The first draft of the new Vermont Comprehensive Energy Plan is about 600 pages long, including appendices.
Thankfully, the public comment period has been extended to Nov. 4, so people have more time to wade through the document, which addresses Vermont's energy future regarding electricity generation, thermal energy, transportation, and land use.
The most notable element of the plan is that it proposes a shift in all of Vermont's baseload electric energy sources. This plan calls for the baseload, defined as the reasonable minimum supply of energy that utilities expect their customers will need, to consist of 90-percent renewable energy sources by 2050.
Is this expectation realistic?
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Consider what the plan calls the single-largest source of energy consumption in Vermont: transportation.
Gasoline for motor vehicles represents 25.2 percent of the state's total energy use, followed by nuclear power for electricity at 15.27 percent, and fuel for heating at 12.87 percent.
Given the lack of public transportation and the long distances that many Vermonters have to travel by car to work, shop, or play, reducing fossil-fuel use for transportation will be difficult.
The document addresses a transition to electric vehicles, changes in land-use patterns to promote walkable downtowns, and increased public transit, but all these measures will require significant amounts of money.
It will be just as difficult to reduce the use of fuel oil and propane for home heating. Energy-efficiency efforts have made a dent, but without more money for weatherization programs and bigger rebates to encourage the purchase of more-efficient home appliances, little progress will be made in this area.
As for getting more baseload sources of electricity, this too looks daunting.
David Hallquist, CEO of Vermont Electric Cooperative, recently told VTDigger.org that he is leery of proposals that try to create enough energy through renewable sources to provide enough baseload power for the state in the short term.
“The real challenge is: Dirty energy is cheap,” Hallquist said. “Clean energy is expensive.”
Hallquist said current rates for renewables are two to three times more expensive than fossil fuels or nuclear energy.
For example, VEC pays 5 cents per kilowatt hour (KwH) for nuclear power; 6 cents per KwH for natural gas; 9 cents to 11 cents per KwH for industrial wind; 14 cents per KwH for biomass; and 20 cents per KwH for solar.
Long-term storage of energy from solar and wind generation costs an additional 23 cents per KwH, he said.
There is also the problem of aging energy infrastructure.
According to ISO New England, the entity that manages New England's electrical grid, one-fourth of the region's 32,000-megawatt generating capacity is generated by plants that are more than 40 years old and due to be phased out soon.
At the same time, New England is relying more on natural gas for heat and electric power.
Nearly half of the region's electricity comes from gas-fired plants, and that percentage is rising. But there are not enough natural gas pipelines to meet increasing demand, which leaves New England vulnerable during the winter and summer months, when electric use spikes upward.
“It's sobering in the sense that there are a number of forces coming together that will cause a transition,” Gordon van Welie, ISO New England's chief executive officer, told The Associated Press earlier this month. “The consequence is that you have to do something about that, and it requires investment in additional infrastructure.”
Van Welie doesn't believe that wind, solar, and small-scale hydropower can fully make up the loss of energy from fossil-fuel and nuclear plant retirements. It's not so much a matter of the intermittent nature of these energy sources, he said, as it is the lack of transmission lines to carry the electricity to urban areas.
These are long-term questions without easy answers.
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Even if Vermont Yankee is permitted to keep operating for another 20 years past the expiration of its original operating license, the 1972-vintage nuclear plant might not be able to keep operating safely or economically through 2032.
The region's aging oil- and coal-fired plants will soon face closure without expensive upgrades to meet tougher air pollution standards.
And while there is broad support for clean energy in the abstract, there is always someone to raise an objection when there is a proposal for a new hydro or wind power project, a new gas pipeline, or a new natural gas or biomass-fired generating plant.
The lack of state and federal funds for energy efficiency and new technologies, the general NIMBY (“Not In My Back Yard”) attitude toward building new electric plants, and the stranglehold that the coal, petroleum, and nuclear industries have over the political process make the goal of 90-percent renewables by 2050 a distant dream.
But unless Vermont takes steps to realize that distant dream, the state faces huge difficulty from the liabilities of its current sources of baseload power.
Unless there is an honest, concerted effort by all involved to quickly upgrade our region's energy infrastructure, New England will be an economic backwater in the coming years.