Vermont Talks Energy

Jake Nonweiler Samantha Strom

Anna Ready-Campbell Kiya Vega-Hutchens

Middlebury College Environmental Studies Senior Seminar

December 2013

Led by Professors Rebecca Kneale Gould and Catherine Ashcraft, with assistance from Diane Munroe

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY — p. 3 2. INTRODUCTION — pp. 4-7

2.1. The Class 2.2. Our Group 2.3. The Pipeline 2.4. Rationale 2.5. The Pipeline as a Lens 2.6. Our Products 2.7. Goals

3. METHODS — pp. 8-12

3.1. Interview Process 3.1.a. Scheduling Interviews 3.1.b. Interview 3.1.c. Post-Interview 3.1.d. Interviewees

3.2. Research 3.3. Podcasts 3.4. Drafts, Reports, and Presentation

4. PROCESS — pp. 13-14

4.1. Original Assignment 4.2. Initial Focus 4.3. Initial Thematic Framework 4.4. Final Thematic Framework

5. RESULTS — pp. 15-19 5.1. Podcasts

5.1.a. Introductory 5.1.b. Relationships 5.1.c. Justice 5.1.d. Energy Options 5.1.e. Decision-Making

5.2. Raw Audio and Transcripts 5.3. Colloquium Presentation 5.4. Comprehensive Final Report

6. CONCLUSION — pp. 20-21

6.1. Takeaways for Audience 6.2. What We Learned 6.3. Next Steps for the Project

7. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS — p. 22 8. WORKS CITED — p. 23 9. APPENDIX — pp. 24-75

9.1. Scripts of Podcasts 9.1.a. Introduction 9.1.b. Relationships 9.1.c. Justice 9.1.d. Energy Options 9.1.e. Decision-Making

Although the information in this document has been funded in part by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under assistance agreement to Bates College, it may not necessarily reflect the views of the Agency and no official

endorsement should be inferred.

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1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This semester long group project was part of an Environmental Studies Senior Seminar (ES401) at Middlebury College. The course was taught by Professors Rebecca Kneale Gould and Catherine Ashcraft and was assisted by Diane Munroe. The goal of course was to examine Vermont’s energy future. Our group focused on the Addison County Natural Gas Project, which is commonly referred to as “the pipeline”. The pipeline is a two-phase project proposed by Vermont Gas that would bring fracked natural gas from Canada to Addison County and to Ticonderoga, NY. Our project used the pipeline as a lens to examine broader issues of sustainability in the state, such as energy siting and Vermont’s clean energy goals. Our goals were 1) to provide our audience with a solid understanding of the impacts of the pipeline and how it relates to Vermont’s energy future and 2) to provide a resource that synthesized a diverse array of voices. Our group produced a series of podcasts called Vermont Talks Energy that will be broadcast online and at the Vermont Folklife Center through our class partners, Elizabeth Courtney, Greg Sharrow, and Vic Guadagno. We created our podcasts by conducting almost thirty interviews with various stakeholders in the state and by researching relevant articles and documents. We created five podcasts: Introduction, Relationships, Justice, Energy Options, and Decision-Making. The introductory podcast provides background on our project and the pipeline. “Relationships” discusses how different individuals and communities relate to one another and how this will affect Vermont’s future energy decisions. “Justice” examines whose priorities are valued and heard. “Energy Options” addresses the immediate and long-term environmental impacts of the pipeline in relation to energy alternatives. “Decision-Making” delves into how the state approves or rejects energy projects. In addition to our podcasts, we presented our findings to the public in a colloquium presentation with other groups in our seminar. This final report will also be made available to the public. We hope that our listeners leave with a greater awareness of how energy decisions are made in Vermont, how Vermonters can get involved in the process, and how complex and nuanced energy issues are in the state. Throughout this process, we were constantly challenged and learned a great deal about energy in Vermont and the process of approval for energy projects in the state. We are grateful to everyone who helped us throughout the process and to our audience for taking the time to listen to our products.

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2. INTRODUCTION 2.1 The Class This project came out of the Middlebury College Environmental Studies Senior Seminar (ES401). ES401 is the capstone course for all Environmental Studies majors at the college. The class is designed to be an intensive course, the main component of which is a semester long group project. This semester, the class was taught by Professors Rebecca Kneale Gould and Catherine Ashcraft, and was assisted by Diane Munroe. The goal of this course was for students to study Vermont’s energy future and examine the question: what would a sustainable state look like? The whole class worked with three partners in the Middlebury community. The first was Elizabeth Courtney, whose recent book, Greening Vermont: the Search for a Sustainable State, was the foundational text for our class. The second was Greg Sharrow, the co-director at the Vermont Folklife Center, who helped show the class how to conduct interviews and record audio. The third was Vic Guadagno, the president of Bright Blue: An Ecomedia Company, who guided students through making professional-quality videos. 2.2 Our Group The class was divided into six groups that focused on a separate environmental issue or on a specific environmental organization in the state. Each group contained students with a range of complementary skillsets and experiences. Our group consisted of four students from diverse environmental foci: Samantha Strom studies environmental policy, Jake Nonweiler studies conservation biology, Anna Ready-Campbell studies environmental non-fiction, and Kiya Vega-Hutchens studies environmental chemistry. 2.3 The Pipeline Our group focused on a specific environmental issue in the state of Vermont; the Addison County Natural Gas Project, which is commonly referred to as “the pipeline”. In the spring of 2012, Vermont Gas proposed the Addison County Natural Gas Project. Vermont Gas is a utility company that is owned by the Northern New England Energy Corporation, which is in turn owned by Gaz Métro, a Canadian company.1 The project consists of a pipeline that would transport natural gas from Canada to Vermont and New York.2 The natural gas is extracted in Canada using the hydraulic fracturing method, which is more commonly known as fracking. Vermont Gas already supplies Chittenden and Franklin counties with natural gas through a pipeline. This project would expand Vermont Gas’ existing service that currently ends in 1 Vermont Gas. “About Vermont Gas.” 2012. http://www.vermontgas.com/about/about.html. 2 Public Service Board. “Vermont Gas Systems Addison Natural Gas Project (Docket 7970).” 2013. http://psb.vermont.gov/docketsandprojects/gas/7970. Note: Background on the pipeline proposal to the PSB can all be found at this web address.

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Chittenden County.3 The project has since been divided into two phases. Phase one would extend the existing portion of the pipeline approximately 41 miles from Colchester down to Addison County. Vermont Gas submitted phase one to the Public Service Board for approval in August 2013. The Public Service Board is a quasi-judicial body that supervises Vermont's public utilities, including electric and gas, and approves or rejects new utility projects under its jurisdiction. We will explain the Public Service Board process more in our Decision-Making podcast. Phase two of the project would extend the pipeline from Middlebury under Lake Champlain to Ticonderoga, NY. It would provide a paper plant in Ticonderoga, owned by International Paper, with natural gas. Vermont Gas submitted phase two to the Public Service Board for approval in November 2013. 2.4 Rationale We decided to focus on the pipeline for three main reasons. The first was that it was a current and unresolved issue. Both phases of the pipeline are presently in different stages of approval, or potentially rejection, by the Public Service Board.4 This means that our work is not only interesting to us as researchers, but will provide resources to many Vermonters who are awaiting the Public Service Board’s decisions. The second reason we chose the pipeline was that the issue is extremely controversial. We had heard even before we started the project that Vermonters had very diverse opinions about whether this pipeline was a good or a bad idea for Vermont’s economy, environment, and community. The tradeoffs between building and not building the pipeline gave us room to delve into the complexities and nuances of a particular issue both for ourselves and for our audience. Lastly, we decided to focus on the pipeline because we thought it was a relevant issue within the broader context of Vermont’s energy future. Specifically, Vermont has a Comprehensive Energy Plan (CEP), which is a state goal put forth by Governor Shumlin to produce 90% of its energy from renewable resources by 2050. The CEP is a legislated goal for the energy portfolio of the state’s thermal, transportation, and electricity sectors. The last CEP was completed in 2011 by the Vermont Department of Public Service.5 We wanted to examine whether the natural gas pipeline would bring Vermont closer to this goal of a clean energy future, or take the state in the opposite direction. Additionally, we wanted to analyze if the opposition to the project was specific to the pipeline, or whether this level of controversy was part of the normal process that any new energy project has to go through in the state. We had heard from various stakeholders

3 Vermont Gas. “Addison Rutland Natural Gas Project.” 2013. http://addisonnaturalgas.com/. Note: Background on Vermont Gas and the Addison County Natural Gas Project can all be found at this web address. 4 Note: Phase one was approved on 12/23/13, after the completion of this student project. 5 Vermont Public Service Department. “Current Plan: 2011 Comprehensive Energy Plan.” 2013. http://publicservice.vermont.gov/publications/energy_plan/2011_plan.

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that Vermonters were against all new forms of energy, from reasons as broad ranging as headaches and noise complaints from wind turbines to solar panels ruining the idyllic Vermont landscape. Some Vermonters were afraid that residents’ opposition to any energy form would simply lead to a continuation of the status quo—burning fossil fuels. 2.5 The Pipeline as a Lens While we wanted to delve deep into the specifics of the pipeline, we also wanted to use the pipeline as lens to examine broader issues of Vermont's energy future. Given the current and controversial nature of the pipeline, we thought that it would be a prime example of how new energy sources get sited, approved or rejected, and discussed in the state. We hoped that focusing on a specific issue would hook our audience, and then by broadening the scope of the conversation, we could make the issue relevant to Vermont’s energy issues for years to come. For example, our group wanted to show step by step how the Public Service Board process worked so that people would be armed with information if they ever wanted to get more involved in the future. 2.6 Our Products We decided to format our project into a series of podcasts about the pipeline and energy in Vermont, called Vermont Talks Energy. Part of the reasoning behind this decision was that we wanted to create a product that could be useful to our community partners. Our podcasts will be put on Elizabeth Courtney’s online Greening Journal, which will be a continuation of her book, Greening Vermont. It will also be showcased as part of a Vermont Folklife Center exhibit in 2014. Additionally, we chose podcasts because one of our group mates, Kiya Vega Hutchens, has had ample experience with audio editing, including an internship at National Public Radio (NPR). Finally, our primary method of conducting research was through interviews with stakeholders in the state. We thought that recording their interviews and showcasing their voices would be a novel and interesting way to convey our findings to a wide audience. 2.7 Goals We have three main goals for our podcasts. First, we want our listeners to gain a better understanding of the impacts of the pipeline itself. This includes the potential impacts on the environment, such as land, water, and greenhouse gases, impacts on state and local economies, and impacts on relationships between individuals as well as across communities. Second, we expect that our podcasts will increase our audience’s awareness of broader environmental issues in the state. We want listeners to know what Vermont’s broader goals for clean energy are, and what potential pathways and options exist to achieve them. Third, we believe our podcasts could be a resource that synthesizes a variety of diverse viewpoints in Vermont. In today's politically

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and ideologically polarized world, it is easy to live in an echo chamber and only listen to one side of an argument. By putting a range of voices side by side, we wanted our audience to hear a range of opinions. We hope that this can spark some productive dialogues about how the state can move towards its clean energy goals.

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3. METHODS 3.1 Interview Process Our main method of gathering information about the Addison County Natural Gas Project was through in-person interviews. The process for conducting interviews was divided into three parts.

3.1.a Scheduling Interviews The first step was scheduling the interviews themselves. Initially, this involved reaching out to contacts that our group already knew such as Middlebury Professors and student activists. Our first interviewees then referred us to contacts that they knew who would be willing to speak with us. Our group compiled a detailed list of stakeholders who we needed to contact, their role, and their contact information. Each week, Jake and Samantha contacted roughly five different people and requested to set up an interview for the following week. Over the phone and through email, we introduced ourselves and explained some background on the project. If our interviewees did not respond, we followed up the next week. After this initial contact, we scheduled when and where the interview would take place and sent our interviewees our interview release form. The release form gave our interviewees an option to decide how they wanted us to use their interview. They had the option to let us not use their quotes, use them freely, or review their quotes later. Only one person requested that we not use his audio, and the rest were divided approximately in half about whether they wanted to review their quotes or not.

3.1.b Interviews Most of the interviews took place at Middlebury College, but we also drove to meet a few of our interviewees in Monkton, VT, Ticonderoga, NY, Cornwall, VT, and Montpelier, VT. The majority of our interviews took approximately an hour. At each interview, we tried to have at least two of our group members present. This helped us ask a variety of questions and made sure that our conversations stayed on task. We recorded each interview using audio recorders. Before we recorded, we asked our interviewees permission to record their voice and asked them sign our interview release form. We opened each conversation by asking a few broad questions, such as: tell us about your career? What is your involvement with the pipeline? How does your organization contribute to the pipeline discussion? Why are you involved with the pipeline? After getting a more general

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sense of the interviewee’s role in the pipeline debate, we shifted to more focused questions that considered the interviewee’s background. For example, we asked Peter Ryan, a professor of geology at Middlebury College, about the effects of fracking on water aquifers and bedrock. For landowners, we asked about how Vermont Gas had initiated its relationship with them. Lastly, the interviews ended with a few broader questions about energy in the state. These included: what do you think is the pipeline’s role in Vermont’s energy future? What do you understand to be the biggest controversy in this pipeline project debate?

3.1.c Post-Interview After our interviews, we gave our interview release forms to Diane Munroe, who filed them for our community partners. We then evenly split the number of transcriptions that each of our group members would complete. For the transcriptions, we listened carefully to the audio and wrote down word for word the most representative quotes from the interviews. We marked the time in the audio for each quote as well as cited the speaker. If our interviewee requested to review their quotes on their release form, we sent them a copy of their transcript to edit. We then marked the quotes that they did not want us to use and added their minor edits to our documents.

3.1.d Interviewees Throughout the semester, we conducted twenty-nine interviews with various stakeholders in the state. We also accessed an additional four audio recordings of interviews from Luke Whelan, who worked at the Addison Independent this past summer. Our twenty-nine interviews were strategically chosen to ensure that we had a diverse array of viewpoints that could speak to the number of issues at hand. As such, we spoke with farmers, landowners, industry representatives, a lawyer, members of governmental agencies, activists, and staff, students, and faculty at Middlebury College. Below is the full list of our interviewees:

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Anna Shireman-Grabowski Middlebury student, activist for Rising Tide Vermont Student, activist

Annette Smith Executive Director for Vermonters for a Clean Environment

Environmental organization

Beverly Latreille* Monkton affected landowner Affected landowner

Bill Roper Founder and President of Slow Communities Community organization

Billy Coster Senior Planner and Policy Analyst for Agency of Natural Resources

Environmental organization

Bob Wellington Senior Vice President of Economics, Communications and Legislative Affairs of Agri-Mark, Inc. Industry

Bruce Hiland Member of Cornwall Select Board Governmental organization

Cailey Cron Middlebury student, activist Student, activist

Christopher Klyza Stafford Professor of Public Policy, Political Science, and Environmental Studies at Middlebury College, Bristol resident

Professor, Bristol resident

Claire Tebbs Community Planner at the Addison County Regional Planning Commission

Governmental organization

Donna Wadsworth

Manager of Communications, Ticonderoga Mill at International Paper Industry

Gaye Symington Former Speaker of the Vermont House of Representatives, Executive Director of The High Meadows Fund

Environmental organization

Jack Byrne Director of Sustainability Integration at Middlebury College Middlebury College

Jan Demers Executive Director of CVOEO (Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity) Organization

Jenny Vynhak Affected landowner, activist, and Cornwall resident Affected landowner, Cornwall resident

John Flowers Reporter at the Addison Independent Media

Jon Isham Professor of Economics at Middlebury College, Professor, Cornwall

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Cornwall resident resident

Leigh Seddon Chair of the Board at the Energy Action Network Energy organization

Linda McGinnis Sustainability Analyst and former Director of the Governor’s Commission on Energy Siting

Governmental organization

Luke Whelan Middlebury student, former intern at the Addison Independent

Middlebury College, media

Marc Lapin Associate in Science Instruction at Middlebury College, Cornwall resident

Professor, Cornwall resident

Maren Vasatka Affected landowner, activist, and Monkton resident Affected landowner, Monkton resident

Mary Martin Affected landowner, activist, and Monkton resident Affected landowner, Monkton resident

Nan Jenks Jay Dean of Environmental Affairs and Senior Lecturer in Environmental Studies at Middlebury College Middlebury College

Nate Palmer* Monkton farmer, affected landowner, and activist Affected landowner, activist

Pete Ryan Professor of Geology at Middlebury College Professor

Renee McGuinness* Affected Landowner and Monkton Resident Affected landowner

Ron Liebowitz President of Middlebury College Middlebury College

Sandy Levine Lawyer at Conservation Law Foundation Lawyer

Sarah Dennison Field Organizer at VPIRG (Vermont Public Interest Research Group) Activist

Steve Wark Director of Communications at Vermont Gas Industry

Tom Corbin Assistant Treasurer and Director of Business Services at Middlebury College Middlebury College

*Interviews acquired from the Addison Independent via Luke Whelan, a former summer intern. Audio used with permission.

