Energy, environment and transportation policy continued to defeat Gov, Ned Lamont’s administration last week. On Tuesday, the governor withdrew regulations that would have begun phasing out the sale of gas-powered motor vehicles.
The governor and Department of Energy and Environmental Protection Commissioner Katie Dykes failed to make a persuasive case to a majority of the bipartisan regulations committee members to support the adoption of California vehicle emission standards. The scene at the intersection of climate change, energy and motor vehicles was an ugly wreck that could have been avoided.
Lamont has signed on to the electrification of our economy as the most effective way to reduce carbon emissions. His plan to transform the sources of the energy we require for everyday life remains incoherent. The plan for creating a reliable supply of renewable energy ends the year in a shambolic mess. The State Pier facility for staging offshore windmill construction cost several times more than originally estimated, rising from $93 million to more than $300 million. No one provided a satisfactory explanation for the state’s failure to accurately estimate the project’s ballooning costs.
In October, Avangrid, a subsidiary of one of the world’s major corporate forces in offshore power withdrew from the Park City Wind project. It cited the escalating cost of the project and what it claimed was the inadequate price it would be paid for the energy it would have produced for Connecticut consumers. The same fate befell two offshore wind farms off the coast of New Jersey a month later.
The governor and Dykes have been hostile to expanding natural gas to produce electricity as a bridge to renewable production while technology improves. The nation enjoys a plentiful supply of natural gas but the pipeline needed to get it here runs through New York and its governor has opposed expanding the pipeline.
Hydropower generated in Canada has been delayed because residents in northern New England have opposed the construction of transmission lines that will deliver electricity to the regional grid. The last objection was overcome earlier this year but the long delays have raised the cost of the 145-mile project from $1 billion to $1.5 billion.
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The plan to transform our increased use of electricity continues to outpace a reliable supply of it. Connecticut’s major electricity distributor, Eversource, understands the burden of supplying customers what they will need. Diguanto Chatterjee, the company’s vice president of regional planning, raised a chilling prospect of the forced transition to electric vehicles under current conditions.
“If you just added one EV, you just doubled your household demand. You add two TVs, you just tripled your house demand,” Chatterjee told the Hartford Business Journal. “If all of your neighbors do the same, a fuse is going to blow and the transformer at the end of your street is going to blow.”
Under the current distribution system, a vast increase in demand for electricity will mean brownouts. If capacity is not improved, charging vehicles will be slow. Or as Chatterjee more bluntly explained, “People will have just a crappy experience charging their cars, sitting there waiting and waiting and waiting for the car to be fully charged.”
At the same time, we will be in the midst of another transition from oil and gas heat to electricity. That will also increase demand, especially in times of extreme heat and cold. Meeting that demand, according to Eversource, will require customers to pay billions more for upgraded distribution facilities.
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Connecticut residents and businesses have long suffered from electricity rates that are among the most expensive in the continental United States. Electrification will add to what ratepayers are charged each month. Electric cars remain expensive to own, insure and repair.
The governor’s calling card has been his experience in business. He is our first governor with a graduate degree and a career in business. The Greenwich Democrat has declined to make a comprehensive case for what he is trying to accomplish and why it remains important.
In November 2021, Lamont retreated from the regional Transportation and Climate Initiative that he had joined to considerable fanfare with Massachusetts and Rhode Island. His commitment to stemming climate change did not extend to a gas tax increase in 2022, the year he would seek a second term.
To put some of this back together, Lamont could deliver a series of speeches—written, coherent and disciplined speeches—to groups across the state. He can explain how the elements of his plans will work in harmony.
In a free society, we often measure progress by policies that increase, not decrease the choices we make. If Lamont can explain how his plans add to our energy choices in affordable ways, he will avoid more embarrassing weeks like the last one.
Kevin F. Rennie of South Windsor is a lawyer and a former Republican state senator and representative.
