A remnant of the ill-conceived Clean Heat Standard may come back to life at the Vermont Legislature. The Clean Heat Standard, which was passed by lawmakers over Governor Scott’s veto in 2023, is a tax on delivered heating fuels like propane and heating oil.

As part of implementing the Heat Tax, the state would’ve built an inventory of delivered fuels. That was scuttled when the state did not move forward with the Clean Heat Standard.

Now, a new bill (H.740) directs the state to establish a fuel supplier inventory, essentially an index of all transportation and heating fuels delivered in the state. At its core is a mandate that “suppliers of transportation and heating fuels covered by the rules shall comply with requests” from the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources.

The bill gives ANR broad authority to collect energy consumption information from suppliers with few limits or controls on what can be demanded or how it can be used.

This poses three significant concerns for small businesses and others in Vermont:

Regulatory Burden. State level fuel consumption data is widely available from both public and private sources. Requiring small, local fuel suppliers to report detailed data is an unnecessary and redundant burden.

Privacy Concerns. H.740 does not limit what data ANR can request. This makes it possible for the agency to request customer-specific data about transportation or energy fuel deliveries. From there, the state can extrapolate a wide range of information about consumption and pricing.

The proposal also does not limit who the agency can share the data with or stop them from posting it on a public website. So, your household or small business energy bills could end up in the public domain. In addition to obvious privacy concerns, this could cause competitive harm to small businesses in energy-intensive industries.

Even if the supplier data is aggregated, it may still reveal information about customers or groups of customers– especially in small markets.

This is not an abstract concern – “energy benchmarking” mandates are common in Massachusetts, California and several other states.

Future Energy Taxes. As mentioned, the fuel supplier inventory was intended to serve as the foundation for the 2023 Heat Tax. It could also serve as the precursor to a California-style Low Carbon Fuel Tax and other very expensive carbon tax schemes.

NFIB Vermont submitted testimony in opposition to H.740. You can read more about our concerns HERE.

The Vermont Fuel Dealers Association and other groups have been raising the alarm about the negative implications of the fuel supplier inventory.