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3.2 Research In addition to our interviews, we also conducted research on the pipeline, energy goals, and laws in Vermont. Our research consisted primarily of articles from local newspapers, such as the Addison Independent and VT Digger. Additionally, we read through state documents, including the Comprehensive Energy Plan, to gain a better understanding of Vermont’s goals for clean energy. The research guided our understanding of the pipeline and the approval process so that we could accurately discuss the details with interviewees and communicate effectively in Vermont Talks Energy. 3.3 Podcasts The first step in creating our podcasts was to create a hard copy of the script for each theme. Each group member chose a topic that he or she felt the most passionate about. We each took responsibility for pulling together quotes from all of our interviews to create a script around each theme. Once we had chosen the quotes, we organized the script around specific questions and added narration that would help guide the story and introduce our interviewees. Each script was edited by all of the group members and Professor Rebecca Kneale Gould. The next stage was editing the audio for each podcast. Kiya and Anna were responsible for clipping the audio for each of the quotes that we pulled for our scripts. Each of us then took the time to record our own narration for our individual podcast. Kiya and Anna put the narration and the quotes together using Hindenberg, an audio editing software. They then added music that they got from www.archive.org and Dakota Russell. Finally, we conducted a final edit as a group. 3.4 Drafts, Reports, and Presentation In addition to our podcasts, we also created this final report and gave a presentation about our project. The report was a culmination of a series of drafts and progress reports that we completed throughout the semester. Over the course of the last three months, we wrote a timeline and work-plan for our project, a progress report, and three drafts of our final report. For each assignment, we held a group meeting where we outlined the main topics that we wanted to address. Then we divided the writing and editing among the group members. Anna and Kiya worked on the first writing assignments, and Samantha and Jake wrote the final report. For our presentation, the group wrote the slides together and then designated Samantha and Jake as the presenters. All of us practiced our presentation with Mike Kiernan, an ER doctor, actor, and public speaking expert. We also ran through our presentation twice with both sections of ES401, and incorporated our peers’ and professors’ feedback into our final product. We presented our findings along with our five fellow peer groups from the fall semester of the ES401 seminar to the public.

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4. PROCESS 4.1 Original Assignment Our initial assignment was called the Country, the City, and the Statehouse. Our goal was to focus on the legislature and power and how they impact the meaning and outcome of Vermont’s energy future. As we considered this assignment, we recognized that the project was broad enough that we needed a case study to understand what we were trying to research and portray with our deliverables. We chose the pipeline, as aforementioned, because it was current, complex, and important in the context of the state energy’s future. From the start, we aimed not only to discuss the pipeline project directly, but also to use the pipeline debate and approval process as a lens to discuss broader energy issues in the state. Part of our initial process included discussion of our various academic and personal strengths and weaknesses. We took turns sharing what we thought we could contribute the most to the group and what tasks we hoped someone else could lead. Jake and Samantha both enjoyed organizing the logistics of a project, so we agreed to split the coordination for our interviews. Kiya and Anna were both experienced at audio editing, and were willing to shoulder the burden of creating our podcasts. Additionally, Anna liked writing, and Kiya enjoyed editing. In the end, this initial communication turned out to be vital. It helped make our group run efficiently and effectively. 4.2 Initial Focus We began our project by investigating rural versus urban landscapes and injustice issues related to the pipeline. Based on our conceptions of power in Vermont, we examined rural and urban issues because many of Vermonters affected by the pipeline were living in rural conditions. We wanted to understand if geography was a deciding factor in who had power and who was being taken advantage of during energy siting. We recognized after a few weeks that rural versus urban power was not the most important issue. Instead, our interviewees spoke about the process by which the pipeline was approved and how people were relating to one another. Furthermore, people told us about how the pipeline contributed to Vermont’s energy future and we realized that that needed to be the focus of our work. 4.3 Initial Thematic Framework After we conducted our initial interviews, we recognized that the subject needed context and a framework so that we could effectively present and discuss what we had learned. We had a group meeting where each group member wrote what we believed to be the main themes that had emerged from our interviews. We then shared these with the group and put them together into five common themes. These themes were 1) socioeconomics, where we wanted to address

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concerns about the cheaper cost of natural gas; 2) Middlebury College, which involved the story and conflict around the Board of Trustees’ and administration’s decision to support the pipeline; 3) conversations and relationships, which included examining how friendly or antagonistic the energy conversations were in the state; 4) governmental structures, which discussed which state, regional, and local governments had the power to make decisions on energy siting; and 5) energy future, which would discuss the environmental impacts of the pipeline and its relationship to other energy alternatives. We continued our interviews with these themes in mind, contacting particular individuals who could speak to these themes so that we could compile information for our podcasts. 4.4 Final Thematic Framework Near the end of our project, we had a series of internal discussions, a workshop with MiddCORE faculty and staff, and meetings with our professors, where we reworked the frameworks for our podcasts. We made sure that our themes accurately achieved our goals and were not simply a reflection of our initial impressions. After much debate and deliberation, we decided on our four final themes, Relationships, Justice, Energy Options, and Decision-Making. Relationships was very similar to our previous category of relationships and conversations and how they took place around energy in the state. Justice incorporated our earlier theme of socioeconomics, but also left room for a broader conversations of whose priorities were being heard and valued. Energy Options was a more focused approach to our energy future theme. In the course of our conversations, we realized that our whole project was about the energy future of Vermont. For this podcast, we wanted to address specific questions about the environmental effects of the pipeline both in the immediate and the long term. With Decision-Making, we realized that government structures did not encompass the entire process; it was only part of how energy projects are sited and decided on in the state. The biggest change that we made to our themes was to disaggregate our initial podcast on Middlebury College. We chose this because our Professors raised legitimate concerns that this podcast could be too biased or too narrowly focused. They helped us realize that using Middlebury College as a case study would bring into question why we did not use other institutions, such as Cabot or International Paper, as a case study. We thus chose to split the Middlebury College interview material into the other themes.

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5. RESULTS

5.1 Podcasts The primary result of our semester long project is our series of podcasts called “Vermont Talks Energy”. Our podcasts will be showcased on Elizabeth Courtney and Vic Guadagno’s forthcoming website, The Greening Journal and at the Vermont Folklife Center in 2014. Links to the podcasts will also be sent to our twenty-nine interviewees so that they can see the result of their efforts. We ended up with five separate podcasts, an introductory podcast and four longer podcasts: Relationships, Justice, Energy Options, and Decision-Making.

5.1.a Introduction The introductory podcast has two main components. The first is a brief outline of Vermont Talks Energy, which introduces the listeners to who we are, the background of our project, and our methods. We introduce the subject, the pipeline, and Vermont’s broader energy future, as well as what our four additional podcasts will be. Next, the podcast details our goals for our listeners and our rationale for choosing the pipeline. The second goal of this podcast is to provide background on the pipeline project. It details who is proposing the Addison County Natural Gas Project and what the pipeline will entail. This includes an explanation of phase one and phase two of the pipeline. We end the podcast by inviting our audience to listen to any or all of our longer themed podcasts. For the full scripts of all of our podcasts, please see the Appendix.

5.1.b Relationships The Relationships podcast examines how relationships and conversations can affect the pipeline decision and Vermont’s energy future. The podcast asks two main questions: one, how are Vermonters’ relationships with one another impacted by the pipeline? For many individuals, the fight against the pipeline has brought people closer to their neighbors and their communities. For others, they have felt that this debate has ruined friendships and torn communities apart. The podcast also delves into how people relate to corporations. Some opponents and landowners have struggled to communicate effectively with Vermont Gas and International Paper, and believe that this is a classic story of the big guy taking advantage of the little guy. For companies such as International Paper and Cabot, they believe that they actively try to welcome and discuss energy with their customers and communities. They believe that this pipeline is in the best interest of the people whom they serve. The second question is, how might these conversations develop in the context of future energy siting? Some of our interviewees felt that Vermonters’ strong opinions about the process were a testament to how much they cared about the state. Others felt that these reactions could be

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unproductive. To move forward towards more renewable energy, many believe that people needed to learn how to listen to both sides. This would create not only more inclusive decision-making, but also more efficient decisions. At the same time, there are structural inhibitors to progress, such as the lack of access to decision making by the Public Service Board. Moving forward, this podcast concludes that productive or unproductive relationships could make or break Vermont’s clean energy goals.

5.1.c Justice The Justice podcast covers the various and often conflicting priorities of different people and industries in the state. The podcast address three main questions. One, will the pipeline be providing a public service? This is based on the criteria that the Public Service Board needs to give Vermont Gas a “certificate of public good”, which means that the project must provide an overall benefit to Vermont citizens. Proponents of the pipeline believe that it will provide many low-income families with the low-cost fuel that they need to survive. Opponents argue that this pipeline will not even serve Vermont's poorest residents, and instead will mainly serve corporations. Many also claim that the price on natural gas will go up, and that the economic benefits are overstated. The Justice podcast then provides a series of case studies of different industry players and their views on why the pipeline is important to them. Specifically, we highlight the voices of representatives from Cabot Agri-Mark, Inc., International Paper, and Middlebury College, organizations that would be receiving natural gas from the pipeline. Second, the Justice podcasts examines the question: whose voices are getting priority in the decision making process? Opponents argue that to participate in the technical hearing, citizens need to be experts themselves or pay large sums of money to provide an expert. The podcast then gives the stories of two landowners, Nate Palmer and Maren Vasatka, who have struggled with the Public Service Board and with Vermont Gas to try to get their concerns and voices heard. Finally, this podcast asks: is Vermont simply exporting this cost to another region? Opponents believe it is immoral to ban hydraulic fracturing in Vermont, but support fracked natural gas that comes from Canada. Additionally, some Vermonters do not believe it is fair that the second phase of the project is designed mainly to serve International Paper, a company outside of Vermont.

5.1.d Energy Options The Energy Options podcast addresses how the pipeline would benefit or harm Vermont’s natural environment. This podcast discusses three main questions. One, what are the physical and environmental effects of the pipeline? This section covers the potential negative, positive, or negligible impact on Vermont’s land, water, and greenhouse gas emissions. Proponents believed

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that impacts on land and water would be virtually nonexistent, and that natural gas would reduce greenhouse gases. Opponents thought that the pipeline would scar the landscape, hydraulic fracturing would destroy wells and aquifers, and the greenhouse gas emissions would be virtually the same or greater given methane leakage from the hydraulic fracturing process. Two, how would the pipeline fit into the state’s broader energy goals to produce cleaner energy? This section details Vermont’s comprehensive energy plan and goals for a cleaner energy portfolio. It discusses whether the pipeline will move the state forwards or backwards towards renewables. Supporters of the pipeline believed that natural gas would act as a “bridge fuel,” which would help mitigate Vermont’s reliance on fossil fuels temporarily and move the state towards renewable energy sources, such as biomethane. Those who were against the project believed that the infrastructure of the pipeline would lock Vermonters into fossil fuel for decades to come, which would create a disincentive for companies and individuals to invest in renewable energy. Proponents responded that rejecting the pipeline would lead to a continuation of the status quo, and thus further move the state in the wrong direction. They pointed out that Vermonters are against many types of new energy, and perhaps needed to be more flexible. Three, what are the energy alternatives to the pipeline? This section details what types of renewable and nonrenewable options are available besides natural gas. Many of our interviewees felt that there are not any real viable alternatives to natural gas in Vermont at this time. They point out that solar, wind, and hydropower are more efficient for electric heat and could not realistically replace natural gas. Environmentalists believe that there are small-scale alternatives such as wood pellets, heat pumps, and solar hot water heaters that could heat homes. The biggest suggestion from opponents was not a new energy option, but a way to reduce energy: weatherization. Proponents believe that the pipeline should not be tied to weatherization, but activists believe that the Public Service Board should require that Vermont Gas provide weatherization services as a condition for its certificate of public good. The final suggestion from environmentalists was a regulatory solution: a carbon tax. The last line of our script ends with a question: what role will natural gas play? It will play a role, but must fit with overall climate objectives.

5.1.e Decision-Making The Decision-Making podcast examines the process of how decisions are made about energy in Vermont. It begins by discussing the Public Service Board (PSB) process. The PSB is the governing body that has the power to approve or reject regional projects in the state. The podcast walks the audience step by step through the PSB process such as the pre-file phase and filing for an official petition and other permits. Then it discusses the two separate PSB hearings, one that is for the public, where testimony is not given official standing in the Board’s final decision, the other of which is a technical hearing, which is on the record. Anyone can come to the public

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hearing, but only people or parties that receive what is called “intervener status” are allowed to speak at the technical hearing. Only the applicant, the Agency of Natural Resources, and the Department of Public Service are automatically given intervener status. Additional parties must apply for intervener status if they want their testimony to be included in the technical hearing. As described by the podcast, the process has two main purposes: one, to represent the views of the people, and two, to regulate industries whose projects gain approval. The next section of this podcast evaluates the pros and cons of the Public Service Board process. Proponents of the process believe that the PSB is transparent and accessible. Not only are the hearings open to the public, but anyone can access information from the formal hearing afterwards. Additionally, testimony from experts in the formal hearings ensures a rigorous, multifaceted review of the benefits and detriments to Vermont citizens. The process also allows for a variety of viewpoints to be heard; a number of our interviewees said that they felt that the process was thorough enough that it eventually covered multiple sides of the argument. The downsides of the PSB process are that it can be extremely formal, technical, and expensive. This can exclude the average Vermont citizen, including those whose land and communities will be directly affected by the pipeline. Our interviewees also voiced concerns that the PSB process was undemocratic. Since the public hearings were not on the record, many felt that their voices went unheard. Additionally, we found that the Public Service Board has limited power to say “no” to a project. For example, it cannot compare natural gas to wind turbines; it only can say whether the pipeline was in the interest of the public good. Unless the opposition clearly demonstrates that the pipeline does not bring any public good, it would be hard for the board to reject it. Consequently, this means that the PSB cannot strategically plan for a clean energy future. Instead, the board can only react to the proposals that are immediately before it. Our podcast then details what changes are currently underway or are being discussed for the PSB process. One is that over the last few years, there has been an increase in the number and diversity of energy projects that have been proposed. This is mainly due to Vermont’s gradual transition to renewables, which takes a larger amount of small-scale energy projects. Due to the increasing number of cases and continued controversy over energy proposals, many Vermonters are hoping to improve the PSB process. The podcast details how the PSB could include more community participation, in ways such as pools of funding for communities to intervene in the process and more cooperation between regional town planning commissions and selectboards. Another possibility is more outreach to communities about the process, such as having someone on the PSB dedicated to talking to individuals in affected communities. Finally, another option is to improve and incentivize town planning, so that Vermont can begin to look long term at its goals for a cleaner energy future. Despite innovative solutions, implementation will remain a challenge. The main limitation will most likely be funding for these new programs and positions.

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5.2 Raw Audio and Transcripts In addition to our podcasts, we have produced the raw audio and the transcripts of our interviews. These will be archived and made available to our partners Elizabeth Courtney, Greg Sharrow, and Vic Guadagno, as well as any other interested parties. Please note that we received interview release forms from all of our interviewees, and many of them requested that they get a chance to review their quotes before they are used for any other purpose. Also, we did not transcribe a few of our interviewees because they were either not recorded or did not speak to our themes. 5.3 Colloquium Presentation Our group also presented our project at Middlebury College on December 5th, 2013. The audience included Middlebury College staff and faculty from the Environmental Studies Program, some of our interviewees from the community, students, our three community partners, and our peers from ES401. The presentation gave an overview of our project, including our assignment, methods, and goals. It also gave examples of our results; we read representative quotes from our interviews for each of our main themes and played a clip of our Decision-Making podcast. We then concluded by discussing the takeaways that we wanted our listeners to gain from our podcasts, and answered questions from the audience. A copy of our presentation is available through the College’s Environmental Studies Program’s website at: http://www.middlebury.edu/academics/es/work/communityconnectedlearning/envs0401 5.4 Comprehensive Final Report The last product we created is this final report. This report will be submitted to our professors and distributed to our three partners. The full report will be available to the public and kept in the archive of ES401 final projects (see above link).

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6. CONCLUSION 6.1 Takeaways for Audience In addition to enjoying Vermont Talks Energy, we hope that our audience leaves with a few take-aways. Our goals are that our listeners will improve their understanding of how decisions around energy are made in Vermont. The process is complicated and technical, and we want to make it accessible to the average citizen. The PSB plays an extremely important role in Vermont’s energy future, and we want Vermont’s citizens to be armed with the knowledge of how the process works. We also hope that our audience gains a better understanding of how they can get involved in and improve the energy decision making process in Vermont. Once Vermonters understand the process, they can identify their role. Ideally, this means that Vermonters can help make positive changes to the PSB process in the future. Finally, we want our audience to gain a better understanding of the complexities and tradeoffs in all of Vermont’s energy decisions. With an issue as contentious as the pipeline, it can be easy for someone to deny the legitimacy of arguments on the opposite side of the debate. We hope that this podcasts shows that the pipeline and broader energy decisions have real tradeoffs for Vermont’s economy, environment, and community. We hope that this recognition can be a catalyst for productive discussions around Vermont’s energy future. 6.2 What We Learned Our group learned a great deal throughout the entire process. We not only learned about the specifics of the pipeline and the energy decision making process in Vermont, we gained a set of skills that will serve us throughout our careers. One of the most invaluable skills we learned was how to conduct journalism. As environmental studies majors, we had to put our own biases aside and assign equal weight to industry representatives and activists. We realized that a more balanced perspective would be a more valuable resource for listeners than a one-sided analysis. Additionally, we greatly improved our outreach and interview skills. We contacted over thirty people and had to practice planning and organizing meetings around our four extremely tight schedules as well as the schedules of our interviewees. During the interviews, we had to balance asking probing questions without pushing too hard. We have also all learned more about audio recording and editing, as well as how to take raw interviews and create a compelling narrative. Guided by our professors, we had to think about who our audience was going to be and what types of stories they would want to hear. Throughout the process, we had to work with each other to synthesize our different visions for the project and strategies for project work. This experience will be extremely valuable for all of us moving forward in our future classes and careers.

