Renewable Energy Standard: witness tells House committee RECs are how Vermont legally claims renewable power; benefits and rate impacts debated

Peter Sterling, executive director of Renewable Energy Vermont, told the House Energy and Digital Infrastructure Committee on Feb. 6 that the state’s Renewable Energy Standard (RES) depends on retiring renewable energy credits, or RECs, and that retiring those credits is how utilities can legally claim renewable electricity.

Sterling told the panel that the REC system is an accounting mechanism layered on top of the physical grid: "The only way you can legally say you use renewable power is to retire the renewable energy credit from Hydro Quebec or a NIPO dam in Northern New York," he said, using a raffle-certificate analogy to explain ownership of RECs. He said that without the RES requirement to retire RECs, almost 60% of Vermont’s electricity would be accounted for as coming from the region’s nonrenewable sources.

Why it matters: The RES determines what Vermont can claim about the carbon intensity of its electricity supply and affects whether more renewable projects get built in state. The committee heard competing framings: Sterling emphasized modeled…