CT Mirror reports on the current state of Connecticut's energy landscape as federal actions aim to slow down renewable energy development across the region. United's Kat Burnham urges New England state leaders to step up to defend the advanced energy industry and keep projects moving.
Connecticut, along with the rest of New England, has long recognized that its energy future lies in cleaning up the electricity sources in its power grid.
And since the 1990s, with the start of the effort to close the “sooty six” coal and oil plants, cleaning up the air for health and climate reasons has figured equally with saving money by using free renewable sources like sun and wind.
The Trump administration has now made that a lot harder, if not impossible, to do, leaving Connecticut and the entire region with the question: Now what?
Since his first day in office, Trump has set about eliminating future development of onshore and offshore wind on federal property, which effectively means all offshore wind, a form of renewable power Trump openly despises. So far, his administration has issued stop-work orders for two northeast offshore wind installations already under construction, including one for Connecticut. Each resumed construction after about a month, losing millions of dollars in the process.
Trump has also succeeded getting a law on the books to end the widely popular and effective federal tax credits for wind, solar and energy efficiency projects. The administration also threw its weight behind keeping old and dirty coal plants operating longer than previously planned, as well as subsidizing more coal mining. And it is ramping up oil and gas drilling, all in the name of an “energy emergency” that Trump claims exists, even though the country is the largest producer of oil and gas in the world.
Kat Burnham, senior principal at the consulting and policy group Advanced Energy United and the state lead for all three southern New England states, said Connecticut and other states need to step up and put some financial skin as well as policy in the game. She pointed to financial tools like the Green Bank.
“I think what’s important is to make sure that we’re looking at a range of different options and trying to find the right one that fits the particular need or situation,” she said. “What are the tools in our kit, and how do we use those so that we minimize our risk?”
She said there’s a cost to building things. And she said there’s “a cost to inaction … We can’t just sit on our hands and hope for the best.”
DEEP is also in the final throes of accepting bids for innovative energy efficiency and energy upgrade proposals designed to help lower energy bills.
In Massachusetts, for instance, all three major utilities — one of which is Eversource — have agreed to discount electric rates in the winter for people who use heat pumps. While they run on electricity, aside from being efficient, they free up other fuels like natural gas to run power plants. In Connecticut, DEEP is continuing with its focus of lowering the upfront installation costs for heat pumps.
Read the full article here.