um the administration will then be in the predicament of having to put forth rules based on goals that are currently in the statute which um doesn't provide a lot of um many guardrails to what the rules might end up being and that the bill was not designed to have that happen such a thing happened so any suggestions on how to prevent that yeah so um again i'm just kind of thinking back to to the experience in massachusetts where our council it was an advisory council um and um it served all of those functions that i mentioned um earlier that is it got expertise at the table it got perspective at the table it got political buy-in but um it wasn't a formal rule writing body now each of the line agencies have their own i don't i'm pretty sure vermont does to own long administrative procedure processes that also require stakeholder engagement that also require public hearings public testimony etc all of those kinds of things so um those didn't those kinds of things didn't have to be written into um didn't have to be written into the the global warming solutions act or the act because those are already part of now the one difference is that there is a statutory body that drives our energy efficiency programs so um an energy efficiency advisory council was created that reviews um the utility three-year plans um and i believe that it does have the ability to accept or reject as a body those plans and um so in that way does have some kind of regulatory authority so if if you're asking are there ways to to fix the bill i mean maybe if it's explicit that well if the council doesn't meet doesn't do anything then the executive agencies write the rules in some ways that's an incentive for there to be a functioning council and for there to be for stakeholders to be demanding there as the law is written for there to be a council because that's not a great outcome that the that the that the executive agencies without any form of council um advisory uh communication writes their own stuff right part of why so many states have gone with these climate related councils is because all of this is incredibly complicated and it's really important to have both the expertise and political buy-in as as folks move forward so um what it tell me what the give given the other part of the bill the last part of the bill i believe that allows for citizen suits why is there a concern that the council won't move forward or that the council won't put forth recommendations at at the end of their term i i've been on councils before where the administration um didn't like where the council was going so the chair did not hold meetings yeah yeah okay i can i i can definitely understand that um so thank you for your answer your thank you i yeah i i i yeah that's no that no that's a that's a that's a tough question and so so in a world in which um and remember i argued at the beginning that you do want a strong executive running the council and that of course leads to the concern if you have an executive that's not as interested in the mission that's represented by this bill well then you want to have enough um belts and suspenders in the bill support the um or or uh you know force the executive to do what the what the legislature wanted them to do you you you always get that problem right and that's why the citizen suits and other other remedies are part of these kinds of bills okay thank you mr chair that was my comment was not directed at this administration that was past histories that brings that question yeah thank you uh thank you senator mcdonnell yeah we i mean we've talked at various points over the years about you know you can lead a horse to water you can't make them drink and we run into that on different issues but maybe there is something we can put in the bill that would make them drink yeah so yeah i don't i don't know yeah well i think senator mcdonnell has been joined to mr martlain and i think we'll start putting together some language to help create those belt suspenders um thank thank you mr chair i'm eager to hear more questions for um to mr cash i'm looking at the clock and i'm seeing my my time quickly running down and i feel bad about that because i'm totally enjoying this conversation maybe i could take one more question and then travel back down to mass traces oh it's been helpful i mean i'm all set very helpful we may be able to track you down if uh if we need to wait no question i am more i mean this happened really quickly right i think you'd reached out to me on uh tuesday and it's thursday so i'm you know i'm happy to do formal informal phone calls whatever um it's important work that you guys are doing thank you so much okay thank you very much for joining us and thanks for your help for being nimble absolutely my pleasure thank you okay bye bye bye bye with that i'd like to return to uh our patient former witness mr coward and um put another 15 minutes on your clock okay what time are we hearing from the treasurer mr chair uh so that'll be quarter of okay thank you um mr chair mr coward was president at a meeting at a meeting in uh may of 05 on the bramont yankee uh upgrade which was a meeting where the minority of uh of an advisory council had to call a meeting because the um the chair would not call a meeting to provide advice on that so he's familiar with that sort of situation so thank you so i i'm gonna follow up on the uh to some degree on what you've just heard about just making a general point about these problems of um accountability and enforceability of an action program and uh just to let you know there's a you know a variety of models out in the world as mr kash said a number of them create climate councils that are quite explicitly only advisory and the main climate council is in that category um the a different example was created in the united kingdom the parliament created something called the committee on climate change and what they wanted to do was to create a very high level uh expert trusted voice independently that could basically call remind the parliament of where the nation was on this and to urge the parliament to take action when they weren't doing it so that's an example of an expert body that uh also didn't have any authority to enact regulations um and they've been frustrated and i've heard from folks on the main climate council that you know they just don't have any idea if their recommendations are going to uh make it into regulation or law so you know we just we do need to remind ourselves that the planners can plan and