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Vermont Gas Systems can purchase methane from a massive upstate New York landfill to sell to its customers after the Vermont Supreme Court rejected a lawsuit seeking to block it.
The court on Friday sided with state regulators who in 2022 let the state’s largest gas utility enter into a 14.5-year contract to purchase methane produced at the Seneca Meadows landfill in the Finger Lakes region. Vermont Gas said the contract would help it, as required by state law, reduce the carbon emissions from the gas it sells by increasing its amount of lower-carbon “renewable natural gas.” But critics blasted the plan as part of an elaborate greenwashing scheme by the for-profit Canadian-owned utility.
They claim that little, if any, of the landfill gas would physically make it to Vermont customers and that all the utility was doing was buying credits for the “renewable attributes” of gas with only slightly lower emissions.
The company counters that the methane it purchases would displace some of the fossil gas it sells to its 56,000 customers in northwestern Vermont. That’s exactly what lawmakers envisioned when they passed the Affordable Heat Act, the company argues.
Vermont Gas president and CEO Neale Lunderville said he was pleased with the ruling and that renewable gas is just one of several innovative strategies the company is exploring.
"Taken as a whole, today’s decision and earlier rulings by the Commission affirm VGS is on the right track, and that all Vermonters stand to benefit as we scale efforts to reduce emissions,” he said in a written statement.
The case was brought by Bristol environmental attorney James Dumont on behalf of Burlington resident and climate activist Catherine Bock. She argued that the Public Utility Commission should not have approved the sale because it would increase her gas rates without actually accomplishing the state’s emission-reduction goals.
She also argued that the utility had not explored other ways to meet those goals.
Bock called the decision “terrifying” and said it “ignored scientific evidence and common sense.”
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- Stuart Blood
- The gas route from Seneca Meadows to Vermont
“Approving the contract to buy RNG from out-of-state perpetuates the burning of methane at a time of climate crisis when we need to stop burning all fuels and invest in climate friendly and non-carbon emitting energy sources,” she said in a statement.
The court found, however, that regulators had weighed all of Bock’s concerns and concluded that the new contract would reduce emissions, with an eye on cost. The company estimated that landfill gas emits 43 percent less carbon than fossil gas. Bock’s experts argued the true savings
was more like 26 percent.
Even assuming the lower figure, the commission noted that if Vermont Gas replaced 10 percent of its gas with the renewable version, it would result in a 4 percent drop in emissions.
That would go a long way toward the company meeting its obligations under the Affordable Heat Act, which requires fossil fuel heating companies to cut their emissions. One method is to help customers use less fuel by weatherizing buildings. Another is to switch to lower-emission fuels.
Climate activists argue that it is imperative for Vermonters to rapidly switch to truly low-carbon heating solutions, such as heat pumps powered by renewable energy, to meet the state’s climate goals. They say slightly reducing the carbon profile of fossil gas will only perpetuate its use at a time it should be abandoned.
Debates about how to rapidly decarbonize the state’s heating, transportation and energy sectors have intensified as the state falls further behind on its climate goals and the impacts of global warming become increasingly impossible to ignore.