Vermont’s Climate Law Faces Legal Challenges Amid Ongoing Climate Cost Report
For Sue Minter, Vermont’s newly appointed climate superfund specialist, the floods started early. Back in 2011, when Tropical Storm Irene thrashed Vermont, Minter—serving as the state’s deputy secretary of transportation—helped rebuild the 600 miles of destroyed road and hundreds of damaged bridges. Just over a decade later, as executive director for Capstone Community Action, a regional anti-poverty nonprofit, she assisted low-income and vulnerable Vermonters displaced by the floods of 2023 and 2024.
With a history of public service dating back to the 1990s, Minter was appointed in September as the program manager for the state’s new Climate Superfund Act. This legislation, currently overshadowed by federal lawsuits seeking to dismantle it, aims to hold major oil companies accountable for their pollution. Minter is now pushing the law forward while the courts deliberate its future. Recently, the federal government requested the courts to void the law once again.
The Vermont law imposes a one-time fee on fossil fuel companies for emissions recorded between 1995 and 2024. A company qualifies as a payee if its extraction or refining of fossil fuels resulted in at least one billion metric tons of carbon emissions over the past two decades. These payouts are intended to help the state finance adaptation to climate change, largely driven by fossil fuel combustion.
“This current job is so meaningful to me because it’s getting back to the mission that I was on in 2011,” said Minter, a former state representative from Waterbury who made an unsuccessful bid for governor in 2016. “In the future, those dramatic costs shouldn’t be borne entirely by taxpayers.”
Her role involves overseeing the most technical aspect of the 2024 law: assessing the financial impact of climate change on the state. This assessment relies on attribution science, a modeling technique that links events like heat waves and floods to climate change by determining how greenhouse gas emissions increased the likelihood of such events.
Minter is managing this cost assessment in collaboration with a consulting team—Industrial Economics, Incorporated—along with the state treasurer’s office and the Climate Action Office under the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources. “We’re in the phase where we’re rolling up our sleeves and doing the analysis,” said Mike Pieciak, Vermont’s state treasurer. “For our office, this is the most technical and scientific part of the work.”
In January 2027, the treasurer’s office will submit a report to the Agency of Natural Resources, which will then have another year to connect those costs to oil companies like Chevron, Exxon, and British Petroleum to determine their financial obligations to Vermont. “This is a rigorous report,” Minter emphasized. “We’re not just putting a number out there; we’re establishing credible scientific evidence for what these costs have been and what they’re projected to be in the future.”
Pieciak refrained from speculating on the total cost until the report is finalized, but a Vermont Resilience Implementation Strategy published by his office and the Agency of Natural Resources in September identified 300 resilience-related measures the state could pursue at an estimated cost of hundreds of millions of dollars.
Resilient Design
Minter arrived in Vermont in the 1990s, learning about climate change through activists like former Vice President Al Gore and Vermont writer Bill McKibben. However, it wasn’t until 2011, when Irene caused record flooding, that she truly witnessed the impacts of a warming atmosphere. “She has a unique experience and background having been the recovery czar in Hurricane Irene,” Pieciak noted. “So whether it’s Irene or more recent flooding, Sue very much understands the impact climate change has on Vermont and the importance of prioritizing community resilience.”
A significant part of Minter’s emergency response role involved persuading the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to fund resilient investments to mitigate future floods. The resilience built with federal and state dollars after Irene helped lessen the impacts of the floods in 2023 and 2024, according to both Minter and Pieciak. The damages from those two events exceeded $1 billion, as reported in the resilience strategy.
“But right now, we are not at all sure what FEMA’s future will be,” Minter remarked, noting that the Trump administration denied Vermont’s most recent disaster declaration related to this summer’s floods. She emphasized that without a federal safety net, the superfund law becomes even more crucial to ensure taxpayers aren’t left to shoulder the financial burden of climate-related disasters.
“A resilient design can protect and reduce costs in the future,” Minter stated. “Unless we have a recovery program that can help with these investments, it’s going to be harder and harder for Vermonters to do.”