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6.3 Next Steps for the Project While our class is at an end, the pipeline and the path for Vermont’s energy future will be discussed and debated for years to come. We hope that our project will outlast this class and help shape those future energy conversations. The next steps for our project will include Elizabeth Courtney and Vic Guadagno posting our podcasts on their forthcoming online Greening Journal and Greg Sharrow displaying our work at the Vermont Folklife Center. Ideally, we want our listeners interest to be sparked, so that they can get more involved in the PSB process and have meaningful discussions about Vermont’s energy future in their communities. We are aware that our project is by no means a comprehensive list of all of the challenges that Vermont faces moving forward towards a clean energy future, but we hope that it can help start those conversations.

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7. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This project could not have been possible without the help of dozens of people who put countless hours and advice into this project. We want to give a special thanks to Professors Rebecca Kneale Gould and Catherine Ashcraft who helped guide us through this project from start to finish. We appreciate you taking the time to read through all of our drafts, listen to our presentation, and give us ample and useful feedback. Thanks also to Diane Monroe, who helped organize and coordinate this entire project- we could not have done it without you! Of course, we want to thank everyone who took the time out of his or her day to interview with us. Some people drove over an hour to see us and many talked with us for longer than that. Our twenty nine interviewees were: Luke Whelan, Jon Isham, Chris Klyza, Bill Roper, Pete Ryan, Anna Shireman-Grabowski, Cailey Cron, Marc Lapin, Gaye Symington, Steve Wark, Jack Byrne, Mary Martin, Jenny Vynhak, John Flowers, Nan Jenks Jay, Jan Demers, Sarah Dennison, Bob Wellington, Annette Smith, Claire Tebbs, Sandy Levine, Leigh Seddon, Billy Coster, Donna Wadsworth, Bruce Highland, Maren Vasatka, Tom Corbin, Ron Liebowitz, and Linda McGinnis. We also want to thank Luke Whelan and John McCright at the Addison Independent for letting us use their interviews from the summer in our podcasts. We used quotes from Nate Palmer, Renee McGuiness, and Beverly Latreille. Thanks to our community partners, Elizabeth Courtney, Vic Guadagno, and Greg Sharrow for teaching us and guiding us along the way. Additionally, thank you to all of our peers in ES401 for providing us with feedback about our project and supporting us in classes throughout the semester. Finally, thanks to our audience for listening to our podcasts, watching our presentation, and for reading our report—you make it all worth it!

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8. WORK CITED

Public Service Board. “Vermont Gas Systems Addison Natural Gas Project (Docket 7970.” 2013. http://psb.vermont.gov/docketsandprojects/gas/7970 Note: Background on the pipeline proposal to the PSB can all be found at this web address.

Vermont Gas. “About Vermont Gas.” 2012. http://www.vermontgas.com/about/about.html.

Vermont Gas. “Addison Rutland Natural Gas Project.” 2013. http://addisonnaturalgas.com/ Note: Background on Vermont Gas and the Addison County Natural Gas Project can all be found at this web address.

Vermont Public Service Department. “Current Plan: 2011 Comprehensive Energy Plan.” 2013. http://publicservice.vermont.gov/publications/energy_plan/2011_plan.

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9. APPENDIX 9.1 Scripts of Podcasts

9.1.a Introduction

Vox pop: rapid clips of us talking and introducing ourselves

This is Vermont Talks Energy, the introductory podcast in a five part series about energy conversations in Vermont. We are four seniors at Middlebury College and the creators of this podcast: Samantha Strom, Jake Nonweiler, Kiya Vega-Hutchens, and Anna Ready-Campbell. This project was created in a senior seminar on Imagining Vermont’s Energy Future, taught and led by Professor Rebecca Kneale Gould and Diane Munroe. In this first podcast, we’ll describe what we’re doing, why we care, and what we hope you will gain from listening to Vermont Talks Energy.

Vermont has had a series of recent and heated debates about energy options in the state. These range from the affordability of renewable energy to wind farms on mountain tops, to the closing of Vermont Yankee to the continued production of electricity by Hydro-Quebec. Most proposed energy projects in Vermont go through a similar process: they seek legal approval, they are debated, and they force Vermonters to decide what their priorities are.

We chose to focus our podcasts on one of the most current and contentious issues in Vermont; the Addison Natural Gas Project, which is often referred to simply as the pipeline. We examined the pipeline because it’s current. It’s controversial. It’s complex. And it’s relevant in the broader context of past and future energy decisions in Vermont. Vermont’s energy sources are changing. More energy alternatives are being proposed than ever before. Vermont has goals to produce cleaner energy, but hasn’t decided how best to achieve these goals. The current controversy over the pipeline demonstrates that Vermonters care about their energy future, but that there’s room for improvement. Vermonters need to listen across differences if they want to plan and implement a clean energy future. The state needs to make energy decisions in the face of our many options that respect the economy, community, and environment.

To examine this topic, we began conducting interviews with people who were involved in the pipeline. Four key themes emerged from our interviews about the pipeline and about energy in Vermont. These themes are:

1. (Relationships) How do conversations start around the pipeline? Are they friendly, antagonistic? Who gets a say?

2. (Justice) Whose priorities are most important in state energy goals and individual projects? Whose opinions matter?

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3. (Energy Options) What are the negative and positive effects of natural gas on the environment? Will the pipeline be a bridge fuel into Vermont's clean energy future, or will it take us in the wrong direction?

4. (Decision-Making) Who makes energy decisions in Vermont? Is the process democratic?

We put together four podcasts to address each one of these themes. They are called Relationships, Justice, Energy Options, and Decision-Making. Please feel free to listen to all of them in sequence, or the ones that are most relevant to you.

These themes helped us contextualize and organize both the specific arguments about the pipeline as well as how future Vermont energy conversations might happen. The pipeline let us trace a real project as it moves through the complex community and political processes in Vermont. Focusing on the pipeline also allowed us to meet with and hear as many individual opinions as we could in various regions and industries.

After listening to Vermont Talks Energy, we hope that our audience leaves with a few take-aways: one, improve their understanding of how decisions around energy are made in Vermont. Two, know how they can get involved in the energy process in Vermont. And three, gain a better understanding of the complexities and trade-offs in all of Vermont’s energy decisions.

Our podcasts were created from a series of interviews that we conducted throughout the last three months. They present the main arguments and ambiguities that we encountered in our research. We juxtapose opposing perspectives on the pipeline in order to acknowledge the complexity of the issue. We met with 29 people and accessed an additional 3 interviews from the Addison Independent. We interviewed a variety of stakeholders, including townspeople, landowners, Middlebury College students, academics, industry representatives, and lawyers.

To understand the controversy and how it relates to the process, we have to understand some of the pipeline specifics as well.

In the spring of 2012, Vermont Gas proposed the Addison County Natural Gas Project. The project consists of a pipeline that would transport natural gas from Canada to Vermont and New York. Vermont Gas already supplies Chittenden and Franklin counties with natural gas through a pipeline. The natural gas is extracted in Canada using the hydraulic fracturing method, which is more commonly known as fracking.

This new project would expand Vermont Gas’ existing service that currently ends in Chittenden County. The project has since been divided into two phases. Phase one would extend the existing portion of the pipeline about 41 miles from Colchester down to Addison County. Vermont Gas submitted phase one to the Public Service Board for approval in August 2013. The Public Service Board is a quasi-judicial body that supervises Vermont's public utilities, including

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electric and gas, and approves or rejects new utility projects under its jurisdiction. We will explain the Public Service Board process more in our Decision-Making podcast.

Phase two of the project would extend the pipeline from Middlebury under Lake Champlain to Ticonderoga, NY. It would provide a paper plant in Ticonderoga, owned by International Paper, with natural gas. Vermont Gas submitted phase two to the Public Service Board for approval in November 2013.

Now that you know a bit about the pipeline, we hope you will listen to our other podcasts. We worked hard, we had fun, and we met some wonderful people. We also recognize that this is by no means a definitive collection of the facts and opinions on the pipeline. Thanks to Professors Gould and Ashcraft as well as Diane Munroe. Thank you to all of the people who we interviewed. We’d also like to thank Elizabeth Courtney, Greg Sharrow, Vic Guadagno, and the Vermont Folklife Center for guiding and hosting our project. We hope you enjoy!

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9.1.b Relationships

Relationships

narrated by Jake Nonweiler

A) Interviewees

Anna Shireman-Grabowski Student at Middlebury College, activist at Rising Tide Vermont

Bill Roper Founder and President of Slow Communities

Christopher Klyza Stafford Professor of Public Policy, Political Science, and Environmental Studies at Middlebury College, Bristol resident

Jon Isham Professor of Economics at Middlebury College, Cornwall resident

Bob Wellington Senior Vice President of Economics, Communications and Legislative Affairs of Agri-Mark, Inc.

Nate Palmer* Monkton farmer, affected landowner, and activist

Jan Demers Executive Director at the Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity (CVOEO)

Maren Vasatka Monkton resident, affected landowner, and activist

Marc Lapin Associate in Science Instruction at Middlebury College, Cornwall resident

Bruce Hiland Member of the Cornwall Select Board

Donna Wadsworth Manager of Communications, Ticonderoga Mill at International Paper

Linda McGinnis Sustainability analyst and former Director of the Governor’s Commission on Energy Siting

* Interview acquired from the Addison Independent via Luke Whelan.

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B) Outline 1. Introduction 2. Diverse perspectives

a. Main relationships 3. Divisiveness

a. Land use 4. Town against town 5. Industries 6. Bringing people together

a. Organizing and activism 7. What we can learn

a. Energy future b. Next steps

8. Conclusion

C) Script 1. Introduction Welcome to Relationships, part of the Vermont Talks Energy podcast series. In this podcast, we will highlight how relationships between Vermonters are created, maintained, or harmed during the debates around the pipeline. This podcasts also highlights between whom these relationships exist and the values that bring people together or cause disagreement. The main questions this podcast aims to address are one, how are Vermonters’ relationships with one another impacted by the pipeline? And two, how can we learn from the good and the bad? What should we emulate and what should we change in future energy conversations in Vermont? During this podcast, we will hear from affected landowners, Middlebury College staff and faculty, industry representatives, and other Vermonters who spoke to the topic of relationships and the pipeline. 2. Diverse perspectives At this point in the debate, the Addison County pipeline project is well-known for the diverse array of conflicting perspectives. These perspectives are motivated by various priorities, including cheaper energy, land-use rights, and renewable energy goals. In many instances, people fighting for the same outcome can disagree entirely on what the reasons might be for doing so. Because many of these priorities are rooted in important and/or emotional issues, discussions among the pipeline’s supporters and opponents can quickly become tense. Anna Shireman-Grabowski, Middlebury College student and member of Rising Tide Vermont, an activist organization working to combat sources of climate change, described the diverse perspectives involved in the pipeline debate: 4m50s This campaign is everyone from students, to old people, to farmers, people with very different perspectives and points of entry into a pretty wide and deep fight in terms of some

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people are involved because they don’t like eminent domain and they’re property rights folks and some people are a part of this because of climate change and methane and it’s potential to be much worse than even CO2 and some people are a part of it because it’s hypocritical because we banned fracking and now we’re supporting fracking somewhere else and some people are a part of it because of safety concerns, health concerns, because their land will be destroyed, or they’ll lose money from their farms. People have a lot of different reasons they’re a part of it… (Shireman-Grabowski) 3. Divisiveness The number of perspectives in the pipeline debate not only makes discussions difficult, but can also lead to divisiveness and tension. Disagreements are common and they happen between multiple entities. a. Community discussions Chris Klyza, professor of environmental politics at Middlebury College, spoke in particular about his frustration with how the pipeline is being discussed in his town, Bristol: 1m30s My biggest frustration is that we’re not having a particularly rational conversation about this…I live in Bristol…a lot of the people I know in town would love the pipeline to come, because they heat their house with oil, and the gas would be less, so that’s a driver for them. (Klyza) 6m00s I don’t have a clear view. It might sound like I’m for the pipeline, but I’m more just frustrated that we haven’t had a real conversation, because one of the things that happens in Vermont…[is] we’ll be against this, we’ll be against that, but we’re not using any less energy that anybody else. (Klyza) Bill Roper, the founder and president of Slow Communities, an organization that provides towns with the guidance and tools to maintain the strength of a community, spoke to us about how the pipeline, because of its regional structure, can impact town and individual relationships and discussions: 19m40s It’s pitting one town against another, this whole proposal, right? Because once it comes to Middlebury, the phase two wants to go through Cornwall and Shoreham. Now there’s an alternate route to that, and that’s to keep going down south 7 through Leicester and Whiting. And so Leicester and Whiting are fighting against it still knowing that’s going to throw it over to Cornwall. And Cornwall is fighting it knowing it’s going to throw it over to Leicester. One of the interesting stories you may find, if you’re lucky, is friends who may no longer be friends…. I’ve heard some tension there. (Roper) b. Relating to the process Another common point of contention for those debating the pipeline has been the Public Service Board process. The Public Service Board is the quasi-judicial body that is responsible for assessing the cost and benefits of the pipeline to determine whether Vermont Gas should be granted a Certificate of Public Good, called a CPG, which would allow the pipeline to be constructed.

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Anna Shireman-Grabowski discusses relationships with the Public Service Board, or the PSB: 1m53s It would be a real first, in terms of how the PSB process works, if, whoever wasn’t the industry, or the company trying to do the infrastructure project, won a CPG case. When my friend Nate, who was just referenced earlier, they were an intervener in the hearing process, and they, the whole Act 248 process is just really absurd, first of all, is what I’m learning. They called the person who’s supposed to be the advocate at the PSB, and were like, “so we’re trying to develop our testimony, and we want to look at some other cases from the past, and see what other people have said, and see how this process works.” And she said, ”okay, what kind of stuff do you want to look at?” And Nate said, “I want to see the ones where the people come out ahead.” She was like, “oh, there aren’t any.” Awkward. (Shireman-Grabowski) Anna provides some further context on tensions in Vermont between community members and the PSB: 7m00s (video II) And that there isn’t structurally meaningful ways for people to engage in the process that exists. And I think that’s where it can look uncivil, or personal, or something like that, because it is personal, and it can’t be a civil thing when there’s such a big power imbalance in who’s coming in and trying to do things, and who’s trying to resist that. It’s people without money and people with a lot of money, and people without power and people with a lot of power, and that gets heated kind of quickly. (Shireman-Grabowski) Marc Lapin, associate in science instruction at Middlebury College, speaks to community relations and collaboration relating to the process of the Public Service Board: 17m0s Rather than this top down process of saying, ‘ok, here’s the plan; lets defend our routing, or developing routing. Collaboration with communities and people in communities would serve us better and help us come up with more livable solutions. It would take longer, it’s more complicated, but this is very contentious obviously… I think it’s contentious because people don’t feel like they are part of the process. And they don’t feel like they’re benefiting or what they value is protected or benefiting. Whether it’s their land, or whether it’s their heirs and descendants I don’t feel like they think that they are benefiting. Not everyone can benefit in every way, but this process doesn’t really allow people to feel like a part of it and like they understand what the options are and whether this is really a public good and what the direction… and what the public feels is a good use of public resources, i.e. land that would be taken by eminent domain and would be used for the public good, supposedly. (Lapin) Cailey Cron, activist and student at Middlebury College, described the tension between Middlebury College and the town of Middlebury after her attempts to encourage the College to revoke its statement supporting the pipeline: 38m20s That was one of our moral arguments that we presented to the college, that we hold immense amounts of power within the community. And this community has played host to us for 213 years. And we employ so many people who live in this community we employ peoples livelihoods but our livelihoods also depend upon people in the community. For us to not use our power to allow community members to be heard is a stab in the back. We weren’t saying to the

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college come out in opposition of the project, we were saying, we have intervener status, lets compile a list of testimony, from people in the community and present it to Vermont Gas, because they don’t have the power to do that but we do. (Cron) c. Industry relations We also heard that people feel frustrated with the industries involved in the pipeline approval process. Bruce Hiland, member of the Cornwall Select Board, describes some of this tension between Vermonters and Vermont Gas, the company proposing the pipeline: 1m02s If Vermont gas had done reasonable due diligence here is what they would have one. They would have organized. There would have been a press conference. There would have been the governor of New York, etc., etc., etc. they would have announced that they had this really excellent plan…If they had gotten their act together right upfront they could have probably I’d say for another 2 or 4 million bucks they could have disarmed everybody. They could have gone through another route. They could have gone through Whiting- but this this has just been a FUBAR. Do you know what a FUBAR is…I’ll say fouled up for the record. (Hiland) 10m10s Then in February I got a call from the chief executive Don Gilbert board asking to meet with me as the chairman of the select board. And I agreed to meet and we met on a neutral ground, and he acknowledged that they had made some mistakes up front and that they had made some statements that were not accurate. (Hiland) 10m37s [He asked me] what would you do? [He was] basically asking for advice… 11m04s I said well Don… 11m22s the first law of holes. And he said well what’s that. And I said the first law of holes is when you are in one stop digging. My message to him was that they had dug themselves a hole in terms of their public posture and that in continuing to act the way they were acting was only making the situation worse. So, you know I couldn’t have been any more helpful in staying stop making these mistakes. I said stop digging and they bought shovels. (Hiland) Jon Isham, professor of economics at Middlebury College, also described frustration with the ways in which Vermont Gas has contacted community members and landowners: 5m00s To quote a neighbor who’s been one of the great opponents of phase two…“if they had come in and consulted with the select board right away, from the very beginning been open, from the very beginning said these will be the tradeoffs…we would have welcomed them with open arms.” Now this person is a deep, deep opponent…they’ve really blown it. (Isham) Maren Vasatka, Monkton resident and affected landowner, spoke about her frustration with Vermont Gas and their promises to visit her land to discuss the pipeline’s proposed path: 10m30s At the end of that meeting, I said I would like to know what’s going to happen on my property. So I’d like somebody to come out and show us where you’re going to put the pipeline on our property… they told us they were going to have someone who was going to come out- they never did. In the January meeting I said I still hadn’t heard from anybody, they said someone would come out, they never did… in the March meeting in Hinesburg, I asked one of the gentleman who promised me that they were going to come out to my property in January, I

