McClaughry: Heating fuel tax dead – for now
by John McClaughry On May 11 the short life of the Clean Heat Standard (CHS), promising “clean heat for a cooler planet”, came to sudden but probably not final end. To understand how the CHS originated, let’s go back to September 2020. The legislature, over Gov. Scott’s veto, enacted the Global Warming Solutions Act. The Act declared that the “climate crisis is both caused by and exacerbated by greenhouse gas emissions that result from human activity.” Therefore Vermonters must be made to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide from combustion of fossil fuels – heating oil, natural gas, gasoline, diesel, and propane – by 26% below 2005 levels by 2025, and by 80% below 1990 levels by 2050.