Climate Lawsuits
The law is facing significant opposition from two lawsuits filed in May by the federal government and 24 states, led by West Virginia, which have joined forces with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Petroleum Institute, a lobby for oil companies. These lawsuits argue that the Vermont law interferes with federal regulation of greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act.
In November, the Vermont Public Interest Research Group (VPIRG) countered this claim, asserting that the law does not regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Instead, it asks polluters to pay for their pollution, similar to the original 1980 superfund law that required polluters to fund the cleanup of contaminated sites. “Nothing in the Act requires emitters and polluters to change their behavior or mitigate their emissions,” the VPIRG brief states. “The Act only asks polluters to pay an equitable share of the bill to help Vermont adapt to climate change.”
Paul Burns, VPIRG’s executive director, noted that the organization has long advocated for a climate superfund law. Initially, they supported a federal climate superfund law, which U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen drafted in 2021 to tax major oil and gas companies for climate disasters based on greenhouse gases emitted from 2000 to 2019. The estimated cost recovery was around $500 billion over ten years. When that ambitious plan failed, VPIRG shifted its focus to state leaders.
“In the wake of the (2023) flooding, we brought the voices and concerns of Vermont residents, farmers, and businesses to policymakers as they considered this legislation,” Burns explained. “That’s a big reason why support for the law was so strong.”
Their amicus brief echoed arguments made by previous groups, including the Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont and the Conservation Law Foundation. In August, Vermont requested federal courts to dismiss the lawsuits against the state’s Climate Superfund Act. The U.S. government filed its reply on Monday, again seeking to void the law. The state has requested an extension until January to respond, after which the court will decide how to address the motions filed since summer, according to Vermont’s Attorney General’s Office.
“Irrespective of what happens in that case, the work that we’re going to do is incredibly important because we’re going to be defining, really, what the impacts of climate change have been in Vermont,” Minter stated.
This story was originally published by VTDigger and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.
Topics
Lawsuits
For Sue Minter, Vermont’s newly appointed climate superfund specialist, the floods started early. Back in 2011, when Tropical Storm Irene thrashed Vermont, Minter—serving as the state’s deputy secretary of transportation—helped rebuild the 600 miles of destroyed road and hundreds of damaged bridges. Just over a decade later, as executive director for Capstone Community Action, a regional anti-poverty nonprofit, she assisted low-income and vulnerable Vermonters displaced by the floods of 2023 and 2024.
With a history of public service dating back to the 1990s, Minter was appointed in September as the program manager for the state’s new Climate Superfund Act. This legislation, currently overshadowed by federal lawsuits seeking to dismantle it, aims to hold major oil companies accountable for their pollution. Minter is now pushing the law forward while the courts deliberate its future. Recently, the federal government requested the courts to void the law once again.
The Vermont law imposes a one-time fee on fossil fuel companies for emissions recorded between 1995 and 2024. A company qualifies as a payee if its extraction or refining of fossil fuels resulted in at least one billion metric tons of carbon emissions over the past two decades. These payouts are intended to help the state finance adaptation to climate change, largely driven by fossil fuel combustion.
“This current job is so meaningful to me because it’s getting back to the mission that I was on in 2011,” said Minter, a former state representative from Waterbury who made an unsuccessful bid for governor in 2016. “In the future, those dramatic costs shouldn’t be borne entirely by taxpayers.”
Her role involves overseeing the most technical aspect of the 2024 law: assessing the financial impact of climate change on the state. This assessment relies on attribution science, a modeling technique that links events like heat waves and floods to climate change by determining how greenhouse gas emissions increased the likelihood of such events.
Minter is managing this cost assessment in collaboration with a consulting team—Industrial Economics, Incorporated—along with the state treasurer’s office and the Climate Action Office under the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources. “We’re in the phase where we’re rolling up our sleeves and doing the analysis,” said Mike Pieciak, Vermont’s state treasurer. “For our office, this is the most technical and scientific part of the work.”