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said to him I haven’t heard from him and he actually laughed at me. And he said ‘you’ll hear from us when you’re ready.’ And it really upset me…” (Vasatka) Vermont Gas isn’t the only company with which community members have been frustrated. Bruce Hiland also described International Paper’s role in phase two of the pipeline: 17m40s International paper is strictly interested in profit they had no illusions about that. Their history of polluting Lake Champlain. Their history of the tire burn. They just got a 30 million dollar settlement for screwing over their employees and their 401(k) plans. I don’t know if you know anything about that they are a corporate entity they are for profit people. Don’t give me good neighbor stuff. They do the minimum they have to do to make the maximum return they [can] (Hiland) 4. Bringing people together a. Organizing and activism As some of the people that we’ve heard from have touched on, the pipeline has created tension and damaged relationships between individuals as well as communities and industries. The ways in which the pipeline debate affects people’s relationships, however, is not always negative. In many ways, the pipeline is an opportunity for Vermonters to come together and creatively find solutions to a complicated issue or simply find others who share their beliefs. Claire Tebbs is a member of the Addison County Regional Planning Commission, or RPC, which is in charge of drafting town plans. The Addison County RPC also facilitates discussion between towns, helps them gather information, and develops regional plans. Tebbs described to us how community members can positively interact: 28m05s I can influence what goes in their town plan, as far as let’s be up to speed on this, what do you guys think about alternative energies? Do you have a strong opinion about the scale of wind, or solar operations in your town? And yes, I push those conversations, but it’s really helpful if you’ve got a champion in the town that’s pushing those conversations too, so the people in the town are even having those conversations, otherwise, you know, they’re just volunteers and they can only do so much thinking on every single topic within a plan. (Tebbs) Nate Palmer, farmer, landowner, and activist from Monkton discussed how the recent Public Service Board meeting in September 2013 was a great way to meet people. This audio clip is courtesy of Luke Whelan’s work at the Addison Independent and is used with permission: 14m0s To get people to actually step up and testify there’s only like 1 in a 1000 who will step up and do it...takes an amazing amount of time. And the only good thing coming out of this is I’ve met some amazing people. (Palmer) Palmer isn’t the only community member who finds relationships among the debate. Shireman-Grabowski actually met Nate and his wife after the hearing, which helped bring her closer to a community and understand the impacts of the project:

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7m30s Last month, right after the PSB hearing, I went out to Nate and Jane’s farm…and staked out with them where the pipeline would go, put up tape and flags, so when the PSB came to visit they would see. And it was ‘oh wow, this is going to be really close to your house, and this is going to go through your pond, and your horse pen, and your garden, and your field.’ And getting to know them and seeing how that would feel to see that destroy a place that you’d always lived…[I felt] a lot of empathy around that. (Shireman-Grabowski) Shireman-Grabowski again on getting to know people through the pipeline campaign with which she has worked: 2m20s The most amazing part has been getting to know people. Being this young person and this student, and this person who just moved here a couple of years ago…and really kicking it hard in Monkton, [with] a lot of people in Middlebury. Having the campaign be pretty intergenerational with Rising Tide being a lot of young folks VTCPG being a lot of older folks. Getting to know a ton of people I wouldn’t know otherwise, being like, ‘y’all are awesome’. (Shireman-Grabowski) Jan Demers, executive director of the Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity, known as CVOEO, expressed similar feelings when discussing the friendships built at town hall meetings. To paraphrase her statements, Demers told us that recent townhall meetings were [a fantastic opportunity for townspeople to interact, share ideas, and communicate with one another.] These townhall meetings exist as a way for townspeople to discuss and decide on issues that will impact the community. Demers’ descriptions of townhall meeting environments further demonstrate how conversations relating to the pipeline have been a way for people to interact and form friendships. Jon Isham also spoke to us about how his town of Cornwall had come together as a community during the pipeline debate: 18m30s Sam: Have you seen any change in your community [Cornwall] through this pipeline? In some ways there’s a lot more solidarity. I have not heard anybody say anything in favor of this. In fact, I may be the person who’s been most favorable publicly when I said, “on paper this reduces greenhouse gases…” And I was just trying to be fair. You’re seeing third generation Cornwall farmers, Yuppie-types, everyone speaking out against this... b. Industries In our interviews, we also found that relationships with industries were not always negative or tense. In many ways, industries are working to connect with surrounding communities to better listen to their needs and desires: Bob Wellington, SVP at Agri-Mark, Inc., the dairy cooperative that supplies milk to Cabot, explained the importance of connecting with the local community: 16m40s We want to be very respectful of the local community and we also want to be very respectful of our customers. If they have legitimate concerns, we need to foster that conversation.

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They need to know what it means to us as well. (Wellington) Donna Wadsworth, manager of communications at the Ticonderoga Mill at International Paper, told us why collaborating and hearing community perspectives was so valuable to future energy conversations: 51m00s I was asked why should we do this for people in Ticonderoga? I said because we are your neighbor. This lake it either joins us or divides us. And we are your neighbor. The people here think of VT as our neighbors, but sometimes the reverse of that is not true. We travel to VT. Middlebury is our closest community. The traffic going over that bridge and the commerce going over that bridge is important to Vermont. Even if you don’t think of New York as your neighbor we are important to the economy of Vermont, too. (Wadsworth) 11m40s and then community relations. We have a community advisory board. About half of them are from Vermont and half of them are from New York and they represent all walks of life –we have teachers and business owners and farmers – and they keep us in touch with the community. They meet about four or five times a year but we speak with them often. They are really good. (Wadsworth) 5. What we can learn a. Energy future As you’ve heard, the relationships between landowners, companies, colleges, and others discussing the pipeline are an important aspect of how the project is being handled and discussed, both at a casual and a formal level. In our Decision-Making podcast, you heard specifically about the Public Service Board and it’s process, especially how its process impacts the ways in which Vermont’s energy future is considered. Relationships between people and the stakeholders involved in any energy project are also vital to understanding and envisioning Vermont’s energy future. These relationships impact how Vermonters will discuss and debate energy moving forward, especially in the face of climate change. If we fail to find conversations that supersede arguing, Vermonters will struggle to determine the most effective energy projects needed to pursue and achieve the desired energy future. Anna Shireman-Grabowski discussed more broadly the values inherent to debating the pipeline: 10m45s It could be interesting to approach this debate, or this situation, from a values and rights perspective as well as a facts perspective. And kind of identifying “what do we as people who live in this place and hold these visions of the future want to see happening in processes around energy, processes around human rights and democracy and that kind of thing? Is this project meeting those rights and values…?” (Shireman-Grabowski) Ron Liebowitz, President of Middlebury College, related the conversations about the pipeline to Vermont’s energy future: 15m55s Jake: Why has the pipeline garnered such strong reactions? Well, I think we all have personal and collective ideologies and I think we all have, thank goodness, deep convictions about certain things, and so I think those people who have the

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pipeline the issue have those strong feelings. And I think they’re genuine and I think they’re based on something real, but some of us have to sort of take the broader view, or wish to take the broader view in cases like this. I might be as ideological and black and white on other issues, perhaps not on this issue, but on other issues, so I understand that as well. And there is reason to be concerned, there is global warming, the question is how best to address global warming and how as an institution we can contribute to addressing the issue of global warming. That’s what we should be focusing on. (Liebowitz) Chris Klyza, resident of Bristol, Vermont, broadened the discussion to where Vermont’s energy might come from. In his eyes, it’s invaluable to understand the importance of our sources of energy and how our decisions affect our future: 25m25s We seem to be against all sources of energy, except for generic talk about renewables. But there was significant opposition to solar on the way up to Vergennes, that was not a controversy-free project, by any means. There’s almost a consensus in Vermont that we need to move away from fossil fuels, that climate change is a real problem, unlike in some states, there’s at least consensus over that, but that next level…it seems like we’re having a very hard time doing that next stage, what does that look like? It would be a great thing to move the conversation more, “where is Vermont’s energy going to come from?” (Klyza) Linda McGinnis, sustainability analyst and former director of the governor’s siting commission on energy siting, completed a report that recommended ways in which Vermont should approach future energy siting projects. Furthermore, her report focused on the goals that Vermont has made to achieve its energy future. This is what McGinnis had to say: 10m03 So basically the bottom line is, in simple terms, is that much greater emphasis needs to be given to making sure that people at all levels are informed, have the appropriate tools, and the appropriate resources to plan in advance so that it’s a proactive approach to determining where your energy generation resources will be, rather than a reactive approach, which is what most towns and regions feel like they’re in right now, like there will be a merchant generator who will come in and they have to react to a process. Whereas what I like to imagine is that at the regional level, they could say look, this type of energy makes a whole lot of sense for this brown field, or for this superfund site, or for this agricultural area it makes sense to have a solar field, or this industrial-zoned municipality it makes more sense to have it here, or we’re okay with having wind in this particular portion because that makes sense for us...Being proactively indicating how each region can help the state reach its goals, and that includes massive investment in efficiency and conservation because I think that’s the key to getting to the overall goal. (McGinnis) 30m52s It’s important to recognize that the 90% by 2050 is a goal. It’s a vision; it’s a way to direct our attention and our resources to our future. And whether we meet that goal in the timeframe that’s allotted is less important than if we put all of our efforts in moving in that direction. (McGinnis) b. Next steps We just heard about the importance of relationships to Vermont’s energy future, but how do we actually incorporate what we learn, or should learn, into future conversations?

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Again we hear from Bill Roper, this time highlighting how removing personal interest from the conversations could be beneficial: 25m43s One of the interesting questions, you probably can’t avoid it, but can you have a conversation with someone who separates the personal interest from the conceptual idea? You know will you find in every conversation a personal interest? Can you talk to some people at the conceptual level? And push and push and push to make sure that you don’t discover the personal interest…? You may not. It’s such a hot issue, an emotional issue, you may always find an element of personal interest that persuades someone one way or another. (Roper) Linda McGinnis has settled in Vermont after traveling the world for various jobs. She loves that Vermonters are passionate about their towns, but sometimes that can have consequences. McGinnis highlights the importance of portraying various perspectives involved a decision: 39m53s “I love Vermont for its engaged citizenry and as the director of the siting commission, what became incredibly apparent to me, in terms of the process, is that Vermonters, more than almost any other state or country that I’ve ever lived in—and I’ve moved more than 50 times in my life so I’ve been in a lot of places—Vermont places an enormous value on making sure that its citizenry is heard. And there is something remarkable about that. At the same time, making sure that everyone is heard, or that everyone who wants to be heard is heard, means that sometimes the majority voices don’t get heard. And that it’s important to understand what everyone would like but make sure that everyone also has the information on which to base their opinions.” (McGinnis) Anna Shireman-Grabowski expanded on the idea, agreeing with McGinnis’ point that we need to look forward towards long-term goals: 10m20s And that, like, at the end of the day there are big questions and conversations to be had around a lot of different types of renewable energy, wind, solar, biomass, hydro, all come with their benefits and their drawbacks, and can be done in ways that are really great, and can be done in ways that are destructive in their own right, or undemocratic or unfair in their own right. To be able to have that conversation, about what we need to be doing with our energy future, we need to stop having conversations about whether we’re going to build a pipeline or not. (Shireman-Grabowski) 6. Conclusion We’ve heard from Vermonters around the state about the importance of relationships. As you’ve heard, how people, companies, and governmental organization are interacting with one another has significant effects on the process itself. As we said at the beginning of this podcast, we examined these relationships to better understand how they were occurring and how they were contributing to the planning of the pipeline as well as future energy projects that have yet been proposed in the state. It’s clear that Vermonters have different views on energy. On the one hand, it shows their passion and love for Vermont, but on the other, it can hinder progress towards clean energy goals that the state has set. To solve urgent issues, such as climate change,

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Vermonters will have to find ways to communicate effectively and understand the diverse perspectives involved. Thanks for listening and we hope you’ll listen to rest of our series.

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9.1.c Justice

Justice

narrated by Aidesha-Kiya Vega-Hutchens

A) Interviewees

* From Luke Whelan and the Addison Independent. B) Outline

1.) Will the pipeline be providing a public good? a. Public good defined b. Cheap gas for low-income households

i. Pro ii. Con

c. Boosting economy for small business owners i. International Paper case studies

Annette Smith Founder of Vermonters for a Clean Environment Bruce Hiland Member of the Cornwall Select Board Cailey Cron Student activist at Middlebury College

Nan Jenks Jay Dean of Environmental Affairs at Middlebury College Jon Isham Professor of Economics at Middlebury College

Maren Vasatka Monkton Resident affected landowner and activist

Beverly Latreille* Monkton Resident affect landowner and Activist (From Luke Whelan and the Addison Independent)

Nate Palmer* Monkton farmer, affected landowner, and activist

Christopher Klyza Stafford Professor of Public Policy, Political Science, and Environmental Studies at Middlebury College, Bristol resident

Steve Wark Communications for VT Gas Mark Lapin Professor of Conservation Biology and Cornwall Resident

Ron Liebowitz President of Middlebury College

Donna Wadsworth Manager of Communications, Ticonderoga Mill at International Paper

Bob Wellington Senior Vice President of Economics, Communications and Legislative Affairs of Agri-Mark, Inc.

Sarah Dennison Field Organizer at Vermont Public Interest Research Group (VPIRG)

Pete Ryan Professor of Geology at Middlebury College Sandra Levine Lawyer at the Conservation Law Foundation

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ii. Middlebury case studies iii. Cabot case studies

d. Opposing Arguments 2.) Whose voices are getting priority in the decisions making process?

a. Money and the Public Service board b. Land owners excluded from decisions making process

i. Maren Story ii. Nate Palmer

3.) Vermont Exporting Cost?

C) Script Hello and welcome to Vermont Talks Energy. I am Kiya Vega-Hutchens and this is the Justice Podcast of our series.

This podcast explores questions of socio-economics and environmental justice in Vermont energy siting process.

During this podcast, we will hear from affected landowners, representatives of International Paper and Cabot, community organizers, activists and Professors at Middlebury College.

With the variety of arguments for and against the pipeline, many of our decisions come down to our own moral code and our priorities for the future of Vermont. For the Public Service Board an essential question in their evaluation of both phases of the pipeline is if the project provides a public good.

As Anna Ready-Campbell explains in our Decision-Marking Podcast, the Public Service Board defines a public good based on

Section 248, a piece of a Vermont law, states ten criteria that the new project or source has to meet. The criteria address environment, need, reliability, and economic benefit. If the board approves the project or source, it issues a certificate of public good, a CPG, to the applicant. (Anna)

Steve Wark, Director of Communication for Vermont Gas feels that public good provided by the pipeline is clear. In an interview he explained that “The way I look at this is very pragmatic...we can help reduce people’s heating cost, almost by half … There is no other energy project in the state that comes close to that” (Steve)

Jan Demers Executive Director of CVOEO talked a little about what this would mean for low-income families when she sat down with us. For the CVOEO the Pipeline is about warmth. There are people in VT who are cold and simply can’t afford the high cost of heating associated with

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heating their homes. Jan explained that the CVOEO views the Pipeline as an asset to low-income families that are struggling to warm their homes.

Demers and Wark highlight one of the major socioeconomic arguments in favor of the pipeline; providing low-income communities with a cheaper fuel alternative.

Others feel that this is not so straightforward. Cailey Cron, a Student Activist at Middlebury College, elaborates

20m15s Vermont gas has put out its own numbers on how much Vermonters can save on their energy bills... if and when Vermonters can actually connect to this pipeline. Their calculations were that Vermont homeowners could save between 1200 and 2000 dollars a year on their heating bills. And those numbers are based on natural gas prices from November of 2012, when prices were at a national, post recession, all time low. So, since then, natural gas prices have gone up 28%... and they are projected to go up another 40%. And seeing how homeowners wouldn’t even be eligible to connect to this pipeline until 2017, [Vermonters most likely won’t be reaping the benefits that Vermont Gas is predicting] (Cron)

Sandra Levine a Lawyer at Conservation Law Foundation agrees. She makes note that:

15m50s Historically, the price of natural gas has been very volatile. It goes up and it goes down. It was inexpensive, oh say, a decade ago, and there was a big rush at that time to support more natural gas. And there’s, I think there are some, there’s some indication that the initial rush to increase supply of natural gas may be starting to taper off, that the developers of natural gas are maybe interested in making more money on their gas, and will reduce supply. So that would drive up price. (Levine) 16m55s Nobody’s saying the price of natural gas will stay low for the next fifty years. At best they’re saying for the next decade. (Levine) Maren Vasatka a landowner in Monkton affected by phase one of the pipeline is concerned that the gas won’t reach those that really need it:

45m30s …a lot of people in Addison County are not even going to get that option. People think that they are going to get this cheap gas to heat their house, they’re not even getting it. And they don’t understand that. (Vasatka)

49m45s None of them [low income people] are actually in the distribution route… I went onto the Public Service Board’s website, and you actually pull up the project, there is a map for Vergennes in there… and stops at UTC it does not go to the trailer park. And literally, you could jump from one parking lot to the next. (Vasatka)

53m20s The reason that is, is they are only servicing the real centers of the area, because they don’t want to do this big distribution. They told me in Monkton for example that it costs them almost 250,000 dollars to put out a mile of distribution pipe

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She raises the question

57m20s Why are we catering to the large business, at the expense of our environment, and our property? (Vasatka) For many residents of Cornwall this question is at the root of their resistance to phase two of the pipeline as well. Phase two will connect the pipeline from Addison county to Ticonderoga, New York, were it will service International Paper, a nation wide paper mill. In doing so it will transverse the town of Cornwall. They feel that the pipeline will only be serving an International Paper, a corporation, not the people. Mark Lapin, a resident of Cornwall and Professor of Conversation Biology notes that this question of public good is at the route of the conflict between Cornwall and Vermont Gas:

7m30s “I think in numerous ways from the town of Cornwall perspective I think most people see it as, there is really no good to Vermont except occasionally cleaner air… Vermont Natural Gas seems to think that public good can be achieved by having some local hookups in a town to their pipeline, I don’t really think that Cornwall residents see it that way, so much. I think they really see it as, the good is to a private corporation, International Paper….