the watchdogs can bark but the power to act remains where just where it was and so you do have to look for ways to take actions um so um i've already commented in a positive way about many of the positive elements of this bill and i want to be clear that i think creating the climate council may well in fact be a an element of a bigger program that would help us but i'm going to now focus on uh two problems authority and timing and now speaking to authority as the memos from the ag example from lege council point out the bill does not inappropriately delegate legislative authority uh to the climate council or to the anr the power to create new regulatory programs to create a carbon tax new fees all those things aren't delegated in this bill the agency retains the authority it already has and now in addition it would have a strong encouragement to use that authority specifically to address climate pollution but here's the mismatch notwithstanding this limitation the bill requires the agency to demonstrate that its rules would actually achieve the state's climate targets on time in section 593a2 the agency is required to develop a record to demonstrate that the rules shall achieve the state's greenhouse gas emission reduction requirements so here's the conundrum and i think mr cash alluded to this as well that if the agency it isn't given new authority but it is given this mandate to meet these ambitious goals how's it going to do it you know what can it what can it legally do in the rulemaking process that would meet these ambitious targets we know that solving these problems and jared's slides you know pointed out quite clearly require fairly dramatic reductions in energy used in buildings and energy used for transportation and we also know that getting that work done is going to require funding so the legislation that is drafted seems to me just creates a mismatch between responsibility and authority for the agency and i mean i get it that the agency may have authority to do things towards climate goals that it's not now doing but it seems clear that other agencies as mr cash pointed out are going to have to act and that this agency the anr would need enhanced authority in order to really meet all the goals mr kauer can you say a little more about what would be some examples of the kind of enhancement to their authority they would need in your estimation well meaningful progress yeah i i guess i want to be careful here because i haven't studied the question and um you know how broad the agency is latent authorities or untapped authorities in the climate realm and it would take some analysis to do that so um but i don't know i'm i wouldn't expect the agency of natural resources to think or for other people to think that it has the authority to mandate that i rip out my oil furnace and replace it with a heat pump and and they don't have the authority to raise the fees that would help me to do that that's an example of what they don't have uh they may have authority over vehicles that they're not exercising they may have authority over methane emissions that they're not exercising right right but um there's a lot of work to be done here that they presently i think i think it's playing don't have the authority to do um now i want to talk about timing there is this problem of delay in acting while we plan i don't think given the urgency of the climate crisis and given the fact that the pro kind of programs we're talking about doing take a lot of time to launch and implement that we should wait until 2022 or 2024 to make major progress on targets that we're now setting for 2025 so this brings up you know i've mentioned to you earlier i used to teach um planning planning law there's a there's a big debate in the world of planning over the years over what's the tension between what's sometimes called comprehensive planning on the one end and the extreme other end is called disjointed incrementalism where people just go around try to solve problems without you know connecting the dots and there is a strategy in the middle which it's often referred to as mixed scanning mixed scanning allows you to take action on things you know you need to do now because you do have a reference to a broader picture and get going on them while you are creating and amending a comprehensive plan and it seems to me that the climate crisis is a classic example of where you want to engage in mixed scanning and the good news as you heard from mr cash and from jarrod um we've been doing this all along i mean thank goodness we didn't wait for a comprehensive climate change plan to launch energy efficiency programs in vermont or the weatherization program or the renewables of programs you know we knew that they needed to be done and we acted so here's a thought for this bill what if this bill had a section added to it if if you want to create the council and you want to create that stakeholder buy-in um and a public publicness of the process um but you don't want to wait too long to have a comprehensive plan what if you added a section to the bill requiring the council to evaluate and recommend a small number of early action steps that would address let's just say up to half of the gap between where we're going under business as usual and where we want to be in 2025 and to get started on programs that we know we're going to take decades to fully work these recommendations could be made within 90 or 100 days 120 days of the council's creation have them delivered to the anr and to the legislature for action within the next year but if the anr already has authority to do those things they could be required to to jumpstart that rulemaking as an early action item if they don't have the authority the legislature would be have received a recommendation from the council that we really need to make progress on this this and this the council ought to be able to pretty readily evaluate the leading options and propose a short early action agenda and i guess i would add and come back to a point you all are conscious of that urgency is needed to link these actions to economic recovery now that's going to be that's going to be moving at a fast clip you know we don't want to wait necessarily for a comprehensive climate plan in order to take action that would be good for economic recovery now do we have an idea what those early action steps would be i would argue that we have a pretty good idea of where we would start but this would be something for the council to actually deliberate on but and all