February 25, 2025
Dear Senator Anne Watson and Members of the Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Energy,
The Sierra Club believes that Vermont needs to continue advancing policies that create a stable and reliable pricing environment and good-paying jobs while achieving our necessary climate emissions reductions. Vermonters benefit from policies that promote energy price competitiveness, rate predictability, and a path that encourages community solar. Energy affordability is a critical issue and we must encourage every effort to add cost-effective, zero-emission energy generation to our electric grid.
The Vermont Sierra Club supports the Standard Offer program for the following reasons:
- The Standard Offer program ensures a predictable minimum renewable build rate that locks in early climate benefits. Because of the least-cost planning obligations under which utilities operate, their ability to build projects in anticipation of future load growth is constrained.
- The standard offer program provides long-term predictability of revenue. This enables developers to finance projects by reducing financial risk.
- Historically, virtual net metering provided the sole avenue for community-owned projects. With the phaseout of off-site/virtual net metering due to cost concerns, there is now no mechanism for community ownership. The Standard Offer program, with a standard power purchase agreement (PPA) and guaranteed off-takers, would provide a pathway for community solar within a program that has proven to be lower cost than virtual net metering.
- The reverse auction mechanism used in the Standard Offer program has an excellent track record of delivering cost-competitive projects.
We urge the Vermont Senate to pass S.57, An act relating to the Standard Offer Program.