Vermont Climate and Energy PC Test Fails Spectacularly!
Tom Shepstone
Shepstone Management Company, Inc.
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Vermont, now seemingly populated by move-ins from metro New York, has placed a priority on political correctness (PC) and it has bitten the state in the behind!
Vermont has, of course, been thoroughly Manhattanized. Very little of the common sense and wisdom Robert Frost wrote about in “Mending Wall” remains. It has all been washed away in a flood of political correctness. Saving the planet from an imaginary risk conjured up by corporatist grifters has become the cause celeb and reactionary attempts to appear to making a difference are the order of the day. It’s a recipe for “pride goeth before the fall” if there ever was one and our guest blogger David Blackmon feasts on the absurdity here. The whole episode is just wonderful and it’s worth digging a little deeper.
Vermont Statehouse
David linked to this article in Seven Days, an independent Vermont journal. Here are the key excerpts, which speak for themselves:
In January 2021, Vermont declared itself the first state in the nation to install a battery backup system in its Statehouse. The new batteries replaced an aging propane generator in the Statehouse basement and stored enough juice to run the building’s lights, computers and elevators for up to four hours during an outage.
Gov. Phil Scott hailed the achievement as evidence of “out-of-the-box thinking, common sense and collaboration,” saying “Not only is this a cutting-edge solution that reduces both carbon emissions and costs, but it also increases reliability.”
Four months later, the state’s insurance company offered a different description of the lithium-ion battery packs: fire hazard. If the $400,000 system ever ignited, the resulting blaze would be extremely difficult to extinguish, Continental Casualty warned.
“That’s a situation where if you had a fire and it’s uncontrolled, it would burn down the entire Statehouse,” Jennifer Fitch, the commissioner of Buildings and General Services, told Seven Days…
Plans are now under way to reinstall the batteries — originally placed in the basement to protect them from the weather — in a safer location outside the Statehouse.
The episode underscores the challenges Vermont faces as it tries to transition from fossil fuel energy systems to newer but often less understood alternatives.
“We were being early adapters,” said Rep. Curt Taylor (D-Colchester), who served on the House Corrections and Institutions Committee, which signed off on the battery installation.
Lawmakers and building officials apparently failed to heed early warnings about the potential fire danger and opted for the basement location in part to sidestep the cumbersome Statehouse bureaucracy.
Erik Filkorn, an official in the Department of Buildings and General Services, told lawmakers in 2018 that putting the batteries outside would have triggered a review by the Capitol Complex Commission. The five-member body is charged with overseeing the architectural and aesthetic integrity of the historic capitol complex.
Rep. Alice Emmons (D-Springfield), longtime chair of the corrections committee, told colleagues at the time that such a review could set the project back many months and increase costs.
“It seems so much easier to put these racks down in the basement,” Filkorn testified…
The seemingly simple basement solution, however, ignored a growing body of evidence that such systems can pose a significant fire risk. Overheating lithium-ion cells can trigger a chemical chain reaction known as thermal runaway that may cause a battery array to combust. For more than a decade, there have been reports of laptops, hoverboards, electric cars and even commercial airliners being set on fire by overheated batteries…
Capitol Police Chief Matthew Romei warned lawmakers and building officials during a committee meeting in 2018 that it would require foam fire retardant, not just water, to extinguish a fire in a large battery system…
The National Fire Protection Association, which publishes fire codes often adopted by public agencies, released standards for battery backup systems in September 2019, just before construction began. The association recommended that systems not be installed belowground due to the potential fire danger…
[An] inspector for Continental Casualty toured the Statehouse and took issue with the battery’s location. The firm warned that such systems “present a severe fire hazard to the structure and occupants.” The company told Buildings and General Services officials the best solution was to move the batteries, but if they chose to keep them in place, they’d have to make major upgrades to the room and fire suppression equipment.
The batteries were hauled out in November…
Today a rented portable diesel generator parked outside the Statehouse’s west wing provides backup power. It sits on a trailer behind a chain-link fence beside the bronze statue of the state’s first governor, Thomas Chittenden.
Gov. Scott said on Tuesday that the setback was “unfortunate” but he still views battery storage as an important part of the state’s energy future.
“We took that one on the chin, but we’ll do better next time,” he said.
Sure you will, Governor. Sure you will. You chose political correctness over facts and you are promising to do so again, so why should anyone expect a different result next time?
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