We spoke to Donna Wadsworth, the Director of Communications at International Paper a little about the company’s interests in the pipeline. The company believes that they need this cheaper fuel to be economically viable.

17m38s Mills are closing all over the country. Just recently International Paper announced the closing of our Portland Alabama Mill 1100 people, they make white paper. And just to keep [up with] supply and demand, mills are closing and….our company a couple of years ago had a dozen of mills in this country making white paper. There are now four. So managing our cost. It is a very lower margin business and it is very competitive, so managing our cost.

18m12s So that we can stay viable and maintain the jobs in this area and continue to be a key driver in Essex County, New York we are the key driver of the economy. The schools the hospitals, there are 600-700 truckers who live in every hamlet or village that are dependent on bringing fiber to this mill. So the tax bases in all of those little towns are all depend on them being able to bring pulp to the mill.

18m48s So it is kind of a responsibility that people here at the mill take very seriously. They feel that they have a lot riding on them. They have a lot riding on the success of the mill.

International Paper will be providing over $70 million dollars to Vermont Gas towards the entire construction of the pipeline as well as some of phase one of the pipeline.

Cailey Cron, a student activist spoke a little about the weight International Paper’s investment gives them in the decision making process.

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18m10s International paper is the biggest player here because they are footing 70 million dollars for this pipeline and will also be receiving about 70% of the gas. Vermont ratepayers, for Vermont gas, will be responsible for paying 66.6 million dollars, and Vermont Gas, in my opinion, has been purposefully vague, about who will be eligible to receive this apparently cheaper cleaner safer natural gas directly to their homes. (Cron) For example she points to International Paper’s role as an intervener in the phase one proposal 17m30s Phase one doesn’t even involve International Paper at all. We’re just talking about a 40-mile stretch of pipeline within Addison County, and yet, International Paper, is an intervener in the PSB process for the CPG of phase one. (Cron)

29m58s We worked out a contract were we would pay for the additional looping where we would pay for the widening of the pipeline from Vergennes and the full cost of the pipeline coming to Ticonderoga.

This is Donna Wadsworth from International Paper again. She told us a little able International Paper’s contract with Vermont Gas and how Vermont Gas saw how they benefited 29m58s They felt that it was part of their commitment to the governor to try and the community of Rutland to try to get gas to Rutland sooner. Rutland is a struggling community. They are losing income, losing employment. There is a real commitment in Vermont to not ignore Rutland. They saw this as a way to get to Rutland much sooner. 31:18 Bruce Hiland, member of the Cornwall Select Board, challenged Donna’s narrative 4m39s The benefits to Vermont Gas as you have heard over and over and over again is that it enables them to get to Rutland sooner, which is a good PR story but in fact all this is a financing scheme by Vermont Gas by servicing International Paper they can generate significant revenue so they don’t have to borrow as much money to build a pipeline going to Rutland. If it is really that important to get to Rutland that fast then there are a variety of ways to finance it other then running a high pressure transmission line through Cornwall. 5:21

1m03s They put a lot of lipstick on this pig but it is still a pig. 1:33

He does not believe that International Paper’s needs cheaper fuel as desperately as it claims 18m50s There is this vaguely implied idea that some how it would keep the paper mill going. There has always been this treat in the background if they [don’t get natural gas. They will] shut the mill and all the jobs will be lost. 19m55s Ticonderoga plant is doing very well. They have gotten rid of all of their troubled assets. If they got a cheaper fuel they are not going to pay the employees any more they are not going to the employers any more. They are on recorded as saying that no they are not going to enlarge the plant anymore the plant is just the right size. If they save 17 million a year on fuel a year on cheap fuel… if they save that much money there is only two places it is going. One is to pay for

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the pipeline the other is going to the Memphis International Paper account there is no regional economic benefit for this at all. 21m23s

International Paper is going to get cheaper fuel one way or other. The current plan is through a pipeline that goes through my town. 17m33s Christopher Klyza, a Professor of Environmental Policy at Middlebury College commented on Cornwall’s residents’ resistance to the project. He believes that many Vermonters are against the pipeline simply because of the NIMBY argument, which stands for Not In My Backyard

4m30s To my mind, it [the NIMBY argument] got loudest when there was talk of running it through Cornwall, which is one of the wealthiest communities that the pipeline was going to run through. And questions of justice…real concern about bringing pipeline through eminent domain, across people’s farms, or just their property. (Klyza)

Jon Isham, a Professor of Environmental Policy at Middlebury College and resident of Cornwall takes account of the town’s privilege economic position

1m40s The professional class has the luxury of saying I’m against something that will lower costs, and that’s not necessarily the case with folks who are on a tighter budget in Vermont. It’s important to listen very, very carefully to the Cabots, to the folks down in Rutland, to see this as a strong economic and environmental play. And I think it’s important to listen to the households whose energy bills, by a rate count, will go down significantly. (Isham)

For Bruce Hiland, a member of the Cornwall’s Select Board, who opposed phase two of the pipeline there is no question that phase two is not in the interests of his town. But he agrees with the economic argument raised by Isham in regards to phase one and us supportive of phase one because of the possible economic benefit cheaper fuel could provide to Addison County, and the western corridor of Vermont.

Phase one is not a problem with me although it is imperfect. It is not a problem for me because it is consistent with the idea of providing a fuel alternative to those in the western corridor. 1m03s

41m42s We have been working really hard for years to have businessmen come here. To have a lower cost and better fuel alternative was on the face of it was a no brainer. 42m32s

Ron Liebowitz, President of Middlebury College expands

11m55s the biggest issue, locally, is the economy, is VT’s economy…we’ve lost several businesses here in Addison County because of the cost of business is too high, based on the cost of energy. It’s a simple sort of thing. You’re not going to stay here if it’s going to cost too much to do, so you lose businesses, that’s an important factor for people that live here.

Businesses themselves make the case that this fuel will be vital for their companies as well. Bob Wellington, Director of Communications from Cabot spoke a little about what a cheap fuel

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sources would them mean for their company. Cabot/Agri-Mark would be served by the pipeline in the first phase of the pipeline. Cabot emphasized the fact that the profit increase will reach their employees.

6m0s We’re owned 100% by dairy farmers, any money we make goes back to dairy farmers. Natural gas over the last few years has been much cheaper than fuel oil. So [with natural gas] we could save our farmers...a few million dollars a year. This is a no brainer from our point of view to make that work. (Wellington)

7m50s Any amount of money we earn beyond our costs goes back to dairy farmer owners, 100%, we’re a dairy farmer cooperative, we’re owned 100% by our dairy farmers. In fact, all of the money we earn, is required to go back to the dairy farmers in either cash or equity. And it’s based on patronage, which is how much business they did with the cooperative. Last year, we gave out over 60% of our direct profits in cash.

Nan Jenks Jay, Dean of Environmental Affairs made note of the economic benefits of potentially cheap fuel as well.

7m21s “When Middlebury started to be criticized for supporting gas, I think the senior administration came in more heavily around the issues… of the economics of the region, and that this would be a way of helping businesses, small businesses and large businesses, and homeowners that can hook into the pipeline in a rather poor and underserved state.” (Jenks Jay)

8m00s And that’s the kind of social justice piece of it that people don’t think about when they think about the pipeline.” (Jenks Jay)

In March of 2011 Middlebury College wrote a letter of support for the Addison Natural Gas Project. Jake Byrnes, at Middlebury College talked to us a little about how Middlebury came to support the natural gas project.

1m35s One of the drivers for the college obviously is its goal to become carbon neutral by 2016. 5m55s We have to be practical with what’s available to us now in terms of getting to our goal. I mean 2016 is only three years away. The college currently has two fuel sources; it has a biomass plant and uses oil, which they need to transition away from to meet their goal of carbon neutrality by 2016. One alternative fuel source they have been considering using to replace the millions of gallons of oil they use is biomethane from a local business.

28m15s The biomethane project, the real appeal of it, was, again, we could put dollars that were going afar, for oil, about seven miles away into a local farm’s digester. That’s a good thing for the local economy. We could help a local start-up, this would be a new business, this would be a relatively, maybe a first of it’s kind that would help other farms in the region, so we’d help with some business innovation. It would be cost neutral for the college, maybe even better depending

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on the price of oil. And then it helps us achieve our carbon neutrality goals by supplying us with local renewable replacement for oil. (Byrne)

The catch was, how do they get the gas to the college? There was the option of building storage system on the college. Expensive. Piping the biomethane to the biomass plant. Not feasible. Trucking it to the college. Dangerous and expensive.

14m15s So that’s why, so when the proposal to run the pipeline, the Vermont Gas System’s pipeline to Middlebury, became a real proposal, the idea, it gave rise to the idea, “well that could be the storage medium.” If the manure digester could put the gas into the pipeline, and Middlebury could run a pipe into the pipeline, then we could take the gas, or an equivalent amount of the gas, we wouldn’t be burning all of that specifically but we’d take an equivalent amount that we’d purchase from the pipeline. Then in effect it becomes the storage medium for the biomethane project.

3m05s From my perspective at least, the pipeline came along as a potential solution to one of the problems we were trying to address with the possibility of switching out the remaining million gallons of fuel that we’re burning after biomass, with this new, potentially new, source of biomethane from a manure-digester on a nearby farm Cailey Cron, a Student Activist, believes that the college’s reasons for supporting the pipeline are hypocritical. She fought to get a petition to get the college rescind its letter of support for the pipeline. 1m30s “I was initially involved in an effort to get Middlebury College to rescind its statement of support for the pipeline. Because Middlebury College is one of the few institutions who were treated as people, that was given intervener status, a position with a large amount of power within the Public Service Board approval process with this pipeline…. We saw our role, or our place within the issue as students- we saw that we could leverage our powers as students most effectively by petitioning Old Chapel” (Cron)

2m30s “We created an online petition and shared it around…and within a span of only a few weeks we got around 13,000 signatures. (Cron)

3m0s In the spring we delivered those signatures to Ron Liebowitz and Patrick Norton who is the VP of finance, he is essentially our college treasurer.

5m0s “Everything kind of culminated in delivering this petition, we had this march, and a fair number of students and community members came together to deliver this, we had news cameras we had the ‘addi indy’ there, we were standing outside of Mead Chapel, we had told them that we were coming to deliver the petition and would they come out and would they come out to accept it, and they said that they would…they had put up police barriers, to keep us out of the road, we were very respectful and we came and delivered this petition (Cron)

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What really surprised and discouraged Cron was how the college administration treated the landowners affected by phase one of the project who had come to the college to tell their story.

5m45s We brought the petition forward as Bill Berger and Patrick Norton came out of the building, and we invited…a landowner that’s going to affected by this project … to give a brief little speech. He stood up to make his comments to Bill and Patrick and they interrupted him, and they said, you know- we’re here to receive a petition, you let us know when you want us to come back out, we’re going inside. (Cron)

5m45s Unfortunately, the way that petition was received, really reflects how the college has treated the community over this issue.

7m30s It was upsetting and unfortunate that all of the concerns that we had raised and all of the factual inaccuracies presented by Vermont Gas that we had challenged, were not likewise being challenged by the administration or that they were kind of taking it at face value from a company that has a very vested interest in making this happen (Cron) This dismissal of affected landowners by the college maybe particularly frustrating because they have felt ignored through many other channels of expressing their concerns over the project. Cron describes a little how the Public Service Board distributed Intervener status among stakeholders.

13m0s The information that they look at is given to them by institutions or individuals who are given privileged status within the process they are called interveners and in this case, interveners are International Paper, Cabot, Middlebury College, and additionally a group of different landowners, all from different regions along the pipeline who all have very different reasons for opposing the pipeline, were all given one intervener position. So they have to bring all of their disparate concerns in one statement through one lawyer. (Cron)

15m0s Vermont Gas, the institution applying for the CPG can advise the public service board on whom to make an intervener. (Cron)

Bruce Hiland, a select board member on Cornwall’s service board spoke a little about the expenses of participating in the public service board process

25m16s Well the general rule of thumb, its like greens fees to get to the public service board and participate in full standing is a minimum of a 100,000 to be able to participate to be able to act on something approaching a level playing field. Hiland)

Annette Smith, founder of Vermonters for a Clean Environment who has been working with community engagement in energy sitting projects for over 15 year, spoke a little about her experience with the public service board as a community organizer

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30m33s I have witnessed over and over again: the communities buy lawyers, they hire credible experts, they spend thousands and thousands of dollars and when the decision comes out it is as if they are not even there

31m24s I don’t know how to advise people to participate in a process that is rigged from the start and that is what I told the people of Monkton, be careful. Don’t think that if you go through with raising the hundreds of thousands necessary to get your case there that you are going to be listened to. 31m48s

Nate Palmer, a farmer and an affected landowner spoke more on this theme. He was interviewed by Luke Whelan who worked for the Addison Independent, and they were generous enough to let us use it:

3m0s “My general impression is that you’ve got a large corporation that’s trying to shove something on you that you don’t want...I didn’t work my whole life to get to this place just to have someone else come along and invade it.” (Palmer) 5m30s “it’s like every argument that they come up with of how great this is all based on immediate profit, and you know there’s a lot more to life than immediate profit” (Palmer)

Another farmer and an affected landowner in Monkton is Beverly Latreillie. She has lived in Monkton for over 60 years and has been extremely active in protesting the approval of phase one of the pipeline. This interview was also conducted by Luke Whelan at the Addison Independent.

57m57s “I really don’t foresee making a build change to stop it. Just making a big noise really. Some of the kids look at me and think old fool. They think I should just keep still. The ones that understand me know better. They know I never did.” (Latreille)

Many affected landowners spoke about their opposition to the natural gas pipeline because it is sourced from hydrocracking in Alberta, Canada. Sarah Dennison head of VPRIG’s Addison Natural Gas Pipeline Campaign, which is an environmental advocacy organization in the state, spoke a little about her own concerns about using fracked gas in Vermont

31m15s We have a lot of privileges just from living in Vermont. The air is clean. The water is clean. And what we’d be expecting from these people, who we’re getting the fuel from, is to not have clean water, not have clean air, that stuff would be toxic to them, it is toxic to them. And to expect them to deal with toxic environment so we can have cheap fuel, not fair. That is not a moral argument. (Dennison)

Christopher Klyza, Professor of Environmental Policy at Middlebury College echoed this sentiment.

32m50s Vermonters at their worst are willing to just push the problems elsewhere. (Klyza)

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We spoke to Pete Ryan, a professor of Geology at Middlebury College about the effects of hydraulic fracturing in Alberta

They are injecting these fuels under the black shale are also rich in as and uranium. Those fluids which are then brought up from the Shale end up… .contaminating an aquifer somewhere in the middle of nowhere Alberta. It is not just what you are putting down there but what you are bringing back up. You are fracturing a black shale, black shale is notorious for containing trace metals. 17m25s (Ryan) 13m32s I think the greatest problem is… the Vermont legislator just stated there would be not fracking in Vermont… if we as a state feel that we are not going to allow fracking in Vermont because of environmental concerns how are we going to allow fracked gas whether it is from Québec whether it is from Alberta…. its great for economic development in Vermont even though it is from an energy extraction technique that we wont allow here. (Ryan) 21m33s I have a feeling that we are going to burn every bit of hydrocarbons that we can get our hands on…. I just don’t see our economy being restructured in such a way there is no…economic incentive to get hydrocarbons out of the ground. How are we going to prevent it. 23:01…who is going to spend millions of dollars on that … we are just so addicted and it is just so easy. (Ryan)

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9.1.d Energy Options

Energy Options

narrated by

Samantha Strom

A. Interviewees

Christopher Klyza

Stafford Professor of Public Policy, Political Science, and Environmental Studies at Middlebury College, Bristol resident

Steve Wark Director of Communications at Vermont Gas

Leigh Seddon Chair of the Board at the Energy Action Network

Linda McGinnis Sustainability Analyst and former Director of the Governor’s Commission on Energy Siting

Nate Palmer* Monkton farmer, affected landowner, and activist

Renee McGuinness Affected Landowner and Monkton Resident

Jack Byrne Director of Sustainability Integration at Middlebury College

Jon Isham Professor of Economics at Middlebury College, Cornwall resident

Cailey Cron Middlebury student, activist

Billy Coster Senior Planner and Policy Analyst for Agency of Natural Resources

Sarah Dennison Field Organizer at VPIRG (Vermont Public Interest Research Group)

Tom Corbin Assistant Treasurer and Director of Business Services at Middlebury College

Sandy Levine Lawyer at Conservation Law Foundation

Pete Ryan Professor of Geology at Middlebury College

* Interview acquired from the Addison Independent via Luke Whelan.

