The Equity Advisory Group (EAG) to the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) heard testimony on July 9th from Richard Giddings of the Department of Children and Families about how the Clean Heat Standard law would impact low-income Vermonters who receive home heating assistance in the winter. The news was not good for LIHEAP (Low Income Heating Assistance Program) participants.
A little background: LIHEAP is a federally funded program that provides block grants to state agencies that manage the logistics of distributing home heating (and cooling and general utilities in some cases) aid. In Vermont, this mostly consists of providing low-income households (185% of poverty level or below) with oil, propane, kerosene, firewood and pellets to get through the winter. Around 18,500 households receive LIHEAP assistance.
Last year (the 2023-24 heating season), according to Giddings LIHEAP was able to help those households by suppling on average 28 percent of their home heating fuel needs, but, as you would expect, those with the lowest incomes receive higher subsidies. In dollar figures, the average benefit provided was worth $897, which purchased 211 gallons of fuel.
However, again according to Giddings, if the Clean Heat Standard – a de facto carbon tax on fossil home heating fuels – were in effect for 2023-24, the added cost per gallon created by the tax would reduce the amount of assistance by 14.2 percent. The same amount of money would only be able to buy 181 gallons per household. As Giddings presentation states:
The Clean Heat Standard will have greater impact on low-income Vermonters as they will need to purchase more [home heating] product with their own funds that will include a charge per gallon that the dealer will have to collect. [Emphasis in original]
In other words, this is what a Clean Heat future looks like, and it’s a double whammy on the poor. Not only will low-income Vermonters who are trying to keep warm in the middle of a Vermont winter receive less assistance due to the Clean Heat Standard, in order to make up the difference on their own they will also have to pay an even higher price per gallon to do so because of the tax.
As Giddings put it himself, “Either people are going to have to find the money, the legislature’s going to have to find the money, or households are going to have to use less gallons, which just puts them at greater risk. So, I do think there is a cost associated with that that will be felt across– low-income folks will feel this much greater than folks who are not low income. If you told me I have to pay $500 more a year for my fuel, okay I could do that. Low-income folks may not have that as an option.”
Moreover, this cost problem will only get worse – and worse for low-income people especially — as the program ages because the way the Clean Heat Standard is designed the carbon credit tax on fossil heating fuel goes up annually. The Clean Heat programs are paid for with the carbon credit tax on heating fuel. As more people take advantage of the programs to transition away from fossil heating fuel, the cost of that activity gets shifted more and more onto fewer and fewer fossil fuel users. And those most likely to be at the back of the line for transitioning either because they can’t afford it, or their housing situation is not compatible with alternative technologies (mobile homes for example), are low-income Vermonters.
Geoff Wilcox, who sits on the EAG and also works for the Department of Children & Families chimed in, “People don’t understand the situation low-income Vermonters are in in heating their homes.” He explained, “Every year or every other year, the legislature or advocacy groups are really bothered by the fact that LIHEAP dollars go up people’s chimneys. I think what a lot of people don’t understand is the low-income people that get LIHEAP dollars and get weatherization, they have not enough money to heat their house. So, if we don’t provide that money… they’re going to go cold or freeze their house or their pipes.”
If that happens, Giddings followed up, “Then…they end up in temporary housing…. When you take a family out of a home and put them into a hotel room it creates multiple problems that [the legislature] is still trying to figure out.”
But there are problems for LIHEAP participants who can transition away from fossil fuels as their primary heat source as well. As Giddings explained, LIHEAP only subsidizes someone’s primary heat source. So, if a low-income Vermonter switches from oil to a heat pump as their primary heating system, but still needs oil back-up for the coldest months of the year when the heat pump doesn’t work, that oil bill can no longer be subsidized by LIHEAP.
Chris Trombley of the EAG called out Johanna Miller of the Vermont Natural Resources Council, a leading advocate/lobbyist for the Clean Heat Standard, looking for an answer to the conundrum of the poor getting slammed by her pet legislation. “The biggest problem I’ve had with this program is that money is being potentially re-directed to higher income households so that they can lower their carbon footprint. I’d love for the VNRC to kind of take on that problem and offer a solution.”
After a two minute long woke word salad which even she admitted was an incoherent non-answer, Miller concluded with a jaunty little giggle, “I’ve been working on this for over a decade. Matt Cota [of the Fuel Dealers Association] and I have been talking about this for fifteen years and we’re still generally in the same spot!” Well, that’s encouraging!
Maybe if you and your cronies haven’t come up with an answer in fifteen years it’s because the schemes concocted by your whakadoo climate cult and practical, compassion policies that benefit the poor are incompatible. (A point Clean Heat Standard architect Richard Cowart admitted to). And in that, you’ve clearly picked your side. As Senator Mark MacDonald (D-Orange) said — and I know I keep coming back to his quote but it is so instructive — when it comes to worshiping at the altar of the climate gods, “We don’t do things based on helping poor people.” As far as you all are concerned, if poor are the ones who must be sacrificed for real in your pretend game of “saving the planet,” then sacrificed they will be. It’s heartbreaking and infuriating to watch.
