• Kevin Mccallum ©️ Seven Days
• John Snell describing his new induction stove at an event highlighting energy efficiency

When then-president Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the international treaty on climate change known as the Paris Agreement in 2017, Vermont's newly elected governor, Phil Scott, announced the state would stay the course.

Vermont would join the U.S. Climate Alliance, a group of states committed to meeting the agreement's greenhouse gas emission goals within their borders, Scott said. "If our national government isn't willing to lead in this area, the states are prepared to step up," Scott said.

To ensure that the state lived up to its word, the Vermont legislature passed a bill in 2020 codifying the alliance's goals as law. The Global Warming Solutions Act calls for Vermont to reduce its emissions to 26 percent below 2005 levels by 2025, and more sharply by 2030 and 2050.

But Scott, a Republican, vetoed the bill, forcing lawmakers to pass it into law over his objection. One of the reasons for Scott's change of heart: Legislators wrote a provision enabling Vermonters to sue the state should it fail to attain the goals. The state could become entangled in expensive litigation, the governor said at the time.

Now, as 2025 fast approaches, the Conservation Law Foundation has put the state on notice that it's likely to sue under the law, and soon. While state officials claim Vermont is on track to meet the 2025 targets, the environmental org is essentially accusing Vermont of cooking the books. The upshot: Vermonters are getting mixed signals about whether the state is meeting crucial targets in combating the climate crisis.

State officials contend that an infusion of federal spending to speed the transition to electric vehicles and clean heat is helping the state meet the goal. But some members of the Vermont Climate Council — the body responsible for recommending climate policy — along with lawmakers and environmental groups, have questioned those predictions. When projections showed the state was not on track to meet the 2025 goal, they say, officials simply commissioned a company to create a different model that showed it was.

"At the end of the day, this is about being real with Vermonters," Elena Mihaly, vice president of CLF Vermont, told Seven Days. "Whether you think we should be doing more or less to tackle climate change, most Vermonters would agree they want to know whether what we're doing is making a difference, and to what extent."

Mihaly argues that state officials are painting an artificially rosy picture to justify not taking more aggressive steps. In July, CLF gave the state 60 days to fix its climate model or face a lawsuit.

"They are showing the public a version that we don't think is accurate," Mihaly said.

Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark declined to comment, noting that 60 days has yet to expire. "We will respond if and when a lawsuit is filed," Clark said.

That seems likely. Mihaly said CLF has repeatedly asked to meet with state Agency of Natural Resources officials to convince them that their modeling is wrong, to no avail.

The environmental organization does not want to be "locked in expensive, time-consuming litigation" over the issue, but feels strongly that the state needs to use accurate data in its models so the public and lawmakers know if more significant action is needed, she said.

The data debate first flared in January when Natural Resources Secretary Julie Moore and the analysts in the Climate Action Office she oversees told lawmakers the state was "on track" to meet the 2025 target. The news was "obviously a very positive development," Moore said.

That new projection was more promising than one her own analysts completed in April 2023. Their Vermont Greenhouse Gas Emissions Inventory and Forecast, which tracks past emissions and predicts future ones, suggested that the state would miss the 2025 target. They concluded that greenhouse gas emissions, instead of falling to 7.27 million metric tons by 2025 as required, would remain stubbornly 18 percent above that level, at 8.55 million metric tons.

That worrisome projection was due partly to the fact that, despite a sharp drop in pollution in 2020 during the pandemic, emissions were rebounding as people returned to their usual driving habits.

By January 2024, however, Moore's climate team was telling lawmakers a very different story. A new projection the state had commissioned from the Hinesburg-based consulting firm Energy Futures Group showed the state was back on track.

The new projection took into account the hundreds of millions of dollars in new federal funding for energy efficiency projects, and estimated that the state's emissions would likely drop to 7.16 million tons in 2025 — 114,000 tons below the 2025 target.

Moore and her analysts stressed that the good news wouldn't be confirmed until the climate office released the official inventory for that year. They also said that despite any progress, all models continued to show the state not doing nearly enough to meet the much more stringent 2030 target of 5.17 million tons.