fuels efficiency program properly funded a program to speed up the transition to low emission vehicles a docket at the puc to start work on lowering the emissions from natural gas you know we've done a great job on electricity we've done a great job on electric efficiency it's time to work on the future of what is now fossil gas heating in this state so other people might you know have two or three other things to put on their list of top threes or top fives but i'm really just making the point we have studied these things we have we have i rap has presented evidence to a legislature for i suppose a decade on some of these policies so have a dozen other well informed um experts we kind of know what we need to do so if we're going to use the council to kind of jump start the process why not just you know tell them to come up with an early action plan that concludes my remarks i'm happy to answer questions okay well um thank you very much for that a i would say you know i agree with i don't know if another state we always like to measure things per capita because that's the only way we sort of win those contests but uh per capita the amount of energy expertise in the state of ramon i would say we're incredibly rich in experience and knowledge already so i um while we work on a a large uh as david kashman was talking about sort of an umbrella uh authority and program i certainly hope we don't get mesmerized by that and fail to act in a timely manner on the kind of opportunities that are right in front of us and that we can build based on past steps like the all fuels energy efficiency program you were talking about senator mcdonnell you are muted senator mcdonnell and getting jump started is an excellent suggestion um we we in the legislature uh toyed a year ago i think it was a year ago with a a modest some say tepid funding source for a thermal heat and and it took a lot of heat but it was so such a modest um proposal that it died what as many people said if you're going to stick your neck out you might as well stick your neck out to get something and um the wrap um in my opinion was sort of sticking with the modest proposal approach and could wrap or could you or wrap somehow provide us with a realistic approach um or such a committee is being proposed with a realistic approach to jump start something that isn't so small that it gets no pushback and big enough to actually start something i love your question i have to say that's terrific uh my argument today would be a lot more ambitious let me put it this way and the reason is that a building's program in vermont ought to be a key element of economic recovery and we this is the time to create quality jobs refurbishing buildings and changing out heating systems across the state of vermont these are jobs that are going to be they're not just it's not just going out and paving a road and then when you get done that's that's it and these this would be a set of jobs in vermont that will likely last for decades because if you look at the realistic pace of refurbishing buildings in this state it's going to be a decades long process which is one reason why we should start as soon as we can so i'd make the argument that we want to ramp up that program you have to start wherever you can start with the workforce and the training and the available funding but it ought to be on a trajectory to grow and grow over time and therefore create an incentive for contractors and other enterprises to get in the business and train people to do this work and if we ever needed a time of you know creating sustainable quality jobs that are consistent with climate goals here here we are i mean so in fact i'd even go further and say that if we are smart about it given that the cost of money is so low i would bond for it you know we can create a revenue stream an appropriate revenue stream for a program like that we can we could issue bonds to create a even bigger jumpstart and the revenue returned to the state from that kind of activity would exceed the cost of the bonds so i did if you want some help with that last sentence i can write a document that shows how the revenue to the state would exceed the cost bonds would be a valuable document well i i haven't done the analysis you know specifically for vermont specifically for 2020 but that i'm aware of and have recently reviewed a study that was done by the the largest bank in germany it's called the kfw bank the bank for reconstruction and development and they were dealing with the question of what to do with their carbon money from the european carbon trading scheme and kfw argued that that it should be invested in refurbishing buildings the treasury argued that they they couldn't stand to lose their revenue kfw did the analysis to show i mean and this is kind of common sense if you think about it that if you leverage the money through the bank private owners end up putting up a significant fraction of the total cost of fixing up buildings you leverage a significant amount of spending that creates a significant number of jobs and also the sale of building supplies and materials and what have you and so the combination of the the income taxes earned or paid by the workers the unemployment compensation that's not paid to the workers and sales tax revenue from supplies equipment what have you um all added up in most scenarios returning four euros to the treasury for every euro that the treasury thought it was giving up and i can provide that study to you mr. chair this is a great conversation i'm just concerned that we have a 12 o'clock uh stop and we have the treasurer waiting and you're muted just so you know as usual very quiet um so thank you for that and um uh if you could send that study over to us that would be helpful and it's actually perfect i want to thank you for your helpful testimony always helpful and if you could send the study that will be helpful to us i know that it's been a frustration to the committee that when we look at our weatherization program it's funded about one tenth or one to eleventh the level of revenue that the electrical efficiency charge was funded at so no wonder it's been hamstrung on some level and um and since you brought up bonds and funding and um this is a perfect moment to be segueing to our patient treasurer treasurer pierce um good morning and thanks for uh being on the meeting with us so there's a handoff a bond related question and um you might have other remarks too about global warring solution act we're happy to hear your thoughts