January 1 marked Vermont’s first deadline to reduce climate warming greenhouse gas emissions under its landmark climate law — the Global Warming Solutions Act.
A preliminary report out this week suggests the state did not meet its deadline.
The report looks at emissions from heat and transportation.
“These are our two most significant sectors when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions,” said Julie Moore, Vermont’s secretary of natural resources. “So the fact that taken together they are level does suggest that the 2025 GWSA requirement may not be met.”
The Agency of Natural Resources is responsible for ensuring Vermont stays on track to meet its statutory emissions deadlines, and for keeping track of its progress.
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ANR had previously said as recently as last summer it believed Vermont was on track to meet the 2025 deadline, despite warnings from environmental groups in early 2024 that the state was failing to cut emissions fast enough.
Last year, the advocacy group Conservation Law Foundation sued the agency over what it alleges is its failure to take action to keep Vermont in compliance with the GWSA.
That lawsuit is ongoing, and CLF declined to comment for this story, pending further review of the state’s claims.
ANR hired a consultant to help them refine their modeling this fall, and this report constitutes the first major update since then.
Vermont’s Agency of Natural Resources crunched the numbers by looking at fuel sales data for fuel oil and kerosene as well as propane, gasoline and diesel oil in 2023 and 2024.
From 2023 to 2024, Vermont made no significant progress in reducing its emissions from transportation and home heat, the report from ANR found.
Liquid heating fuel sales decreased by about 4.8% over that time period, and gasoline sales increased by roughly 1% during that time.
However, ANR points out that fossil heating fuel sales — excluding propane, for which sales are increasing — have decreased in Vermont every year since 2019, and were 24% lower in 2024 than they were prior to the pandemic. Similarly, gasoline sales have declined by 8% in that time.
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Moore says declining commuting rates because of the COVID-19 pandemic are likely at play, as are warmer winters. But she still credits much of the progress to investments Vermont has made in recent years in weatherization, heat pump rebates and other programs. She estimates the state has dedicated roughly $400 million in federal funds to this effort over the last five years, as well as $100 million in state funds.
What’s less clear is how much of that progress is because of climate change itself.
Vermont has been seeing steadily fewer days when people need to heat their homes for some time.
Winters here are warming faster than the global average, largely due to human-caused climate change, and 2024 was the warmest year on record for the state.
“Based on what we have seen to date, it is probable that the largest factor in declining fossil heating fuel sales is related to a decline in heating demand,” said Jared Duval, who leads the data analysis nonprofit Energy Action Network.
Last year, EAN ran their own analysis of Vermont’s progress on reducing emissions from home heating fuels from 2018 to 2023.
Their report found that more and more Vermonters are heating with lower-carbon appliances every year and getting their homes weatherized.
For example, in 2015, electric utilities estimated there were fewer than 1,500 heat pumps in the state. By 2023, that figure jumped to nearly 60,000 — which is still roughly two-thirds of what the Climate Action Plan says Vermont would need to meet the 2025 emissions deadline under the Global Warming Solutions Act.
And while those heat pumps are certainly driving emissions reductions, EAN determined that the driving force behind declining heating fuel sales in recent years was warmer winters.
He says they plan to update their analysis this spring to reflect data from 2024.
Moore also called the data “noisy,” but said she believes fuel use in the state is declining faster than would be expected if the trend were being driven by fewer heating days alone.
Duval with EAN says that needs to be explored further.
Together, transportation and home heating account for roughly 70% of Vermont’s annual greenhouse gas emissions, making them good bellwethers for the state’s progress overall. This report does not include natural gas sales for the year, as that data is not yet available.
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The Global Warming Solutions Act says Vermont’s 2025 Greenhouse Gas Inventory will be the final judge of whether the state met the 2025 emissions reduction deadline. That report is due to be completed in 2027, and experts at the state say it’s unlikely the figures for home heating and transportation will change much between now and then.
The two-year lag in reporting time is due to a delay in the state’s ability to calculate emissions from agriculture, which accounts for a substantially smaller portion of Vermont’s overall emissions.
When asked if ANR will consider new regulations or programs to help Vermont reduce emissions faster and comply with the GWSA, Moore said it’s too soon to say and she believes the state needs to conduct further analysis.
For example, she says examining vehicle miles traveled would offer useful insights about whether people are buying less gasoline because they’re switching to electric vehicles, or because they’re working from home.
“Vermont taxpayers are investing significantly in climate action and I think we owe it to them to make sure we’re doing this work as efficiently and as cost effectively as possible,” she said. “Seeing if there are programs or particular areas that seem to disproportionately be driving the results we all want is really important.”
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