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Sunday, May 20, 2007

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Several initiatives to be lost with climate change veto

MONTPELIER, Vt. -- If Gov. Jim Douglas makes good on his promise to veto a global climate change bill, more will be lost than a tax on the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant.

New incentives to build renewable energy projects will be thrown out, as will a chance to create jobs in the emerging field of greenhouse gas emission reduction, supporters of the legislation say.

"For too long, Vermont has had a green image with nothing behind the mirror," said Jeff Wolfe, of Gro Solar in White River Junction, one of the nation's biggest solar energy providers. "And this bill is a tremendous start for Vermont to start addressing a problem that will radically affect all of our lives, whether we address it or not and hopefully less radically if we address it."

Douglas says the bill's benefits are outweighed by what he sees as an unnecessary new tax and the creation of an unproven bureaucracy. There already are efforts to accomplish the same thing without expanding Efficiency Vermont, an energy efficiency utility established in 2000 to help homeowners reduce their electric bills, he said.

"He said before he would have signed the House bill," said Douglas spokesman Jason Gibbs. "There was an opportunity for legislative leadership and he to reach agreement."

But essentially tripling a tax that replaces a statewide property tax on Vermont Yankee is farther than he was willing to go.

Senate Natural Resources Committee Chairwoman Virginia Lyons, D-Chittenden, is among those disappointed by the prospect of a veto that would scuttle the Efficiency Vermont expansion and the Vermont Yankee tax, both of which she supported.

"I don't think the funding source is so onerous and I think it's outweighed significantly by the benefits that are in the bill," she said.

Among the initiatives contained in the bill approved by the Legislature and awaiting Douglas' signature:

-- a goal set in state law that 25 percent of the energy consumed in Vermont by 2025 come from renewable sources, "particularly from Vermont's farms and forests."

-- "Smart-metering," allowing utilities to use two-way signals on meters that let consumers qualify for price breaks based on the time of day they use the electricity. It's significantly less expensive during certain periods of the day or seasons of the year.

-- the use of expanded "net metering" to allow larger systems and to allow neighbors to cooperatively generate their own electricity on the same system. Net metering allows consumers to install solar panels, windmills or farm methane systems to generate power. If excess power is generated, it could be sent to the electrical grid to supplement what's provided by utilities.

-- a stable tax rate on commercial wind projects, which advocates said would encourage more to be built.

-- extension of a tax credit for businesses seeking to install solar projects and further study to determine whether it could be expanded.

-- a study of the feasibility of building or refurbishing small hydroelectric projects. The state also would be directed to work with developers of community hydro projects of 2 megawatts or less, easing them through the permit process, so they could be used as pilot projects for other efforts.

Douglas supports most of those things and would have liked to see them enacted, Gibbs said. Because of that, the administration is going to try to ensure they become state policy.

"He is disappointed but he has asked the administration what provisions of the bill the administration can implement without legislative authorization," Gibbs said. "The governor will pursue those and other initiatives that are not in the bill. That underscores the fact that the difference of opinion in this is not on the need to address global climate change."

(Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)