can you hear me we'll start with that yes ma'am okay that's good news i'm learning the technology so i'd like to address the climate change issues first um and then um take on the bonding if we have questions i know you got a a quick um a stop there and i don't know if it's a hard stop but so i'm going to go through my uh my thoughts on the climate change issue and the global solutions um act here so i would uh start with that um you know the climate change is obviously a serious threat to our way of life and the future well-being of our citizens and from my perspective and what i pay attention to in particular is the uh its impact on our financial bottom line um you know these are not threats that are down the road they are here with us today and they do require a collaborative effort from all parties and that includes local state and federal governments in conflict with the private sector that's something we're pretty good at in vermont uh that collaboration versus some other states and what happens in dc i should add vermont has been a model and a number of businesses solar wind uh clean water technology and we have articulated very ambitious goals to address climate change in a clear energy future but we have not met those goals and are not presently able to meet them vermont has not done nearly enough to combat climate change or reduce our greenhouse emissions it's been said already but we've failed to curb our total emissions in the transportation and heating sectors and are woefully behind where it should be i guess that what i would say too is a report that was issued on the state it said the bulk of vermont's total emissions come from transportation and the heating sectors and we've already missed our goals there and it's likely to miss future goals as emissions have continued to rise making it more difficult to heat that to meet that target um there was a 2018 report from agency of natural resources where they clearly identified that we have failed to meet our goals and it goes on to save a lot of greenhouse gas emissions remain at levels well above its reduction goals established by statutes in the compliance of energy plan each successive year of increasing emissions makes achieving those goals more difficult and that gets to the question and what's been said by previous speakers is that putting this off is not a good thing we need to deal with it now you know about three years ago three years ago january i wrote a paper in an op-ed on clean water with the help of a number of different agencies and i did an op-ed and it was entitled the financial case to protect vermont's water and as a treasurer i was asked to do some work on the funding and financial recommendations but with that study and in that op-ed i said we have a choice we can act or we can defer action and the bottom line is that we cannot continue to defer action simply put there no other choice without jeopardizing the house the health of our citizens our economy our natural resources our way of life and as i said the financial future of vermont we're in a similar position now there's enormous tasks ahead of us and if we delay it's at our peril and the and the peril of our citizens and every day we delay we have more risk and more cost associated with it i want to point out that there is a cost associated with it so let's talk about the risk and climate change and some of the some of the issues and you folks have looked at many of them but what caught my attention is that farms clearly are dealing with climate change with temperature swings rain increasing and intensity is as well more floods and changing and increasing numbers of pests our sugar season has already been impacted more funds are needed for infrastructure and it's obviously impacted our snow snowfall when i wrote the clean water report i mentioned that tourism was about a 2.5 billion dollar industry in this state my i haven't looked at recent numbers over the last three years but i would assume that they're over three billion dollars now and the cost of mitigating weighs heavily on the detrimental impact of not doing it in terms of that tourism industry and and and other issues including as we just mentioned our building trades and being able to put people into full employment we have done many things and i commend folks in both the scott administration and the schumlitt administration from for those efforts we do have a hazard mitigation plan the state that i believe was issued in 2018 and it talked about the various resources that are available the emergency relief and assistance fund vermont's stream alternatives in the general permitting our collaborative work on flood resilience it reviews hazards such as invasive species extreme heat drought infectious disease and more but while those efforts are there and that report mentions it you know that on page 143 of that report it says that our practice our efforts and priorities are quote still is still evolving and talking about we intend to create you know it that whole concept of it's still evolving is a problem for me because that's what we keep saying we're not moving off the dime and getting into action so for me the solution is a process first developing climate change goals and making requirements to link those to action developing an action plan through strategies and policies implementing that plan and monitoring that plan including progress on regulation and policy that requires action and measures the effects this act does that it also protects vulnerable communities and populations it encourages smart growth and it supports new farming practices so i know we're running short of time but i'd like to point out the impact on our ratings as well and not so much the ratings but what they're saying about it and why they're interested in it there are a number of documents that the rating agencies have put out moody did something in 2017 called the evaluating the impact of climate change on state and local issuers and what they pointed out in that that that they're interested in a couple of things what are the mitigation strategies that states are using what are the cash flows associated and what are the emergency plans after i win we had similar questions we were we were asked by a rating agency you know a couple of days after i win hit you know how much does it cost how are you going to pay for it and can and can you pay for it and still do your debt service one of the concerns that they would have and at that point i said well it's a little early on