Maleficent_Rope_7844 t1_je9hl34 wrote on March 30, 2023 at 12:01 PM

Reply to comment by HeadPen5724 in Letter to the editor: Is it all hands on deck, or will this planet sink? by RamaSchneider

As we transition to using more electricity for EVs and such it would make sense to have some incentive to not overuse/waste electricity. If consumption increases too quickly we may have to get electricity from elsewhere (could be fossil fuels).

More generally speaking, even if something is renewable we still shouldn't waste it.

HeadPen5724 t1_je9jbc8 wrote on March 30, 2023 at 12:18 PM

I agree, and VTers are usually pretty good about not wasting stuff. That said this is an expensive place to live and electricity isn’t the way we contribute to climate change.

Maleficent_Rope_7844 t1_je9m099 wrote on March 30, 2023 at 12:42 PM

>electricity isn’t the way we contribute to climate change.

As of 2017 electricity generation accounted for 6% of CO2 emissions, which is small. But transportation and fuel (including heating) accounted for a combined 58%. If a large portion of our transportation and fuel use instead comes from electricity, our CO2 emissions from electricity will rise dramatically.

Also, a sliding scale would make wealthier individuals pay more, so your point about the high cost of living in Vermont I think is moot.

HeadPen5724 t1_je9of21 wrote on March 30, 2023 at 1:02 PM

Replacing heating and transportation with electricity is a long term issue. We don’t even have the infrastructure or resources in place for that yet. On top of that, many VTers do not have the resources to convert to electric vehicles and their inefficient homes will use more electricity and they’ll pay more if we use some usage scale to determine rates. This will hurt the poor and do little to nothing to address climate change.

By the time we are converted to electricity we won’t even be using the same technology to generate power.

Real-Pierre-Delecto2 t1_je9r56a wrote on March 30, 2023 at 1:23 PM

> We don’t even have the infrastructure or resources in place for that yet

We are with GMP and if it even looks like it might get windy we could lose power. The infrastructure and capacity of the substation here is maxed so much so that they offer extra incentives for having solar along the line here. How on earth they think they can manage all these heat pumps and ev's is beyond me.

I remember just a few weeks ago the generators down in mass wrote a letter to the leg about just this and said there was no way they could keep up with the proposed mandates to move things to electric.