TCI Regional Policy Design Stakeholder Submissions

We are already behind on these initiatives and need to get moving on TCI.

Maine has so many rural areas without access to transportation alternatives that will help lower emissions. And we need affordable, incentivized ways to help individually make an impact.

Full steam ahead, we are behind this!

If we want a half decent world for our grandchildren to live in we must act to curb our emissions now. This is a great plan to start that work. So many of us in Maine have no option but to drive everywhere if we cannot walk because of distances to needed resources. This is a world challenge and breaking up into regions to find viable solutions seems to be a sensible way to proceed. I support this approach.

Through my work at 350 Vermont, with the Vermont Wilderness School, and as a parent of young children, I am committed to cleaner transportation future for Vermont. Vermont’s largest source of carbon pollution comes from the transportation sector, accounting for 44% of Vermont’s climate pollution. That is unacceptable.

I urge Vermont to participate in the Transportation and Climate Initiative so that all Vermonters, including my young children, live in a world where they do not have to choose between being able to get where they need to go and polluting the planet irreparably.

Vermont, like other states, desperately needs additional funding to create innovative, equitable transportation options for all, including seniors/people with disabilities/people with low incomes, for whom transportation costs and accessibility are an added burden. TCI can provide this support.

As someone who works with rural Vermonters, I see the extreme need for increased accessibility. We might be a rural state, but that is no excuse for expecting people to rely solely on personal vehicles, which are costly to operate and have limitations for many, in addition to being high polluters. A lack of reliable transportation options can have a negative effect on entire rural towns.

As you know, Vermont’s participation in a cap and invest program is not new. Under Governor Jim Douglas, Vermont joined the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) in 2008. This cap and invest program covers the electric sector in the Northeast, and it has proven very successful, reducing consumer costs and carbon pollution from the power sector by 40%.

Vermont has strategically invested the revenues raised from RGGI, directing the $2 million annually into weatherization programs that help Vermonters stop wasting energy and save money. We know this type of project works — there is no excuse not to adopt TCI as well.

TCI provides the opportunity to tackle the biggest problem of our day — climate change — by reducing emissions in our state’s most carbon-intensive sector, while diverting funds into much-needed transportation infrastructure that will benefit all.

We can either seize this opportunity to make monumental progress and have a chance to prosper in a clean energy future, or accept a status quo that is only becoming more and more difficult for Vermonters and more harmful to our environment.

I urge Vermont to formally join TCI so we can create a clean energy future that works better for everyone, especially our most vulnerable. Thank you for the work you’ve done so far to advance TCI across the region.

I support TCI because clean transportation is an opportunity for economic growth and new jobs.

I believe Vermont must not only join TCI, but fight to make it as strong on climate as it can be. It is a critical opportunity for our region to get a handle on transportation emissions while investing in more sustainable alternatives (therefore strengthening our economy by creating jobs and resilience). Regarding the issue of equity, it is up to our state to ensure that the millions we make from the auction of carbon credits goes to helping low-income and rural Vermonters out by incentivizing low/no-carbon alternatives, and/or in the form of direct cash payouts.

It's about time we support a bill like the TCI. Vermont's emissions have increased 16% above 1990 levels. Stop this now!

I support the TCI and hope that Vermont will participate fully. I recognize that rural states face challenges in achieving cleaner transportation, but we need to keep moving in that direction, and adding a modest charge to our carbon fuels is essential. We need to do this both to incentivize reductions in consumption and also fund clean alternatives. I know there will be howls of protest, but let me point out that these same voices are silent when market forces push fuel prices up, often by amounts greater than those proposed for TCI. Let's build into the price of our fuels an increment that will not go to out-of-state corporate profits, but instead fund important changes to our transportation system.

Gasoline and diesel powered vehicles are collectively the largest source of carbon dioxide emissions in this country. In as much as our federal government apparently believes that excessive amounts of carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere is a good thing, it is incumbent on state governments to take action to reduce the emissions. I am in favor of the TCI states developing a regional transportation policy to address this problem. Responsible government action is desperately needed at the state level in light of the federal government's abysmal environmental record. Thank you.

Design a regional low-carbon transportation policy proposal that would cap and reduce carbon emissions from the combustion of transportation fuels through a cap-and-invest program or other pricing mechanism and complete the policy development process within one year, after which each jurisdiction will decide whether to adopt and implement the policy.