Instead of launching a shiny new climate program this year, lawmakers are looking at a more concrete means to meet legally binding goals to reduce carbon emissions: data collection.  A proposed greenhouse gas reporting program would collect data on emissions from fuel suppliers, largely for hea ting and transportation, which together make up about 70% of state emissions. The Agency of Natural Resources submitted a memo in December estimating the program would cost the state $800,000 to start, and then require an annual $500,000 to pay staff and run a public website. “That’s a lot of money anytime, and especially right now,” said Rep. Kathleen James, D-Manchester, who filed H. 740 on Wednesday and included the $800,000 budget request.  READ MORE For Vermonters, the stakes are practical as well as political. Without more reliable data on where exactly emissions come from, some lawmakers lack a detailed roadmap as they debate costly climate policies that could affect home heating bills, gas prices or future taxes. Better reporting, the bill’s supporters say, could help the state avoid repeating past battles over sweeping emissions programs.  Now, with Vermont appearing to miss its legally binding climate targets and federal support shrinking, lawmakers say credible data may lay the groundwork that bigger policy swings have lacked.  James planned to take testimony to determine whether the budget request is a fair amount. The new program could be modeled off of neighboring New York, which launched its own program in December.  While Vermont has taken on a host of climate proposals over the last decade, the state has so far largely failed to meet the requirements set by legislation.  Since 2017, the state passed: a Renewable Energy Standard that requires most Vermont utilities to get 100% of their energy from renewables like solar and wind by 2030; the Global Warming Solutions Act, which binds the state to cutting greenhouse gas emissions; the Climate Superfund Act, the first program in the nation to make major carbon polluters like Chevron and Exxon pay the state for their carbon emissions. But recent reports show the state has likely failed to meet legally binding targets for reducing carbon emissions. Legislators have failed to pass programs that could move its energy sectors closer to those goals, and the state’s GOP leadership has proposed bills that would weaken the state’s renewable energy plans. Under the second Trump administration, Vermont lost tens of millions of dollars in funding for clean energy projects on top of expensive court battles brought by the federal government against Vermont’s landmark climate policies. “We’re on the famine side of feast or famine in the moment we find ourselves in,” Agency of Natural Resources Secretary Julie Moore told the House Committee on Energy and Digital Infrastructure earlier this month. “We’ve had unprecedented federal investment in climate action, and it’s ending really abruptly. This requires some pretty significant changes in the assumptions about what financial resources are available to Vermont in terms of making investments in climate action.”  Such shifts, plus statewide issues of affordability, have made lawmakers wary of spending on the programs needed to ensure Vermont meets its climate goals. “In previous sessions, the legislature has taken up a clean heat standard, taken up a cap-and-invest program, and these are big, meaty policy pieces,” Moore said. “The fact of the matter is we haven’t necessarily done something smaller and more manageable in the short term.”   A study of the potential data collection program stemmed from the 2025 Vermont Climate Action Plan, a report released every four years that seeks to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and promote climate resiliency in the state. The Climate Council, a 23-member body of state officials and appointed members, includes the state’s climatologist, a farmer and a high school senior.  The plan received a strong endorsement from the vast majority of the Climate Council, whose members also backed the financial request from ANR. The exception was Matt Cota, a fuels lobbyist, who did not sign onto a letter supporting the plan.  One of the flaws in the clean heat standard, relegated to legislative obscurity last session, was the lack of detailed data to build sound policy, James said in early January.  “No matter what we do in the future, whether it’s cap and invest or something else, we need solid data,” she said. Cota disagreed.  “I am not convinced that spending $800,000 of taxpayer money on a new data collection system is essential,” Cota said Thursday.  Tracking emissions as they move across state lines and between counties is tricky, according to Cota. County-level data would be required by the program, but he said such figures are “not information that suppliers routinely collect or can readily access.” He also warned of redundancies. “All gallons are already counted and reported, and this data is publicly available,” Cota said.  Vermont already collects some fuel and emissions data, but not in a way that lets regulators clearly see who is producing how much pollution. Without detailed, enforceable reporting from fuel suppliers, the Agency of Natural Resources can’t reliably track emissions or hold specific emitters accountable — a gap that lawmakers say must be closed before the state can meet its legally binding climate targets The Agency of Natural Resources doesn’t need the legislature’s permission to mandate such a program under the Clean Air Act, but Moore said other states that didn’t have their legislature’s endorsement to implement a greenhouse gas reporting rule had faced extensive legal challenges. “There is benefit in the environment we currently find ourselves in having the legislature specifically authorize this work,” Moore told the committee.  But Moore wasn’t convinced of the necessity of such a program either.  “In the moment we currently find ourselves in, personally, I wouldn’t say this is a priority,” she said. She also noted the thin line she was trying to weave. She had been critical of programs like cap-and-invest and the clean heat standard in the past because the programs lacked such data.  Tracking emissions data is only becoming more difficult for states like Vermont under the current administration, according to Jane Lazorchak, director of the Climate Action Office.  “In this time of significant federal uncertainty and rollbacks in the data being collected by the Environmental Protection Agency that Vermont relies on for our greenhouse gas inventory to produce annually,” Lazorchak said in a committee meeting discussing the plan, “it would help us move in house the data collection that we now rely on from federal data sets.”  Read the story on VTDigger here: What comes after climate fights? Better numbers, lawmakers say. ...read more read less