Vermont’s “Emissions Reduction Target” Illusion

by
Steve MacDonald

The State of Vermont is committed to ruining the lives of Vermonters to achieve arbitrary emissions reduction targets that are globally insignificant. The entire exercise is a punchline to a bad joke. To make matters worse, the State is arguing with environmentalists over whether or not they are achieving those meaningless planned reductions.

To meet the 2025 deadline, Vermont must have policies in place to hit 7.3 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, the metric used to track emissions — down from 9.86 million metric tons in 2005.

Of the 2.56 million metric tons Vermont needed to reduce, Hopkins [and the Conservation Law Foundation]said Wednesday that he expects the state to miss the mark by between 230,000 and 310,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent — between 9% and 12%. …

Meanwhile, the Agency of Natural Resources estimates that Vermont will meet the requirement with 13,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in the bank.

All while Vermont’s Biomass plants emit obscene (by their standards) emissions that neither the State nor the Conservation Law Foundation is counting.

Biomass bleeds money, is a significant source of emissions, which means it needs green papal dispensations. McNeil has a bunch of them.

According to the report, it is Vermont’s largest in-state power generation facility. It is the state’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, but those emissions are not counted because they are considered renewable.

The State’s biggest emitter isn’t counted, nor is its second-biggest emitter,

The energy would have to come from generators whose electric rates are even higher, at least one of which is another VT biomass plant (Ryegate Power Station). Another major emitter of emissions (presumably uncounted in the state’s greenhouse gas inventory).

This seems like an excellent time to revisit another massive virtue signal. Green energy replacement theory lives and dies on dirty mining and manufacturing for production in places with no environmental controls that use fossil fuels (mainly coal) to craft these devices. A series of human rights crises the greenwashers ignore as easily as the offshored emissions.

The State of Vermont and the Conservation Law Foundation are bartering over the price of snipe. An emperor’s new clothes arrangement where even children are convinced they are real and labeled deniers for daring to suggest otherwise.

The real joke is that even if man-made emissions were warming something, they are fooling themselves. They aren’t reducing anything. The only reality is the pain inflicted on Vermonters for no good reason.

Note that the Valley News never manages to find column inches to remind us about the biomass emissions or the destruction of Vermont’s economy to reduce some random quantity of global CO2 that – even you bought in on the need – that China or India erases in half a blink of an eye.

Author

  • Steve MacDonald

    Steve is a long-time New Hampshire resident, blogger, and a member of the Board of directors of The 603 Alliance. He is the owner of Grok Media LLC and the Managing Editor of GraniteGrok.com, a former board member of the Republican Liberty Caucus of New Hampshire, and a past contributor to the Franklin Center for Public Policy.

Share to...