Posted on August 6, 2024
One of my priorities in Hartford is to make our state more affordable, especially by addressing utility rates. These high rates are due to factors like our location and lack of natural resources, infrastructure upgrades, Connecticut’s high business costs, legislative policies, and decisions by state utility regulators.
The Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA) and utility companies are in open conflict over rates, programs, infrastructure, and policy proposals. Credit rating agency Moody’s has branded our state’s regulatory environment “inconsistent and unpredictable”. The Governor has largely stayed out of the fray and hasn’t fully staffed PURA, leaving two vacancies on the panel.
Our system is broken. Connecticut needs a comprehensive and bipartisan energy strategy, led by the Governor, now more than ever.
I joined minority party Republicans in addressing this crisis earlier this year as we offered proposals to deliver short and long-term relief, including redefining Class I renewable energy sources to include all forms of hydropower and all nuclear power, and studying ways to get more natural gas into New England to reduce our reliance on more expensive fuel-mix used to generate electricity.
Other Republican proposals:
Provide autonomy for PURA. PURA is a division within the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP). I fear that environmental (and ideological) goals of Governor Lamont’s DEEP, such banning the sales of new gas-powered vehicles, aren’t aligned with the interests of ratepayers. PURA should be removed from DEEP to provide it the greatest autonomy possible.
Unbundling the System Benefits Charge. Your bill includes charges that pay for hardship protection measures, low-income conservation programs as well as other public policies. We should consider funding these programs as part of the state budget appropriations process rather than including them on ratepayer bills.
Set reasonable caps on future power purchase agreements (PPAs). To stimulate growth of renewable energy projects, the state has required utility companies to purchase clean electricity (such as wind and solar) at rates that are sometimes substantially higher than others available on the market. Republicans proposed to improve this situation by capping future PPAs so that no contract can be for more than significantly over the wholesale electric market price.
Unfortunately, our ideas have been shot down by our majority party colleagues. Last year, our proposal to study how electric distribution companies could be reconstituted to bring more competition into the market was also rejected.
Decisions made by the state have a significant impact on your monthly bill, such as roughly four years of moratoriums on service shutoffs (citing COVID-19), which socialized the cost of unpaid bills to all ratepayers. It’s why Republicans insisted upon a provision that requires your electric bill to indicate the amount of your monthly cost that is attributable to these “public benefits” decisions.
The effect on ratepayers was among the reasons why I opposed the electric vehicle mandate sought by DEEP and Democrats, and why I opposed legislation requiring installation of electric heat pumps in thousands of homes. Both would have added significant load to our grid, require massive infrastructure upgrades, and ultimately impact the “public benefits” tally on bills and create homeowner system upgrade costs. Thankfully, those concepts stalled–for now.
But if approved, a draft PURA decision could allow utilities companies to recover from ratepayers the costs from another initiative tied to the state’s ambitious climate goals: a rebate program for residential electric vehicle charging stations
We can’t continue to lurch from one crisis to the next. I want you to know that I’ll continue to push for strategies to stabilize, and ultimately lower, electric rates for homes and businesses. For now, if you’re using a third-party supplier for your electricity, you should compare whether your per kilowatt hour rate is more than the current standard offer rate from your utility company.