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B. Outline

1.) What will the physical and environmental effects of the pipeline be? a. Effects on land b. Effects on health c. Effects on greenhouse gases

2.) How will it fit into broader goals for Vermont? a. Comprehensive Energy Plan b. Pipeline as a bridge fuel c. Pipeline moving us in the wrong direction d. Disincentive for renewable energy e. Rejecting is accepting the status quo f. Vermonters are against all types of energy

3.) What are the alternatives to the pipeline for reaching a Vermont’s clean energy goals? a. Thermal vs. electric heating b. Thermal alternatives c. Weatherization

C. Script

Welcome to the podcast, Energy Options in the series Vermont Talks Energy. I’m Samantha Strom. This podcast will examine a few main questions: one, what are the potential environmental effects of the Addison County Natural Gas Project? Will the pipeline harm water and land, or go virtually unnoticed in our landscape? Will it increase or reduce greenhouse gas emissions? Two, how would the pipeline fit into the state’s broader energy goals to produce cleaner energy? Will it move us towards a clean energy future, or move us in the wrong direction? Three, what are the energy alternatives to the pipeline? Will rejecting the pipeline continue the status quo of foreign oil, or will it leave room for renewable energy alternatives? Throughout the podcast, we’ll cover the pro and con arguments for each of these three questions and sub-questions.

We will start with the physical effects of the pipeline itself. Landowners are asking, what will it mean to have a natural gas pipeline in my backyard? Many who do not support the pipeline are worried about impacts on water, land, as well as safety.

This is Nate Palmer, who is a farmer as well as a vocal activist against the pipeline. Palmer is an affected landowner, which means Vermont Gas wants to put the pipeline on his property. This interview was conducted by our classmate, Luke Whelan, who worked with the Addison Independent this summer. The paper was generous enough to let us use it.

2m0s Well basically it comes right through the most productive part of our land you know it goes right through our garden our pasture our little apple orchard...and right up next to our house 150 feet away which doesn’t exactly give you a warm and fuzzy feeling when you’re talking

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about a 12 inch pipeline with 1400 lbs. of pressure which if it blows up your basically incinerated when you’re here. (Palmer) With the Addison Independent, Luke also interviewed Renee McGuiness, another effected landowner. 8m20s The pipe will be about 900 ft. behind our house. We have a wooded lot there is plenty that will catch fire. We have a wetland, we are concerned about the wildlife...we have a spring that is back there, we have no idea how that might affect our water, hopefully our water won’t be affected. (McGuiness) Jon Isham, a professor of environmental economics at Middlebury College, is not convinced by these arguments about pipeline safety. 10m30s These things are very good, so I’m not persuaded we’re going to have these leaks everywhere and these explosions. (Isham) We asked Professor Pete Ryan, a professor of geology at the college, what he thought the physical effects of the pipeline would be: 11m17s I think none… It gets installed, it’s underground. There is concern about explosions, but there are gas pipeline all over Europe, all over Canada, many major American cities have natural gas and how often do you hear about natural gas explosions? What is a more contested issue is what will happen to the land that the pipeline runs under, especially for farmers. Here is Nate Palmer again: 2m0s A lot depends on the size of your farm and what kind of farming you’re doing, we do everything naturally. We’re not organically certified but we could be easily enough if we wanted to go through the process… you’re really trying to balance out bacteria and nutrients and all these little things that play in sometimes it can take years to adjust your soil so when you start disturbing your soil, naturally farmed soil like this it takes a long time to bring it back.” (Palmer) 4m25s You just act like its rocks and dirt what’s the big deal- but it is a big deal. (Palmer) If you take a 40-mile strip, 50 foot wide, there’s a few acres that you’re not going to be able to do anything with. (Palmer) Despite these concerns, Vermont Gas is convinced that they build their product in an environmentally sensitive fashion. We spoke with Steve Wark, the Director of Communications for Vermont Gas. He preferred that we did not use his audio, but allowed us to use our quotes from our interview. He reminded us that the pipeline is 3-5 feet underground. In terms of disturbing the land, he said that 13m0s “it can take sometimes 2 or 3 months to complete construction, it depends on exactly where we’re doing it, on any particular parcel of land we will probably be in and out in a week, maybe more, it depends on the weather and the characterization of the land. And it takes about a year for it to return back to its normal state.” (Wark)

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Billy Coster, who works at the Vermont Agency for Natural Resources, told us a bit more of the specifics about how Vermont Gas builds its pipeline: 17m50s What I have been told by Vermont Gas is that the way they do their construction is that they remove the soil by horizon layer, so they take all the topsoil off and pile it one place, and they take the next layer and put it in a different pile. And then, after they lay the pipe, they put it all back in the appropriate order, so that it actually hasn’t mixed up the soil horizons. So if you have good farmable topsoil on the top, that’s still what’s going to be on the top. (Coster) 18m30s One would assume that, even if they do that, there’s still some, the compaction the density of the soil is going to change, things are going to be different, but it sounds like they at least make a concerted effort to make sure the horizons are maintained. (Coster) Billy also told us that with a pipeline, a company can avoid some of the worst natural resource impacts in the state. The Agency of Natural Resources has a list of places in Vermont that are one- of-a-kind or key for the resilience of an ecosystem. It was their goal to get Vermont Gas to work around those places. 17m05s There were probably four or five major locations where we were asking them to significantly change what they were proposing. There were a lot of small little tweaks we asked them to do all throughout the line in how they construct and maintain it. (Coster) 29m40s With a linear project, like a pipeline, they have so much flexibility to kind of adjust their route. (Coster) The impacts on land are by no means people’s only concern. The other has become known by one word: fracking.

First, a little background on natural gas. Natural gas has been around for decades, and its price has fluctuated depending on supply and demand. Recently, a new process to extract the gas has become extremely economical: hydraulic fracturing, often referred to as fracking. Fracking consists of shooting water and chemicals at a high pressure into rock. This breaks up the rock and allows people to extract a resource, in this case natural gas, that was trapped underneath. This has enabled companies to get natural gas from more and more places. As the supply of gas has grown, the price has decreased. The fracking process is actually used to extract not just natural gas but all types of oil. While some believe that fracking is the key to gaining endless abundant energy, others believe the process comes at too high of a price.

Here is Cailey Cron, a student and environmental activist at Middlebury College.

23m0s Natural gas is also a really good example of industry greenwashing. Conventionally drilled natural has a bunch of its own issues, but fracked natural gas is not natural. It’s shooting 596 chemicals, some of them known carcinogens, into bedrock, and into natural water aquifers, to shoot this gas back up. (Cron)

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VPIRG is the largest environmental advocacy organization in Vermont. We spoke with Sarah Dennison who has been heading VPRIG’s campaign to stop the pipeline.

2m40s The reason we’re against the pipeline is because, obviously, the adverse health effects to people that are near those fracking fields. (Sarah) 3m00s There are a lot of different estimates but we don’t really know because they don’t actually have to tell us what’s used in fracking fluids, because it’s considered like a secret recipe, like a Pepsi soda. And so we can’t actually regulate those chemicals because we’re not told what they are, and it’s kind of like a catch 22, but we do know a lot of the chemicals used are carcinogens, neurotoxins, and we find those in people’s water wells. People can’t always prove this is because of fracking, but we know that it is. It’s obvious. (Sarah) Steve Wark believes that fracking has been a success not just for natural gas but also for the whole energy sector. He says that 9m45s“the reality is that the fracturing process has transformed energy markets not just in natural gas, but in oil, propane, kerosene, and all the fuels because it is used in virtually all of those industries. So, for example today, if you’re using fuel oil in Vermont, it came from one of two places, either it’s bore oil, from traditional wells or fracturing, or it came from tar sands.” (Wark)

Fracked natural gas has brought up concerns not only about water and health, but about greenhouse gas emissions, which cause climate change.

Steve Wark told us that natural gas produces 50% less greenhouse gas emissions than conventional oil. He says that Vermont Gas can 3m0s “reduce emissions in Addison county alone over a 20 year period by almost 300,000 tons…There is no other energy project in the state that comes close to that.” (Wark)

The problem with this estimate is that it only takes into account the greenhouse gases at the point of use, or at the home when you burn natural gas for your stove and heat instead of heating oil. Environmentalists are also concerned with the greenhouse gases that come from the source of fracking, because fracking releases methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

Billy Coster explains the need to look at all the greenhouse gas emissions from the whole process, which is called a lifecycle analysis.

32m35s So not what’s the efficiency at the point where it’s combusted for heat or energy versus fuel oil or anything else. But how much emissions are released when it’s extracted from the earth, through transmission, through processing, the whole start to finish, what’s the greenhouse gas footprint. 33m30s… that kind of leakage rate is critical in determining the greenhouse gas emission because, I think natural gas is largely methane, which has a really high potency as a greenhouse gas, higher than carbon dioxide. So even a little bit of direct release could have significant impacts. So if the line is managed well, and there are really no leaks at the point where the gas is procured, then the greenhouse gas emissions is much less than if there are leaks (Coster)

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The issue is that there is a lot of uncertainty around how much methane is actually released in the fracking process. Here is Jon Isham again, the environmental economics professor at Middlebury College. 2m0s Everything that I’ve seen for a long time suggests that it would lower carbon footprint and the really tricky thing is uncertainty, you know, people say that the methane release is this much or that much, you get a study from the EPA, you get a study from Cornell, and it’s just a classic case of you kind of gravitate to the study you believe. (Isham)

What we found was that Vermont Gas’s numbers were not based on a lifecycle analysis, and that most comprehensive comparisons ended up sounding something like this:

15m14s If you look at the entire lifecycle costs, of greenhouse gas emissions, of oil, from production to transportation, and compare that to natural gas, natural gas is slightly lower. (Seddon) That was Leigh Seddon, who is the Chair of the Board of Directors for the Energy Action Network, a nonprofit that brings together various stakeholders in the state to move towards a clean energy future.

Something that adds to the controversy is the fracking ban in Vermont. Governor Shumlin banned fracking in Vermont in 2012 because the impacts were uncertain and he did not want to risk damages to the environment or to human health. So fracking is not allowed in Vermont, but the pipeline would be allowed since the source of the gas would be from Canada.

Here is Pete Ryan:

15m0s I think the greatest problem is… Vermont’s legislature just stated there would be not fracking in Vermont… if we as a state feel that we are not going to allow fracking in Vermont because of environmental concerns how are we going to allow fracked gas whether it is from Québec whether it is from Alberta…. (Ryan)

Cailey Cron agrees:

27m30s It doesn’t make sense for us to have said, you know, fracking is really dangerous, it’s dangerous for the environment, it’s not a bridge to the clean energy future that we want it to be, and therefore we’re not going to do it here, it doesn’t really make sense for us to have passed that legislation where we say, everything we said was true, fracking really sucks, we don’t want it to happen here, but we will enable it to happen elsewhere. We will allow our state to be a conduit, for what we said, in legislation, was a really, really, dirty product. (Cron)

When we started talking with people about the greenhouse gas impacts of natural gas, the conversation veered towards a broader conversation about what Vermont’s goals were for the future of its energy supply and demand.

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A major theme that came up is that Vermont has what is called a Comprehensive Energy Plan. This plan states that Vermont should reach 90% renewable energy by 2050.

Here is Leigh Seddon again, from the Energy Action Network.

1hr02m25s The Comprehensive Energy Plan is probably the best state plan of any of the fifty states. It really is comprehensive. We need to implement it, nobody’s really talking about implementing it. (Seddon) This is how many people see the Comprehensive Energy Plan: it’s a great idea, but no one is enforcing it. Part of the reason is that the plan is not a law, it is a goal.

Linda McGinnis, who managed a comprehensive review of how Vermont planned energy projects, called the Electric Generation Siting Commission, helped explain the difference.

6m23s That 90% by 2050 is not a legislative goal. And it’s true it’s not legislative goal, but I can give you about 8 others that are legislative goals that contribute to that 90% goal. (McGinnis)

She went over a few of the clean energy targets that are legislated in Vermont.

27m55s One is that 25% of all energy comes from in-state renewables, particularly from forests and farms by 2025... The second, and probably the most important one where we’re not getting much progress, is to reduce greenhouse emissions. That’s been in place for quite a while and that we have to reduce greenhouse gas emissions within the state and from outside the state boundary caused by use of energy within the state by 50% by the year 2028. That is statute…We’re now going in the opposite direction. We’re now higher than when that was started. (McGinnis)

Whether the natural gas pipeline fits into these specific targets and goals for clean energy depends on if you view the pipeline as a bridge fuel or not. A bridge fuel is an energy source that would be used to transition away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy.

Here is Jon Isham again:

10m30s The case for this pipeline… is that it moves us away from something nasty, fuel oil number two, in some cases fuel oil number six, to something less nasty, natural gas. It buys us…ten fifteen years using of the bridge fuel—Obama buys this argument—and that eventually when we get to a more solar, storage kind of economy, which will include heating homes in a more creative way, the need for that natural gas will go away. (Isham)

Steve Wark says that 5m0s“the comprehensive energy plan calls for an increase of 90% renewables by 2050, but what it also calls for is increase of natural gas and biofuels, so there are places where renewables applications are not appropriate or even remotely possible and that’s where a fuel like natural gas, at least in a transitional capacity, can play a big role, how long that bridge is and how far that bridge is a function of two things: public policy and technology.” (Steve)

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One way to turn the pipeline into a bridge would be to replace the natural gas inside of the pipeline with biothemane. Biomethane is a fuel source that can come from processing any organic matter, such as cow manure or food scraps. Middlebury College is planning to do this with the pipeline; it hopes to use the natural gas pipeline as a way to transport and store biomethane from a farm in Salisbury, Vermont.

Steve Wark from Vermont Gas is in favor of the Comprehensive Energy Plan and believes that biofuels could make the pipeline part of that goal. 7m0s He says “it’s one thing to say that we can get 90% renewables by 2050, it’s a great goal, we support it, in fact, that’s one of the reasons we’re working with Middlebury College and others on biofuels, renewable natural gas from farmed methane. Who knows, in 30 years, we may be using exclusively biomethane, it’s hard to tell what the future will bring in energy”(Wark). Tom Corbin, the Assistant Treasurer at Middlebury College, agrees that biomethane could be a big part of Vermont’s energy future.

33m0s We view natural gas as a way to improve from 6 oil, on our way to hopefully more biomethane, or something that we don’t even know about yet, so we don’t necessarily see it as an end... and we really hope that if our biomethane project is a success… that other people who are near a gas pipeline, will consider doing more biomethane… you have to show people it works. (Corbin) We asked if he thought the pipeline would act as a bridge. 33m30s You know- it might be a long bridge, but we don’t view it as an end. (Corbin) Others feel that the pipeline is the opposite of a bridge and that it is moving the state in the completely wrong direction.

Nate Palmer, the landowner and activist: 3m30s My personal philosophy is that we need to get off of fossil fuels, we need to move towards alternative energy, and this is just going totally in the wrong direction. It’s not only the fact that it’s only my land it affects the whole way I think and do business I want to get to where we have a better place in the world I don’t want to destroy the world more… you don’t just take what you can and trash the world and leave someone else to clean it up. (Palmer) 9m0s You just don’t get off of from fossil fuels by going and extending fossil fuels. (Palmer) 11m30s Our chairman says “oh I can’t look 20 years down the road.” Why not? That’s where you’ve gotta look if you’re trying to figure out what you’re doing today. (Palmer) Sandy Levine, a lawyer at Conservation Law Foundation, or CLF, agrees: 2m0s The push to expand gas throughout the region is concerning in terms of climate change because we are putting in place infrastructure that will be there for 50 to 100 years. In that time frame…credible climate scientists say we need to move away from fossil fuels.” (Levine)

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Building the pipeline might have an unintended consequence, creating disincentives for renewable energy. 4m30s The concern is…how the pipeline squeezes out alternatives to move towards alternative power. (Levine) 3m15s The infrastructure will be in place for 50 to 100 years and it will be providing gas for that time… so long as that is available it will be more difficult for people to move to other sources of power, including renewables. Both in terms of cost and availability. (Levine) 4m45s If the pipeline were only going to be in place for 5 years, CLF would probably support it… that would make it a real bridge fuel, which many folks talk about. (Levine)

Proponents of the pipeline argue that rejecting the pipeline has a cost- continuing the status quo.

Steve Wark at Vermont Gas says that 3m30s “there is a cost to the status quo. To simply do nothing, means that you embrace foreign oil, typically in places where our military has paid a very high price, and where the indigenous populations have paid a very high price, it’s also not as clean, and also frankly comes from the hydraulic fracturing process… just saying no is saying yes to something else, and sometimes, what you’re saying yes to is not good.” (Wark) Jack Byrne, who is the Director of Sustainability at Middlebury College, has come to the same conclusion.

7m00s I kind of do a weighing process. What’s the current situation? The current situation is we’re using a million gallons of fuel oil…. And that has a pretty significant cost, environmentally. That oil’s coming from Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Canada. Some of it may be the result of pretty bad practices. Just like this gas might be the result of some pretty bad practices. From an emissions standpoint, from a cost standpoint, being able to displace the use of that much oil with that much gas seems to be a net gain. It gives us a step in the right direction, and time to figure out how we’re going to figure this ambitious goal of 90% renewables by 2050. I don’t think we’re going to do that by 2020 or 25. I think we’re going to need some interim solutions. And I think this represents one of those. (Byrne) 9m25s And I think that’s part the challenge of these kinds of issues, it’s pretty easy to know what you’re against, but it’s pretty difficult to figure out what you’re for to achieve this pretty ambitious goal that we’ve got. (Byrne)

Many of our interviewees felt the same way: that Vermonters were not just against the pipeline, but were against all new types of energy. This has been an issue in recent years as people try to move towards renewables such as wind, solar, and biomass, which typically involve a larger amount of small-scale projects. These projects have faced strong opposition for varying reasons, such as obstructing the view of the idyllic Vermont landscape or making noise and causing

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headaches. All of this opposition has caused some to fear that Vermonters will not be satisfied with anything, which will result in the continuation of the status quo.