In January 2027, the treasurer’s office will submit a report to the Agency of Natural Resources, which will then have another year to connect those costs to oil companies like Chevron, Exxon, and British Petroleum to determine their financial obligations to Vermont. “This is a rigorous report,” Minter emphasized. “We’re not just putting a number out there; we’re establishing credible scientific evidence for what these costs have been and what they’re projected to be in the future.”
Pieciak refrained from speculating on the total cost until the report is finalized, but a Vermont Resilience Implementation Strategy published by his office and the Agency of Natural Resources in September identified 300 resilience-related measures the state could pursue at an estimated cost of hundreds of millions of dollars.
Resilient Design
Minter arrived in Vermont in the 1990s, learning about climate change through activists like former Vice President Al Gore and Vermont writer Bill McKibben. However, it wasn’t until 2011, when Irene caused record flooding, that she truly witnessed the impacts of a warming atmosphere. “She has a unique experience and background having been the recovery czar in Hurricane Irene,” Pieciak noted. “So whether it’s Irene or more recent flooding, Sue very much understands the impact climate change has on Vermont and the importance of prioritizing community resilience.”
A significant part of Minter’s emergency response role involved persuading the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to fund resilient investments to mitigate future floods. The resilience built with federal and state dollars after Irene helped lessen the impacts of the floods in 2023 and 2024, according to both Minter and Pieciak. The damages from those two events exceeded $1 billion, as reported in the resilience strategy.
“But right now, we are not at all sure what FEMA’s future will be,” Minter remarked, noting that the Trump administration denied Vermont’s most recent disaster declaration related to this summer’s floods. She emphasized that without a federal safety net, the superfund law becomes even more crucial to ensure taxpayers aren’t left to shoulder the financial burden of climate-related disasters.
“A resilient design can protect and reduce costs in the future,” Minter stated. “Unless we have a recovery program that can help with these investments, it’s going to be harder and harder for Vermonters to do.”
Climate Lawsuits
The law is facing significant opposition from two lawsuits filed in May by the federal government and 24 states, led by West Virginia, which have joined forces with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Petroleum Institute, a lobby for oil companies. These lawsuits argue that the Vermont law interferes with federal regulation of greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act.
In November, the Vermont Public Interest Research Group (VPIRG) countered this claim, asserting that the law does not regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Instead, it asks polluters to pay for their pollution, similar to the original 1980 superfund law that required polluters to fund the cleanup of contaminated sites. “Nothing in the Act requires emitters and polluters to change their behavior or mitigate their emissions,” the VPIRG brief states. “The Act only asks polluters to pay an equitable share of the bill to help Vermont adapt to climate change.”
Paul Burns, VPIRG’s executive director, noted that the organization has long advocated for a climate superfund law. Initially, they supported a federal climate superfund law, which U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen drafted in 2021 to tax major oil and gas companies for climate disasters based on greenhouse gases emitted from 2000 to 2019. The estimated cost recovery was around $500 billion over ten years. When that ambitious plan failed, VPIRG shifted its focus to state leaders.
“In the wake of the (2023) flooding, we brought the voices and concerns of Vermont residents, farmers, and businesses to policymakers as they considered this legislation,” Burns explained. “That’s a big reason why support for the law was so strong.”
Their amicus brief echoed arguments made by previous groups, including the Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont and the Conservation Law Foundation. In August, Vermont requested federal courts to dismiss the lawsuits against the state’s Climate Superfund Act. The U.S. government filed its reply on Monday, again seeking to void the law. The state has requested an extension until January to respond, after which the court will decide how to address the motions filed since summer, according to Vermont’s Attorney General’s Office.
“Irrespective of what happens in that case, the work that we’re going to do is incredibly important because we’re going to be defining, really, what the impacts of climate change have been in Vermont,” Minter stated.
This story was originally published by VTDigger and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.
Topics
Lawsuits
