Representative Kathleen James (D – Bennington-4) has introduced H.740, a bill that would appropriate $800,000 from the General Fund to expand Vermont’s greenhouse gas reporting authority and develop a new emissions-source database tied to heating and transportation fuel sales.

The bill directs the Agency of Natural Resources (ANR) to adopt rules creating “a comprehensive greenhouse gas emission reporting program that covers all sources of emissions, including fuel suppliers.” Under the rules, suppliers of transportation and heating fuels would be required to comply with information requests from the Secretary of Natural Resources.

At minimum, the information collected would include the types and volumes of fuels sold, broken down by sector—transportation, residential, commercial, and industrial—and by county. Proposed final rules would be due to the Legislative Committee on Administrative Rules by March 1, 2027.

Supporters frame the bill as foundational: better reporting enables better climate policy. The central question, however, is whether H.740 funds genuinely new insight—or whether it spends $800,000 building a parallel reporting structure on top of data Vermont already collects.

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Vermont Already Tracks Fuel Volumes

During committee testimony on February 5, fuel industry representative Matt Cota described Vermont’s existing fuel tracking systems in detail.

For motor fuels, bonded distributors report gallons monthly to the Department of Motor Vehicles and pay excise taxes based on those volumes. For heating fuels, suppliers report through the Department of Taxes under Vermont’s per-gallon fuel tax system.

“We know definitively what was sold in Vermont,” Cota told the committee, emphasizing that the state already receives enforceable monthly volume data through its tax mechanisms.

In other words, Vermont is not starting from scratch. The state already collects the core data required for a fuel-based emissions inventory: how many gallons of major fuels enter commerce and are taxed accordingly.

If the goal is simply statewide totals by fuel type, the expensive part of the work—mandatory reporting, enforcement, and auditing—already exists.

The New Requirements: County and Sector

H.740 goes beyond statewide totals. The bill mandates that fuel sales be reported “by sector” and “by county.”

Those additional breakdowns are where the proposal becomes more complicated, and where testimony suggests the state may be paying for precision that cannot be reliably produced.

County-Level Reporting

Fuel distribution does not map neatly onto county boundaries. A single tanker load may serve multiple towns across multiple counties in one route. Dealers track deliveries for billing purposes, but county-level categorization introduces another administrative layer without clear benefit to emissions accuracy.

“County doesn’t work,” Cota testified. “Zip codes, sure. Counties… I don’t know what benefit does this serve having a county as another line on your code that will cost money.”

If Vermont wants better emissions accounting, lawmakers should ask whether county-level fuel reporting provides meaningful clarity—or whether it creates a costly geographic fiction.

Sector Classification

The bill also requires classification of gallons into residential, commercial, industrial, and transportation sectors.

But fuel dealers do not typically track gallons this way, and in many cases cannot do so with certainty. A gallon of distillate fuel may be used for home heating, farm equipment, municipal vehicles, or off-road diesel applications. The product itself is often identical at the point of sale.

“We don’t track whether it is residential, commercial, industrial,” Cota said. “It’s a guessing game.”

This raises the risk that Vermont will spend significant funds collecting new categories of data that are not directly observable and will ultimately rely on estimates, assumptions, or inconsistent reporting practices.

Who Is the “Emitter”?

H.740 also introduces conceptual ambiguity by describing fuel suppliers as “sources of emissions.”

Fuel suppliers are intermediaries. The emissions occur when end users burn fuel—homeowners, businesses, drivers—not when dealers sell or deliver it.

Cota warned that singling out suppliers as emission sources risks confusing the regulated party with the actual emitter, potentially producing a compliance system that misidentifies responsibility while still failing to improve emissions measurement.

A Second Imperfect Dataset

Cota’s broader concern was not opposition to better information, but skepticism about creating a new registry that does not resolve the underlying measurement challenges.

“We have significant set of data at our disposal that is imperfect,” he said. “But what I’m concerned about is we’re creating a system in which we will have a different set of data that is just as imperfect.”

That critique goes to the heart of the appropriation. Vermont already has enforceable gallon reporting through tax systems. H.740 proposes spending $800,000 to build a new framework that demands additional breakdowns—county and sector—that may be administratively expensive, technically uncertain, and ultimately speculative.

The Sponsor’s Framing

Representative James, who chairs the House Committee on Energy and Digital Infrastructure, emphasized that the legislature is not designing the reporting program in the bill itself.

“We are not designing the program here,” she told the committee. “ANR wants us to say please go do this.”

H.740 is therefore best understood as enabling legislation: it grants ANR authority and funding to begin a rulemaking process that will determine the program’s actual scope.

The Bottom Line

H.740 proposes an $800,000 investment in expanded greenhouse gas reporting and a new fuel-linked emissions database. Vermont already collects fuel volume data through existing DMV and tax reporting mechanisms. The bill’s new mandates—sector and county reporting—are precisely the areas industry representatives argue are least reliable and most costly to produce.

Before building a new registry, lawmakers should ask a basic question: will this appropriation produce clearer, actionable emissions data—or will it fund a second, expensive layer of uncertainty on top of information Vermont already has?

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Dave Soulia | FYIVT

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