Electricity key to meeting state energy goals

Andrew McKeever

GNAT-TV News Project

MANCHESTER — By 2050, 90 percent of the state’s energy needs are supposed to met by renewable energy sources, according to a plan developed by the state’s Public Service Department.

Getting to that goal won’t be easy, and won’t happen all at once. It will require a vast increase in the use of electricity to replace fossil fuels, particularly when it comes to transportation needs, Jim Sullivan the executive director of the Bennington County Regional Commission told an audience of about 30 people at Manchester’s Town Hall on Dec. 1.

But it will also require lowering the total amount of energy consumed in the first place as well, he said.

“To get to that goal of 90 percent renewables by 2050, we have to reduce that total usage by quite a bit,” he said.

How much is quite  bit? According to the presentation Sullivan delivered, that would require a statewide drop of more than 30 percent from today’s consumption levels; from roughly 120 million BTU’s (British thermal units, a commonly used measurement of energy consumption, or the amount of work needed to raise the temperature of one pound of water by one degree Fahrenheit) to less than 80 million BTU’s by 2050.

Energy use in Vermont, as elsewhere, revolves around transportation, heating and commercial applications. All of those sectors have a role to play if the state’s goals are to be met, but one of the keys to making that happen will be a massive changeover in the transportation area, where a vast increase in electric cars, replacing today’s gasoline powered vehicles, would be needed, he said.

About 25,000 vehicles, nearly all of them gas or diesel powered, are currently in use around the Bennington region served by the regional commission based in Bennington, which is largely the same as Bennington County’s borders, with a few exceptions such as the towns of Searsburg and Readsboro, which are part of the neighboring Windham region. In order to get the region’s use of renewable fuels up to what will be needed to help reach the 90 percent marker, about 13,000 of those vehicles would have to be electrically powered by 2050, Sullivan said.

The model for getting to the target goal when it comes to transportation’s contribution will also assume an increase in the use of public transportation, he added.

Electrical use in general will have to ramp up significantly from present levels to displace fossil fuels. According to a chart Sullivan presented, electric use statewide would need to double, while use of gasoline cut back to a fraction of its current levels. A shift in the profile of energy consumption of the Bennington region would need to follow suit.

One possible advantage for Vermont in the transition away from fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas is the the likely alternatives to replace potentially could be more home-grown. Residents and businesses in Bennington County alone spend about $160 million on energy, and most of that money is “exported,” Sullivan said.

“The vast majority of that money is spent out of state, so one reason to try to keep more of that local money local (allows it) to be reinvested in local projects,” he said.

But that also runs up against a problem — energy sources like wind, solar and geothermal energy generation tends to occur where the resources are in the first place, he said.

Coal and other fossil fuels are more readily transportable and moved from place to place where needed.

“The tricky thing about renewables is that by and large you have to have the generation where the resources exist,” he said.