25m25s We seem to be against all sources of energy, except for generic talk about renewables. But there was significant opposition to solar on the way up to Vergennes, that was not a controversy-free project, by any means. There’s almost a consensus in Vermont that we need to move away from fossil fuels, that climate change is a real problem, unlike in some states, there’s at least consensus over that, but that next level…it seems like we’re having a very hard time doing that next stage, what does that look like? It would be a great thing to move the conversation more, “where is Vermont’s energy going to come from?” (Klyza)

6m00s Because one of the things that happens in Vermont…[is] we’ll be again this, we’ll be against that, but we’re not using any less energy than anybody else. (Klyza)

That was Christopher McGrory Klyza, a professor of Environmental Policy at Middlebury College.

Steve Wark thinks this is just a typical process that every energy project goes through in Vermont. He says that 2m0s“every energy project in Vermont has to go through essentially kind of a crucible. If you look today, biomass is being criticized for particulates or water use, natural gas, solar, wind…GMO… the list goes on.” (Wark). Activists disagree. We spoke with Anna Shireman-Grabowski, a Middlebury College student who has been a staunch environmental leader on campus and in the State. She told us that it’s unfortunate that right now, environmentalists have to fight against things. But what the campaigns will do is leave space for Vermonters to use other alternative energies. Sandy Levine from the Conservation Law Foundations also believes that Vermonters are saying yes to energy options.

39m15s I think Vermonters are saying yes to a lot of projects, I think that the support for solar in the state has been robust, we’ve seen two utilities in the state say ‘we’ve met our cap’… I think Vermonters are saying yes to a lot and things that are more responsible than expanding fossil fuels or nuclear power. (Levine)

This brings us to a larger question: if not the pipeline, then what? Are there viable alternatives to the pipeline? There is a lot of talk about alternative energy options, but it can get confusing what is really available now and how effective they can be.

One thing that makes these discussions about alternatives confusing is that some energy is more efficient for certain purposes. A person’s energy needs can be divided into three categories: transportation, electric, and heat. Transportation involves fuels that we can burn in places like cars and planes. These types of fuels are typically conventional oil, such as gasoline, or sometimes natural gas or biofuels, which are fuels made from organic matter such as plants.

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What is more confusing is the difference between electric energy and thermal energy. There are more renewable options for electricity, such as solar panels, wind turbines, and hydropower. It’s important to note that relative to other states, VT uses renewable energy for a large percentage of its electricity needs. For heat, which is what natural gas would produce; many feel that there are fewer viable alternatives. The most common are oil, natural gas, and wood. Wood is the only renewable resources in that category, but only if it is come from forests at a slow and sustainable rate. Here is Professor Klyza: 16m00s There’s real confusion out there…And again I’ve had conversations where people are saying, “we could just use more wind or solar to replace the pipeline.” At least so far those are not particularly good substitutes for thermal heat. (Klyza)

2m45s There’s a sense of “oh, we can replace it with renewables,” but what other renewables to heat people’s homes with, aside from wood? (Klyza)

Others believe that there are viable alternatives to heat houses. Back to Sandy Levine, the lawyer from the Conservation Law Foundation, who faced similar opposition working to shut down Vermont Yankee, Vermont’s nuclear power plant. 21m45s It’s a false choice that the critics are presenting, and it’s a similar choice that I heard a lot when I was working on the VT Yankee case. No single renewable energy project in VT is going to replace the 600 megawatts of power that VT Yankee provided. But just because no one thing will replace it does not mean that that there is no alternative or that there is no combination of alternatives if you look over the next five, ten-year horizon. I know from studies done elsewhere in the region that for instance solar powered ground source heat pumps are starting to be economic compared to fossil fuels. (Levine)

There are some newer, more small-scale alternatives to heat homes. Sandy Levine believes that heat pumps, which provide a new way to create heat from electricity, is one of the most current viable alternatives. There are also solar hot water heaters, which use electricity to heat water for showers, dishwashers, and laundry machines. We also heard from a few sources that wood pellet stoves are a way to heat homes.

Even though these resources are considered renewables, we saw that even the best alternatives do have costs, here is Pete Ryan:

4:06 I am still struggling with this pipeline thing because look at it one way, I know there are problems with fracking, but I also know there are problems with bringing oil out of the ground… no matter how we get our energy it comes at a cost. If we are mining metals to make wind turbines or the competent to make solar panels or whatever. (Ryan)

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The main alternative to the pipeline that we came across was not even an alternative form of energy, but a way to reduce energy demand. Again and again, opponents of natural gas pointed to weatherizing homes as the better option. This involves builders going into existing homes and making sure it is efficiently keeping in heat and keeping out the cold. This would include things like adding insulation or plugging up holes in the walls. We found that while this is a high upfront cost, in the end it can have a huge economic benefit. Here is Leigh Seddon again, who has done extensive work on how Vermont could reach 90% renewable energy by 2050. 42m30s In the thermal sector, efficiency of course is huge. We have the ability to lower the energy use in our buildings by at least 30%... And we have about 300,000 buildings in Vermont, and we’re going to build a few more in the years, but our buildings heat load will always be in the old buildings like this one that will still be around. So by investing in efficiency, we could lower that whole need in the thermal sector, 30%, and it would be the most cost effective thing we could do. More cost effective than biomass or anything. Problem is, it costs $6 billion. (Seddon) Many environmentalists believe that funds that are going to be used for the pipeline, could be moved towards weatherization. Cailey Cron again: 22m0s A charge that has been lobbed at anti-pipeline activists is ok well what’s the better solution, you want a clean energy future doesn’t everyone well it can’t happen tomorrow, and until then we are going to be reliant on blahblahblahblahblah…But if this is really about helping Vermonters and really about cutting down on our energy bills, it’s really convenient that Vermont gas is the number one supplier of weatherization services. Why don’t we give that 66.6 million dollars that ratepayers will be paying… why don’t we channel that towards weatherization…That will create far more jobs, that will save people far more money in the long run. (Cron)

We posed the topic of weatherization to Steve Wark from Vermont Gas. He said that he is in favor of weatherizing homes, which Vermont Gas funds. The issue is who will pay for this huge investment, which he views as separate from the pipeline proposal. But some interviewees suggesting that instead of replacing the pipeline with a weatherization program, the two could be connected. Sandy Levine elaborated: 7m50s How that would work is a per unit charge on the gas that’s sold through the pipeline, that would fund energy efficiency statewide… the most greenhouse gas reductions for the lowest cost comes from insulating homes and businesses and really increasing thermal efficiency. Vermont as you know is a really cold climate, there is a lot of low hanging fruit… we see that as the best opportunity in Vermont to reduce greenhouse gases and functionally share the economic benefit of the pipeline with others in the state as a way that would reduce greenhouse gases and not increase them. (Levine)

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We asked Steve Wark if this idea could work. And he said that it would be unlikely, since the funds for this weatherization would have to come from two sources: either investors or the Vermonters who buy from Vermont Gas, known as ratepayers. Steve said that it’s not fair to place this extra cost on investors since it would cut directly into their profit, and it’s not fair for ratepayers alone to pay for everyone’s weatherization. He told us that, “if this is so imperative for the state, this should be a statewide tax where everybody pays. And if that’s the case, then this is not the vehicle to advance that agenda.” (Wark) We found that while Vermont Gas might not pay for weatherization voluntarily, the Public Service Board could make it a condition for the approval of their certificate of Public Good. Here’s Sandy Levine again: 10m0s CLF has recommended that that be required as a condition from the VT Public Service Board… there are routinely conditions put on projects going forward, and frankly, all Vermonters are ponying up their environment to support a pipeline like this so why shouldn’t we be sure that a pipeline like this is benefitting all Vermonters. (Levine) 12m0s All energy project have environmental impacts, hopefully all energy projects have some benefits as well. I think it’s the role of regulation to balance those burdens and those benefits. (Levine) To learn more about the Public Service Board process, please listen to our podcast on Decision- Making. The other solution to reach Vermont’s energy goals was not an energy source at all- it was a way to regulate energy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Many people suggested to us that a carbon tax, which would put a price on polluters whose energy emits greenhouse gases, would incentivize cleaner fuels. Leigh Seddon at the Energy Action Network believes that a carbon tax is one of the best solutions to climate change. 1hr3m13s We need to price carbon. Carbon is already being priced when you, everybody pays subsidies for solar power. There’s 30% solar tax credit that makes solar power affordable. That is a carbon tax that everybody pays. And I think it would be much more rational simply to price carbon, so everybody’s decisions about fuels that have carbon versus renewable is more of a level playing field. Then you don’t have to have special subsidies for solar, or wind. (Seddon) Chris Klyza, professor of environmental policy, agrees. 29m30s I think the key to moving us in the right direction is to put a price on carbon, and to jack that up. (Klyza)

But until that price, the question remains: 2m30 What role does gas play? Clearly it will be playing a role, but it needs to fit with our overall climate objectives. (Levine) Thanks for listening to our podcast, Energy Options, we hope that you listen to the rest of our series Vermont Talks Energy

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9.1.e Decision-Making

Decision-Making

narrated by Anna Ready-Campbell

A.) Interviewees

Billy Coster Senior Planner and Policy Analyst for Agency of Natural Resources

Linda McGinnis

Sustainability Analyst and former Director of the Governor’s Commission on Energy Siting

Sandy Levine Lawyer at the Conservation Law Foundation

Claire Tebbs Community Planner at the Addison County Regional Planning Commission

Jack Byrne Director of Sustainability Integration at Middlebury College

Leigh Seddon Chair of the Board at the Energy Action Network

Nate Palmer* Monkton farmer, affected landowner, and activist

Bill Roper Founder and President of Slow Communities

Gaye Symington

Former Speaker of the Vermont House of Representatives, Executive Director of The High Meadows Fund

* Interview acquired from the Addison Independent via Luke Whelan. B.) Outline 1. What Is The Decision-Making Process For The Addison Natural Gas Project?

I. Public Service Board 1.) Process A. Pre-File Phase B. File Petition And Apply For Other Permits C. Determine Parties D. Hearings E. Decision 2.) Parties

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A. ANR And Department Of Public Service B. Interveners: RPCs, CLF, Others

2. What Is The Process Supposed To Do? I. Representation II. Regulation 3. Evaluation I. PSB Pros 1.) Open 2.) Expert Analysis 3.) Variety Of Viewpoints II. PSB Cons 1.) Quasi-Judicial: Formal, Technical, And Expensive 2.) Can Be Undemocratic 3.) Reactive, Limited Power To Say No 3. Change I. Different Energy Projects II. Different Process

1.) Community Participation A. B. Intervener Funding C. Cooperation Between RPCs And Select Boards 2.) Outreach A. What Does Local Governance Look Like B. Outreach Position On PSB

3.) Town Planning A. Long-Term Analysis B. Incentives 4. Challenges I. Implementation 1.) Funding C.) Script BACKGROUND Many people wish they could decide whether to build the pipeline. But who does? Who actually has the power of approval? And what does the decision making process look like? Does it serve Vermont residents? Could it be improved? The answers, of course, aren’t straightforward. This is the Decision-Making podcast in our Vermont Talks Energy series. It documents the process of us learning about the process--the nitty-gritty details, the good, the bad, and what it might look like in the future. As soon as we started conducting interviews, we discovered that the Public Service Board will make the final decision on the pipeline. But we had no idea what the Public Service Board was,

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who was on it, how it functioned, or its role in state government. We had to do research on vermont.gov and read “A Citizen’s Guide to the Vermont Public Service Board’s Section 248 Process” a few times to wrap our heads around it all. The board is made up of three members, including a chairman. It regulates many of Vermont’s public utilities. Applicants also have to petition it to build new energy facilities or to buy energy from new sources, which is relevant to the pipeline and all new energy projects. When considering petitions, the board looks at environmental and economic impacts. Section 248, a piece of a Vermont law, states ten criteria that the new project or source has to meet. The criteria address environment, need, reliability, and economic benefit. If the board approves the project or source, it issues a Certificate of Public Good, a CPG, to the applicant. In technical language, the board is quasi-judicial, which means it functions sort of like a court. It holds two types of hearings, evidentiary and public. Only formal parties participate in evidentiary hearings, which are similar to trials. Everything is on legal record. For the most part, participating parties need lawyers and outside experts. Public hearings are off the legal record. In the end, the Board has to make its decision only on information from the record. 8m30s It’s complicated! (Tebbs) That was Claire Tebbs, Land Use Planner on the Addison County Regional Planning Commission. And she’s absolutely right. Stick with us as we outline the main steps of applying to the PSB for a CPG. PROCESS A. petition: It begins with a petition. Billy Coster, senior planner and policy analyst at the Agency of Natural Resources, explained that even before the process officially starts, there’s a pre-file phase. 8m15s Basically, the way that it works there’s a fairly drawn out pre-file phase, where before they file their permit applications, they’re working with, most developers are working with all the stakeholders. Ideally they’re working in a constructive ways with communities, not always, with individual landowners. For a linear project like this, they’re going out and trying to get access to do resource assessment studies. Or they’re trying to get rights of way, potentially, for the project. And they’re working with us to provide additional information. (Coster) B. file petition After the petition is filed, the board has to plan how to manage the case. Part of that is figuring out who the parties might be. C. determine parties By default, formal parties are the applicant, the Department of Public Service, and the Agency of Natural Resources. Others can apply for intervener status. An intervener is a person or organization that becomes a formal party by applying and meeting the board’s criteria. Among

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other things, interveners have to prove they have substantial interest. They can be landowners, environmental organizations, businesses, etc. Billy Coster on party roles: 10m45s The PSB is kind of like the judge, it’s the court. And the applicant, the developer, is one party in the case, on one side. And then, in law, there are two statutory parties. Us, the Agency of Natural Resources, and Department of Public Service. So, for every certificate of public good proceeding we are expected to be there, and we need to provide testimony and findings in all the different stages of the case to the board. 11m30s Other state agencies can become parties, they have to intervene, but generally they’re let in. And then any party can intervene the board to get standing, but they have to show that their interests are somehow materially affected by the project. (Coster) D. hearings Hearings follow. The board has to have a public hearing in at least one county where the project is proposed. At public hearings, there are sign up sheets to talk. Comments, of course, aren’t on record, but can raise new issues or perspectives. The board might ask parties for evidence on something addressed in a public hearing. Evidentiary hearings are more complicated. There’s a lot of paperwork, including prefiled testimony and briefs. E. decision Finally, the board writes its decision into an order, which can be appealed to the Vermont Supreme Court. The PSB is scheduled to make a decision about the pipeline before the end of 2013. PARTIES AND ROLES That’s the short version. Once we understood what the process was, we were able to figure out who could influence it, and how. We started by talking to one of the automatic formal parties, the Agency of Natural Resources (ANR). Billy Coster: A. ANR - automatic 2m03s We are a statutory party to the Public Service Board section 248 proceedings, where they look at new energy transmission and generation projects. The PSB issues what’s called a certificate of public good, which the primary permit these projects need. So in that law it says that ANR needs to basically show up to every 248 proceeding and provide evidence and recommendations to the board on the natural resource criteria that are spelled out in section 248. (Coster) 6m45s We are sort of agnostic. We’re not saying one development project is better than the other, we’re really just looking at the impact on resources…We try to give them advice on how to minimize those resource impacts. (Coster) Again, the other automatic formal parties are the applicant, in this case Vermont Gas Systems, and the Department of Public Service.