Nevertheless, Moore told lawmakers the projection should give them confidence and "underscores and reinforces the impact of the investments we are currently making in things like weatherization, EVs and charging infrastructure and natural and working lands."

The celebration didn't last long.

Jared Duval, a member of the Vermont Climate Council with experience in emissions tracking, expressed deep skepticism about the new projections. Duval is the executive director of the Energy Action Network, a Montpelier-based nonprofit that encourages the state to reduce climate pollution.

He told lawmakers that Moore's optimism appeared misplaced. The new model she and her team were relying on undercounted past emissions compared to those in the official inventory, Duval said. He likened it to a 200-pound person stepping onto a scale that was set at negative 25 pounds and then celebrating when it shows 175 pounds.

That doesn't mean the person lost weight, he said. "It means the scale needs to be recalibrated to be accurate."

The targets are critical because they measure whether Vermonters are doing their part to help the world meet its climate goals to help prevent the worst effects of climate change, Duval said.

Following Duval's criticism, the consultant who worked on the model confirmed it was not designed to predict compliance with state emissions targets. Rather, it was meant to predict the effect of potential policy changes, such as by offering larger incentives for heat pumps or putting more EVs on the road.

The consultant, David Hill, called Duval's comments "valuable observations," and acknowledged that using the study to predict hitting the 2025 target "may not be the most appropriate way" to employ its data. Hill's own report warns against using it to predict compliance with the Global Warming Solutions Act.

Hill also acknowledged that the new projections relied in part on federal estimates instead of hard data in areas such as fuel sales. Using such data instead of estimates was "potentially a legitimate step that we could have or should have taken," he said.

Jane Lazorchak, director of Vermont's Climate Action Office, said during the same January meeting with lawmakers that she was "disheartened" to hear Duval publicly criticize projections he'd been privy to for weeks. Duval countered that he only realized the faulty math when digging into the data before his testimony.

In an interview with Seven Days last week, Duval said it never occurred to him that the new projection would have used emissions figures significantly lower than those in the official inventory.

"I was kind of astounded," he said. "They are not small differences. They are large and consistent undercountings."

He raised the issue several times in subsequent meetings of the Climate Council, noting that unless the new projections could be reconciled with hard data, the figures were misleading and giving the public and lawmakers an impression of significant progress when in fact Vermont lags others states in the Northeast in per capita emissions reductions.

In August, ANR officials updated their projections slightly but still did not fully align them with the hard data in the inventory. Duval called the impasse "an untenable situation."

"I just don't think that we can have confidence about future forecasts until and unless the estimates that are emerging are aligned," he said.

Anticipating litigation, Moore declined to be interviewed.

She has previously noted that in 2022, the state imposed the most significant restriction of vehicle emissions in its history, passing two rules — the Advanced Clean Cars II and Advanced Clean Trucks regulations. They require that an ever-increasing share of the new cars and light trucks sold are to be electric, until reaching 100 percent in 2035.

Lawmakers and climate activists find the dispute over data disturbing.

Sen. Anne Watson (D-Washington) called it "frustrating" to be months away from the January 1, 2025 target only to have uncertainty linger about the accuracy of emissions calculations.

"It's something that I feel like we should be clearer about at this point in the process," she said last week at an event held to highlight home energy efficiency upgrades. Her takeaway is that ANR appears to be using its climate modeling inappropriately.

Ben Edgerly Walsh, climate and energy program director for the Vermont Public Interest Research Group, which hosted the energy efficiency event, said he thinks CLF and Duval are making important points.

"We have a greenhouse gas inventory. It is not enough to say 'Oh, we used some other methodology with some other consultant, and we think we're probably fine, so let's not worry about it,'" he said. "That's basically what the state has done."

The Global Warming Solutions Act requires the secretary of the Agency of Natural Resources — Moore — to review the state's progress by July 1 of this year, and to update rules, if necessary, to ensure that the target is met.

Mihaly said she hopes the state will revamp its projection with the proper data, and if it shows the state is not on track, as CLF suspects, to quickly undertake a "course correction" that will ensure it. If that doesn't happen, the organization warned that it would ask a judge to order the state to take further action.

"We expect our administration to execute the laws passed by the legislature, and, if not, then be held accountable," Mihaly said, "and that's what's happening here."