Lawmakers review Vermont’s Global Warming Solutions Act: rule deadlines, enforcement and a lawsuit

At a House Energy and Digital Infrastructure Committee briefing, Ellen Tchaikovsky of the Office of Legislative Counsel gave lawmakers an overview of the Global Warming Solutions Act and the statute’s rulemaking deadlines, enforcement mechanisms and recent litigation.

The Global Warming Solutions Act (GWSA), enacted as Act 153 in 2020, converts Vermont’s greenhouse‑gas reduction goals into binding requirements and assigns primary responsibility for rulemaking to the Agency of Natural Resources (ANR). Tchaikovsky told the committee the statute requires ANR to adopt rules consistent with the Vermont Climate Action Plan and to publish a factual record showing the rules are reasonably likely to achieve the greenhouse‑gas reduction requirements.

The law sets numeric reduction targets and time lines that lawmakers heard are already in play. The GWSA requires reductions of at least 26% from 2005 levels by Jan. 1, 2025; 40% from 1990 levels by Jan. 1, 2030; and 80% from 1990 levels by Jan. 1, 2050. Tchaikovsky noted the most recent state inventory available to the committee covered emissions through 2021 and placed Vermont at about 8,280,000 metric tons of carbon‑dioxide equivalent for that year, with the 2025 target at roughly 7,300,000 metric tons. She emphasized the inventory’s data lag, because each year’s inventory requires a full year of data collection and analysis.

The Climate Council, a 23‑member body created by the statute, develops the Vermont…