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B. RPCs - intervener Everyone else applies for intervener status. We heard from two organizational interveners, the Addison County Regional Planning Commission (RPC), and the Conservation Law Foundation (CLF). Other organizations intervened, too. The Addison County RPC and CLF were simply two important ones we had the chance to talk to. Townspeople and landowners also intervened. For the most part, individuals have a really different experience, though. We’ll address the ups and downs of individual intervention later. To give a little background on RPCs, there are eleven in Vermont. One of their main charges is to draft town plans. The Addison County RPC also facilitates discussion between towns, helps them gather information, and develops regional plans. In Claire Tebbs’ words, their mission is to: 10m25s Provide support services to the towns of Addison County for making planning, strategic planning decisions. And there’s a regional plan that RPCs are responsible for writing. (Tebbs) 14m45s The town, as a municipality could go to the PSB and say, and get party status so that they could file testimony to them, and say ‘hey, this is what we’re having trouble with.’ At the same time, the RPC can do the same thing, and say ‘hey, we’re in support of this, here’s our memorandum of understanding, with these caveats’, and file their own testimony, and say ‘we think this project is good, but we want you to do this and this and this.’ And that’s what Addison Country RPC has done. (Tebbs) C. CLF Sandra Levine, senior analyst at the Conversation Law Foundation (CLF), described the foundation’s role. 5m20s We are parties to the PSB, intervened at the PSB proceedings, and recommended against approving Phase one of the pipeline, that it doesn’t meet Vermont’s greenhouse gas reduction goals, it will increase greenhouse gas emissions, and as proposed the project doesn’t supply the public good that’s required. (Levine) 6m20s CLF, although we’ve opposed the project as it’s proposed, we’ve also provided recommendations for conditions that could be put on the pipeline if the project is approved. And those conditions have looked at how do we limit the use going forward, so this is not a project that we’re going to rely on, both in the out years and for uses we may not want. ROLE OF GOVERNMENT Before hearing about what does and doesn’t work about the PSB process, we have to ask: why does it exist? In other words, to tell if it’s functional, we have to understand what its function is. Most people don’t know what the board is, but they do know what they want the government to do in Vermont’s energy conversations: one, represent Vermont residents, and two, regulate to minimize economic burden and environmental impact. In the pipeline debate, those

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responsibilities fall to the PSB. If the board approves the pipeline, will it add conditions that regulate how it fits into Vermont’s overall energy future? Will those conditions represent Vermonters’ various opinions and needs? Some of those needs are individually specific, like land use. Regulation can help balance individual interest with public good and with the applicant’s profit. Regulation also helps keep long-term, statewide energy goals on track. For example, Vermont’s Comprehensive Energy Plan calls for 90% renewable energy by 2050. Vermont needs government to keep steering policy and energy projects toward that goal. Levine says: 12m00s All energy projects have impacts, environmental impacts. Hopefully all energy projects have some benefits as well. And I think it’s the role of regulation to balance those burdens and those benefits. (Levine) 10m00s There are routinely conditions put on projects going forward. And, frankly, all Vermonters are ponying up their environment to support a pipeline like this, so why shouldn’t we make sure that that pipeline benefits all Vermonters. (Levine) We also spoke with Leigh Seddon, a board member of the Energy Action Network. EAN brings businesses, nonprofits, and government leaders together in one room to talk about a sustainable energy future. He thinks the PSB can influence the energy future beyond just saying yes or no to the pipeline. 17m23s Vermont Natural Gas is a regulated industry, which oil, the oil dealers are not. They are regulated by the PSB just like electricity is. The PSB can say, “well, Vermont Gas, as a condition for building this pipeline, we are going to require you to building audits for any new customer, has to have a free building audit from you, and you have to take their thermal envelope and their energy equipment, thermal equipment, to the highest standards.” (Seddon) 20m45s Having the pipeline built might not be such a bad thing, if the state takes all the precautions it can to make sure we’re not locking out efficiency, not locking in risk, and there’s a lot they can do. (Seddon) PROS AND CONS Understanding the details of the PSB process helped us figure out how well it represents Vermonters and balances those Section 248 criteria--environment, need, reliability, and economic benefit--through regulation. Of course, no process represents everyone. No set of regulations balances burdens and benefits perfectly. PSB PROS A. Open process One of the good things about the PSB process is it’s pretty transparent. As a lawyer, Levine finds it especially accessible.

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24m50s I think over all the PSB process is a good one. It’s relatively open for people who have an interest and will be affected by a project to participate. And it is a public process. They operate in the public sphere. The information that is presented to them is available to anyone. (Levine) B. Expert analysis Gathering expert evidence is another good aspect of the process. 43m20s That’s part of the benefit of the PSB process, is that people can intervene around narrow sets of issues. So we have to do this kind of catchall, look at all the natural resource criteria. We’ll comment on testimony, but other parties can really drill into specific issues like that that may be a little less cut-and-dry. (Coster) C. Many viewpoints Because there are multiple parties, the experts they hire offer many different viewpoints. Leigh Seddon: 13m52s But when you look at that process [the PSB process], at least when I look at it, I find that it’s actually pretty thorough, and it actually starts surfacing some of the contradictions in some of these individual viewpoints, and driving towards a deeper understanding of the energy future. (Seddon) PSB CONS A. Formal, technical I. expensive Not everyone feels as comfortable with the level of procedural legality as Levine does, though. Evidentiary hearings are technical. Levine acknowledges that they’re not easy to jump into without a law degree. 25m25s It is a difficult process for neighbors, for activists, for people without a lawyer. It’s a very formal, technical process. It is difficult, but it’s not impossible. I have seen activists, I’ve seen towns effectively participate in that process. And I’ve seen the board make sure that the information that’s being provided by them is incorporated into their decisions and into what they consider. It’s expensive, if you hire an expert to present, information is costing you anywhere from $10,000 to $50,000, and if you, the utility or the proponent of a project usually has more money than you do to present their side. That’s true in many legal proceedings. But I think that there are still opportunities to have, to have a voice heard. (Levine) Bill Roper, also a lawyer, is the Founder and President of Slow Communities, which helps organizations and towns build sustainable community. Bill also serves on the Weybridge Planning Commission. He emphasized that the process works better for some--specifically, those with money.

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33m45s Big energy utility that’s got a lot of money, it’s a Canadian-owned parent company that has even more money. They’ve got a process that is geared towards approving this kind of thing. (Roper) ii. Undemocratic Because public hearings aren’t on the record, and evidentiary hearings are expensive and hard to follow for non-lawyers, some people find the PSB process unfair and inaccessible. This, we found, was the crux of the issue. Is the process democratic? If one of the PSB’s primary roles is to represent people, does it succeed? Bill Roper thinks perhaps not. 7m15s The unfortunate thing about that process is that virtually everything that everybody said doesn’t impact the process at all. The PSB has these very established discrete criteria on which they have to make findings, and you have to have a certain interest in making your position known in order for them even to listen to you. (Roper) 7m51s It’s an extraordinarily frustrating process because people went there, they spoke up, they think their voices matter, and they will come to learn, if they dig deeply, that the board isn’t required to listen to them at all. (Roper) Here’s Levine again on representation in the PSB process. 24m35s Anna: A lot of activists are frustrated with the process in that they feel it’s difficult to get their voices heard at the PSB. It is! (Levine) She has faith that the process can work well, however. 29m30s It’s not helpful for the conversation to be so polarized that the public feels both very shut out and not heard, and that the public just needs to have faith in the system. I think that the system needs to show that it’s worthy of the faith that it’s asking the public to put in them. (Levine) Jake- what’s your biggest issue? 25m30s Mine has to do with what I see as the undemocratic nature of the public service board process and what I see as the classic, big guy screwing over the little guy… (Cron) 12m20s And the public service board… is a group of three, middle aged white men, they are gubernatorially appointed, so they are not beholden to any electorate… who has individuals within his administration who were formally employed by Vermont Gas. (Cron) That was Cailey Cron, a student and activist at Middlebury College. Even for people who get in the room as interveners, the process can still be frustrating. Nate Palmer of Monkton applied and was approved. Luke Whelan, a Middlebury College student who worked for the Addison Independent this summer, let us use audio from his interview with

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Palmer. Though others, including Levine, thought the PSB did a good job incorporating his testimony, Palmer’s experience with the board was rough. 13m30 “been doing tons and tons of paperwork” (Palmer) 4m25s “my life is being consumed by this process and it sucks- it’s not what I want to do” (Palmer) 6m30s “all you can do is hunker down and defend yourself and hope things don’t go wrong” (Palmer) B. Reactive and limited power to say no The PSB must be reactive. It can only deny a petition that doesn’t meet the section 248 criteria. ANR’s influence is similarly restricted. Of course, it’s not the role of the PSB or ANR to come up with his or her own energy plans. But legal limitations make it hard for the PSB and ANR to contribute to long-term thinking or planning. 41m05s In reality, we have to be reactive to what people propose. (Coster) Often, legal process keeps the PSB and ANR from being able to entirely reject projects. ANR can’t say no to a project only because it doesn’t fit into their ideal energy future. Their recommendations must be specific to the project and its effect on natural resources. 50m40s I think what’s challenging for people is that the way that energy, the way section 248 is set up, is that there’s this assumption that energy generation and transmission is in the public good, that it meets some reliability and other public policy needs, and there are standards set out, and as long as a project meets those standards, generally, they’re going to go forward. And that the process often will refine, and change, and adjust a project to bring it in conformance with those standards, but it’s not very often that it says completely no. (Coster) 59m25s Anna: Can the board be effective at moving the state towards its energy goals? When there is a specific energy related public policy goal, I think the PSB process can be pretty effective at implementing in the affirmative. I think it’s harder for them to do things in the negative. Like the gas pipeline for instance. That would have had to have a really negative and demonstrated impact against our greenhouse gas goals for that to significantly weigh on the decision. (Coster) CHANGE The whole process, good parts and bad, will probably change in the future. It’s already started to. It used to be that the PSB dealt mostly with extending transmission lines from central generation. Now, there are more, different types of energy projects. The current process doesn’t work as well for the new volume and type of work. Governor Shumlin put together an Electric Generation Siting Commission in 2012 to look at how the process could be improved now that the PSB’s duties are shifting. The commission came up with recommendations for the PSB and town energy conversations that are relevant to the pipeline and other future projects. Linda McGinnis was director of the commission.

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4m30s “About ten years ago, a decade ago in the early 2000s, the PSB had an average of 0 dockets coming before them on energy generation siting—for 3 years, no dockets whatsoever. Over the past 3 years, they’ve had an average of 16—and that’s a lot. And those 16 are in large part because we have had policies in place, good policies, that have encouraged a huge investment in renewable energy generation. But what that means is, as a board, not only the numbers of dockets they have to consider, which is an enormous increase, but also the variety of technologies and what the implications are for the environment, for municipalities, for regions, and for transmission lines, all that kind of thing.” (McGinnis) 5m40s “There’s an enormous range of new issues that have come up and so the reason the governor wanted to put the commission together was to look at two broad areas. One is how can Vermont learn from the experiences of other states and its own experience to improve public participation in the process to ensure that voices are being heard and weighed adequately. And second, how can we...improve the efficiency of the siting process itself. Because it appears from most participants in the process to be slower and less transparent process than most participants would like to be.” (McGinnis) If energy projects are changing, maybe the process does, too, to keep representing Vermonters and steering toward state energy goals. Considerable conflict over the pipeline suggests that the system could function better. 52m40s It’s less about getting between point A and point B, and people are beginning to argue, it is about what’s happening in our communities. So you should give us more weight in that conversation. (Coster) A. Community participation As we heard again and again, the current system makes it hard for the public to participate. Improving the process must include providing other ways for people to get involved and feel recognized. Again, Levine weighs in: 28m15s There need to be better ways to include public input in any energy decision. These are big decisions that we as a people make. And we are now asking three people in the state of Vermont to give the thumbs up or thumbs down on that. And they need to have input from as broad a cross-section as possible. And currently they get input from the people who participate in the technical hearings, and then they have one or two public hearings where a lot of people show up and express their views. (Levine) Coster, though he agreed, also made the case for keeping the process broad and fairly objective. 53m30s I don’t think it will ever get to the point where there’s pure local decision-making in these decisions because energy is a statewide public policy endeavor. And I think there needs to be some higher level analysis happening, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there were more opportunities for towns to at least influence what kind of generation transmission occurs in their towns, if at all. (Coster)

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What are some concrete ways to improve the process? A lot of our interviewees had solutions. I. Intervener Funding First, Levine suggests intervener funding: 29m I think it would be really helpful to perhaps have a broader opportunity for public input. Have the public raise issues, have the public have some say in what issues get studied, or get looked at further. One means to do that, and some other states have done that, is have what’s called intervener funding. A pot of money that’s available for additional studies. So that would be one means to do that. (Levine) II. RPC and Select Board cooperation Second, Tebbs thinks that more cooperation between RPCs and Select Boards would also help smooth the process and offer new avenues for people to be represented. 52m45s What I wish is the Select Board and the planning commissions worked more together, because there’s a very consistent divide with many of the towns I work for that they’re two different groups and they’re not discussing issues early enough on together. The select board may have their budget in mind, and they may have discussed the logistics and technicalities of their decisions, and it comes to a very black-and-white number decision, where the planning commission is looking at it a little bit from a lots of different angles, and not just considering the immediate financial. And if the two talked earlier on in the process, it would be a much healthier process. And a much fairer process, where more voices are heard, and you get the public involved in more creative opportunities to participate. (Tebbs) B. Outreach NEED FOR EDUCATION: After community participation, we heard most about outreach. As a member of an RPC, Tebbs realizes that her job is mysterious to most Vermonters. She thinks that the role of her commission should be to educate residents about all levels of state government. 57m05s Often we talk about what are our goals as RPCs, and I think there’s huge need to provide education and outreach on what local governance and involvement looks like, and what planning is. If you want good implementation, I don’t, nobody knows how this works. (Tebbs) 57m45s No one tells you how it works. Which is a huge missing link. (Tebbs) 58m58s There needs to be young people knowing how to click into the system and improve it, and be involved in it. And then, get money to make it better. (Tebbs) EDUCATOR: One way to educate Vermonters about the PSB process specifically would be to make a new position on the board. 46m35sThey don’t really have an outreach person to help people understand the process and where things stand. We’ve been pushing hard, a coalition of folks, to actually have the PSB create a case manager or an “um-butsman position” that would be a kind of external relations

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person, who could answer procedural questions without having to write formal orders, asking questions, and just make it a little bit more user-friendly for especially for interveners. (Coster) McGinnis and the Siting Commission recommended the same: 13m00s And a key element, which I’m not sure is going to go through anymore, for transparent process, is to have somebody called a case manager work for PSB, somebody who is allowed to talk to the public about the process. Someone who is allowed to hold the hands of both developers and the public who want to participate in the process to help them understand what is expected of everyone because it is so hard to understand.” (McGinnis) B. Planning Communities have to understand the decision-making process and how to take part in it for the state to successfully implement policies that will get Vermont to its energy goals. Without community-level cooperation and initiative, big state plans will fail. That’s why towns and regions should start planning, too. Community participation and outreach make the third procedural change, more planning, possible. I. Long-Term Analysis Concerned with keeping and improving parts of the process that take into account statewide data and goals, Jack Byrne called for broader and longer-term thinking in the future. He’s director of sustainability integration at Middlebury College. 32m55s What we always lack in these things is a really good analysis of what’s the current state of affairs, and how does this proposed change, how does that change that current state of affairs for the better and for the worse, and then what’s the net difference. I mean that’s really hard to do. But I think it’s often missing from the overall analysis. Particularly in how we get to 90% renewables by 2050 in Vermont. That’s no easy task. (Byrne) Byrne’s comment about 90% renewables by 2050 refers to the statewide Comprehensive Energy Plan. The plan aims for Vermont to have 90% renewable energy by 2050. The Siting Commission recommended planning, as well. In their final report, they wrote that planning could make the process more efficient, approachable, and representative. It could get towns involved in the process earlier if developers can read specifically what they do and don’t want. If only projects confident of community support started the PSB process, applicants could avoid investing in projects that the community would fight long and hard against. 8m00s The state needs to come up with some scenario planning that will give an idea to regions and to towns what it will take to reach a 90% goal by 2050, that’s sort of the broad goal. Then at a secondary level, the regional planning commissions themselves need to be given the tools, the guidance, and the resources to be able to determine what their regions can do to help contribute to that overall state goal, with the understanding that there are a wide range of scenarios that don’t just include electricity, or don’t just include wind, or don’t just include solar, but that show the range of decisions, including efficiency, which is enormous, that each region do to help the state contribute to that goal.” (McGinnis)

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II. Give Towns Power in PSB hearings (Siting Commission) To incentivize planning, McGinnis and the siting commission suggested giving towns with plans more power in the PSB process. More details can be found in their final report. Coster also sees planning as a way to make the process more efficient and less contentious. 1hr02m30s There’s been a fair amount of conversation about can towns be more proactive in planning for energy generation and transmission in the future. In a way that doesn’t say, “we don’t want anything, we don’t want nothing anywhere, but these are appropriate areas for solar, if there was going to be a transmission line, we want it to go through a road corridor versus cross-country.” And I think there’s ways that communities can do that work not when there’s a project bearing down on them, but in a more general way, that’s thoughtful and acknowledges that we’re going to need to produce more power locally, and we’re going to need to transmit more power, and here are the places we want you to do it. And if they do that, it both gives them more power in the PSB proceedings, and it gives hopefully responsible developers where to start with the community. (Coster) CHALLENGES in future process Meeting statewide energy goals outlined in the CEP will be a challenge. But how the transition from fossil fuels to renewables will look remains uncertain. Which renewables? What sort of new infrastructure do we need? Exactly how many wind turbines or solar fields or hydroelectric dams or heat pumps would we need to build to achieve our goals? How will Vermont pay for the transition? These are hard decisions to make. No matter which energy source or sources Vermont commits to, there will be costs and benefits. But without decisive commitment in one direction or another, implementation of any energy plan is impossible. I. Implementation 1hr02m25sThe Comprehensive Energy Plan is probably the best state plan of any of the fifty states. It really is comprehensive. We need to implement it, nobody’s really talking about implementing it. (Seddon) Implementing the CEP requires statewide cooperation, but also local and regional participation. Local and regional government includes select boards, town planning commissions, regional planning commissions. And those boards and commissions can only plan for the energy future and make concrete goals or recommendations if they have funding. Tebbs, as a member of the Addison County RPC, said this about funding: 25m50s I would say it ebbs and flows, with what is made priority at a federal and state level. If it’s priority there, then it kind of trickles down to regional planning, and we can allow it to be priority. So I’m not saying the structure is a model structure, as far as, you know, where the funds go, and when we can do what, but that’s what it looks like now. (Tebbs) Right now, limited money means:

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43m33s You’re really stuck at this day-to-day maintenance level, and I find that very, very frustrating. Especially if there’s a town out there that really wants to do more, there’s not enough support for planning, and implementation, the two should go hand-in-hand. (Tebbs) Again, the Siting Commission did a lot of research about funding avenues. Their final report includes that research. Like the Siting Commission’s recommendations, it’s hard to compress everything we learned about the process into one podcast. In the end, Sam said it best. 56m54s Sam: There are just so many pieces that you just don’t really think about. You think, ‘there’s a president of the United States, and me.’ You just don’t think of all the steps in between. Thanks for listening.