Regional planners tell committee state emissions data would improve local energy planning

Senators heard testimony on H740, a bill to create a greenhouse‑gas inventory and registry, from regional planning officials who said state‑collected data would materially improve local energy and emissions planning.

"Most definitely," said Ann Janda, senior energy project manager at the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission, when asked whether municipal planners would use state‑level emissions data. Janda told the committee that CCRPC used Vermont Gas Systems (VGS) data and a transportation tracking tool developed by the UVM Transportation Research Center and ClearPath to build accurate municipal inventories for South Burlington. "Because we had the VGS data for South Burlington ... building emissions overall had gone down by 11%," she said, describing how access to utility data allowed the commission to see the effect of efficiency programs and changing vehicle fleets.

Janda and other witnesses stressed the limits of current modeled data where utilities do not provide information. "If a municipality is outside of VGS territory ... we just have to guess," she said, noting that for some towns the American Community Survey yields a large margin of error.

Harry Falconer, shared energy coordinator at Two Rivers Regional Commission, echoed that local planners rely on modeled numbers for non‑utility service areas and would welcome "hard data" from a statewide inventory to enable longitudinal tracking of progress and better evaluation of policies.

Committee members asked about data accuracy and margins of error. Janda said transportation estimates derived from DMV registration and the UVM tool have a "very low margin of error" for light‑duty vehicle miles traveled, while heavy‑duty vehicle estimates have a larger margin because of necessary assumptions.

Witnesses emphasized that state collection would not only improve accuracy but also reduce confusion in communities that currently receive modeled results with wide error bars. Janda said state data would make it "a lot more helpful" for municipalities updating enhanced energy plans.

What happens next: The committee took the testimony for the record and will consider H740 alongside committee staff recommendations; no committee vote was recorded at this meeting.