cost but you know obviously we're going to pay our debt service but they also mentioned in the 2017 report similar issues the impact on the property tax when you took a look at water for instance and the impact it had on property tax where for instance in the town of georgia state sales tax tourism and you know and also on the other side is it's been mentioned you know the ability to use this for local investment i appreciate a generous comments on that and a previous speaker on you know the economic generation that we can have you know and july of uh in july of 19 moody's one of the rating agencies acquired a majority share in a company called 24 seven and this company uses outputs on climate change models to assess the physical risks associated with climate change and the process and effects that that are going on in the uh in the public sector including state and local governments as well as the private sector now why would moody's do this and you know because that's a little outside of their uh their their their main focus and the is the reason is that they want to provide meaningful data on the government uh they want the finance committee investors who buy our bonds who know that uh what the risks are and how are we doing in terms of managing that and i'd like to point that out investors are interested in what we're doing on climate risk and that doesn't mean just folks that buy our bonds but it's folks that want to move here and establish their businesses here and they are concerned uh about those issues because again uh this is not uh something in moody's bail daily with this is a concern that they have and i will tell you that our last meeting with them one of the questions was on climate change climate change is a material risk in their ratings and it is a material risk in terms of companies that are assessing whether they want to come to vermont you know um again uh coming back to those those reports i'd like to and i will send you the those reports um and and the next couple of days as they talk about yes master yes please you're muted first of all mr chair just so you know um the question that i have is you mentioned that investors are looking for uh is it is it in the state's investment in renewable energy uh yes they're interested in what we're doing on renewable energy but and just as important in terms of those climate shocks what are we doing in terms of risk mitigation strategies if you're going to move here you want to know whether you're going to be susceptible to more flooding if you're looking to do some type of agricultural uh uh innovation technologies you want to know whether or not you're going to be able to to to meet those uh in in our state um and i'm going to read right from the from the moody's report again uh it says in addition to the loss of life and threats to public safety and health these events present multiple challenges in the form of compromised crop yields economic disruption damage to physical infrastructure increased energy demand recovery and restoration costs and the cost of adaptive strategies for prevention or impact mitigation and they point out that those costs um are better you know it's paying me now or paying me a lot more later um is the bottom line for me and the bottom line is again what they what they mentioned in the report is um is lower revenue increased expense impaired assets higher liabilities and increased debt among other things so they're they're interested the investors that are buying our bonds are interested and people that want to come to Vermont are interested in how we're dealing with this and it does impact our economy is is my bottom line on that and again moody's would not be buying into a a company that's uh that's doing climate risk assessment if they weren't concerned about this issue uh you know why I would like to point out as well uh that uh that uh you know why why we need to do this and uh and and again it's about from my end our economy and how we're managing that economy so I'm going to cut this a little short but I'm going to go back to something I said early on and again uh what what I said was that uh we have a choice you know to act or not to act um and uh the the the consequences of not acting are impacts on our economy our revenue base our property taxes um increased costs and uh in impairment of our tourism dollars that's not a good thing on the other side acting um is something that will increase local investment increase jobs um and be uh something that investors and uh others that are interested in and settling in Vermont and and making their home in Vermont or making their business in Vermont are interested in so for me the question again is do we act or do we um do delay and the bottom line for me time to act um and we must act now this bill brings us uh a long way toward uh toward that objective so I support the bill and I urge you to pass it thank you great um thanks for hanging in there and committee thanks for staying a little over so that we could finish I think when we get the report uh that Mr. Coward's sending on to us love to be able to loop back to their treasure again and and discuss funding further when there's a positive rate of return on additional debt um I know that we're always maxed out on our bonds but I'm just wondering if there are uh we can have a discussion about other uh maybe novel instruments or you know there was an awful lot of things like credit default swaps all sorts of instruments were this got in created to help facilitate financial work in the past hopefully some of those didn't work out very well I'm wondering if there's some opportunity to look at novel or maybe I should say not traditional bonding but if we there's that positive rate of return is there a way a role for the state to play in facilitating that not that we own the debt but that we facilitate debt something like that Mr. Chair I need to leave if you have a quorum I have an interview okay so would like me to address that now or or later sir I apologize for asking a big question right at the end so we'll have to come back to that but um thank you everyone for joining I can't address it now if you'd like it's up I'll we'll we'll schedule one more time and I'll give you a call as well thank you okay great thank you very much appreciate the time and again you know the only real choice in my in my assessment from a financial side is action now so thank you very much for the time and appreciate it thank you thank you and I'm treasurer thank you commiss Dougan