Current News

Vermont Business Magazine The Vermont Department of Health today is reporting 122 new cases COVID-19 after two days of cases well under 100. There was also one more deeath for a statewide total of 188. Also, the City of Burlington’s testing of wastewater has detected the presence of two COVID-19 virus mutations that are associated with the B.1.1.7 variant, first detected in the United Kingdom. Detection of these two mutations is a strong indicator that the B.1.1.7 variant is present in the community.

Vermont Business Magazine Late yesterday afternoon, the City of Burlington received test results from its COVID-19 Wastewater Monitoring Program that detected evidence of two COVID-19 mutations that are associated with the B.1.1.7 variant, which was first detected in the United Kingdom. Though this finding will not be definitive until it is confirmed through genomic sequencing, it indicates that the B.1.1.7 variant is likely now present in Burlington at a low level. The B.1.1.7 variant has been found in 34 U.S. states according to the CDC, and has not previously been identified in Vermont.

Vermont Business Magazine Vermont Green Building Network’s (VGBN) ninth annual Vermont’s Greenest Building Awards Competition is now open for submissions. This statewide competition recognizes exemplary residential and commercial buildings that excel in green building strategies – including water, health, transportation, and affordability – and meet the highest standard of demonstrated energy performance.

Vermont Business Magazine Governor Phil Scott, the Vermont Division for Historic Preservation and the Vermont Advisory Council on Historic Preservation today announced the recipients of the 2021 State Historic Preservation Grants. The grants, totaling $204,896, were awarded to 13 municipalities and non-profit organizations statewide in eight counties, facilitating the repair and rehabilitation of important historic buildings.

Vermont Business Magazine The Bennington Opioid Response Team, which formed in the spring of 2018, is eager to share recent updates on its work and to gather feedback from the community. The group is comprised of over 40 individuals from community organizations, including health care, mental health, recovery, government, law enforcement, housing, transportation, and prevention. It’s mission is to improve quality of life by reducing the adverse effects of opioid use in the community.

by Timothy McQuiston, Vermont Business Magazine As the Vermont Labor Department seeks to rectify errors in processing 1099-Gs for 2020 claimants, regular weekly unemployment claims last week fell by 120, but remain at a historically high level. Numbers also fell nationally but also remain high. Economists suggest 2021 is off to a sluggish start. As for the 1099-G errors, they came to light the day claimants first started receiving the forms on February 1. Labor sends out 6,000-8,000 1099s in a typical year, but between the spike in UI claims because of pandemic-related layoffs and the new federal relief programs, the total number of 1099s required is about 180,000 forms to 101,511 people.

Vermont Business Magazine Middlebury College has instituted an official land acknowledgment which recognizes that the Western Abenaki are the traditional caretakers of Vermont lands and waters. A Middlebury College steering committee worked with local Abenaki leaders to develop the acknowledgment and accompanying initiatives. The acknowledgement follows Middlebury's establishment of the pilot summer Abenaki Language School in 2020.

Vermont Business Magazine Encore Renewable Energy, Bromley Mountain Ski Resort and Tangent Energy Solutions announced their plans to develop and build a 615kWdc solar project on land owned by Bromley Mountain in Peru, Vermont. The resort has implemented several sustainability initiatives over the last two decades, including energy efficiency upgrades to their buildings and snowmaking activities. The new project jointly developed by Encore and Tangent Energy Solutions will generate clean, locally generated solar power and help Bromley reach their sustainability goals.

Vermont Business Magazine Packetized Energy, a developer of software systems and smart devices based in Burlington, will receive $2 million in prime contractor funding from the California Energy Commission under their BRIDGE (Bringing Rapid Innovation Development to Green Energy) program. The award will fund deployment and connection of 7,000 new and existing smart energy devices to Packetized Energy’s Nimble platform, enabling a combined 4 megawatts (MW) of grid flexibility. The project will create one of the largest distributed energy resource (DER) aggregation networks from residential devices in California.

Vermont Business Magazine Americans have always cared about gas prices given the nature of its volatility; it suddenly goes up, it suddenly goes down, all without an obvious explanation. Today, GasBuddy released its annual Pump Habits Study that found that nearly a third of Americans care more now about saving money on gas than before the start of the pandemic. Gasoline prices in Vermont are averaging $2.47 (US average $2.49), but the range across the state is from a high of $2.60 to a low of $2.24.

Vermont Business Magazine Énergir, LP today released its first-ever Climate Resiliency Report, which follows the recommendations set by the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures. This report is the result of a rigorous initiative that gives Énergir confidence in the resilience of its business model over the 2030 horizon according to a scenario that limits global warming to 2 degrees or less by 2100 compared to preindustrial levels. Énergir is the parent company of Green Mountain Power and Vermont Gas Systems. The central objective is to reduce by 30% the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions related to the use of natural gas of its customers in the building sector by 2030, and over the 2050 horizon, Énergir wants to steer its activities to become completely carbon neutral.

by Brian Shupe There has been much debate over the last five years over how to strengthen Act 250, Vermont’s 51-year-old venerable land use law. There is broad agreement that Act 250 should be updated to meet contemporary environmental challenges ­– many of which were not widely recognized fifty years ago when the law was enacted. To this end, a two a year legislative commission was formed in 2017 to evaluate options for improving Act 250, which was followed by two years of legislative review of specific proposals to amend the law. A comprehensive update was passed out of the Vermont House of Representatives last year, but the ensuing virtual legislative session and the need to focus on the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent economic crisis prevented the Senate from undertaking the necessary review.