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With the price of natural gas sending electricity bills soaring across New England, some climate activists are pointing to Connecticut’s pledge to wean itself off fossil fuels by 2040 as a means of reducing the state’s stubbornly high energy costs.
Although the cost of renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power have fallen in recent years — especially compared to the cost of operating traditional oil and gas plants — those technologies continue to produce a small fraction of the electricity used in the six-state power grid that covers Connecticut.
The grid, ISO New England, gets about half of its electricity from natural gas, and nearly one-quarter comes from nuclear reactors. The largest source of renewable energy, hydroelectricity, accounted for about 6% of the region’s electricity needs in 2021, and the combination of wind and solar produces about 5%.
Last week, Connecticut’s two largest electric companies, United Illuminating and Eversource, announced that electricity bills for most customers would rise between $79 and $85 a month starting in January as a result of a global natural gas shortage caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine .
The price increases reflect the costs both utilities pay to purchase electricity from generating facilities, which are passed on to consumers at cost under Connecticut’s deregulated electricity markets.
“Cleaner, longer-lasting electricity is cheaper. It just is,” said Laurie Brown, executive director of the Connecticut League of Conservation Voters, which has advocated for the state’s transition from fossil fuels to cleaner, renewable sources of electricity generation.
Brown compared the sudden rise in utility bills to the “roller coaster” of gas prices and the impact those costs have on consumers’ car-buying habits.
“When prices drop, everybody runs and buys SUVs,” Brown said. “But the moment it goes up, people go crazy and they have no control over it.”
Even before the current spike in natural gas prices, Connecticut utilities took steps to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels by developing a pair of offshore wind farms that are expected to power more than 550,000 homes when they come online in a few years. In addition, the state and Eversource are financing a $255 million overhaul of the New London State Pier to serve as a launching pad for offshore wind development, though the project has been mired in cost overruns and conflict-of-interest questions.
Gov. Ned Lamont, who signed a pledge to make Connecticut’s grid carbon-free by 2040, defended the project and vowed that his administration, through the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, is in a position to take advantage of billions of dollars in federal funds recently placed on availability for renewable energy projects through the adoption of the Law on Reducing Inflation. Officials say the money can be used for solar and wind projects, as well as new transmission lines and battery storage technologies.
“The recent rate increase further underscores the importance of diversifying the state’s energy mix,” DEEP spokesman Will Healey said in a statement Wednesday. “Bringing renewable options online will better insulate residents from volatile fossil fuel market prices and geopolitical events beyond our control.” As the governor has previously warned, and as utilities have recently cited in their rate hike proposals, the region’s reliance on natural gas is a major driver of higher rates.
Even those who have questioned the costs associated with Connecticut’s clean energy goals in the past said this week that the current price of natural gas and its impact on residents’ electric bills have made renewables, at least in the short term, attractive to the economy and preserving the foundation.
“I think there are a number of ways we should explore to address this,” said state Rep. Stephen Harding, R-Brookfield, the ranking Republican on the Environment Committee. “Certain infrastructure can be helpful in curbing those costs, and if they are, then we should definitely consider that.”
Still, supporters of the state’s transition to carbon-free renewables caution that the cheaper costs associated with those forms of generation alone may not be enough to dramatically lower utility bills, at least not right away. State Sen. Norm Needleman, D-Essex, who co-chairs the General Assembly’s Energy and Environment Committee, said that’s because of the need to maintain a backup power supply in case of bad weather, which requires utilities to pay for traditional types of power plants. such as natural gas, to sit idle until needed.
Those costs are likely to rise as more renewables come online without sufficient battery technology to store excess energy long-term, Needleman predicts.
“They’re great when the wind’s blowing and the sun’s shining,” Needleman said. But “you still need the ability to generate [electricity] when you need it.”
Another confounding factor that state and industry leaders must contend with is the potential for local interests to delay or even push projects aimed at bringing clean energy to the region.
Offshore wind projects in Long Island and Massachusetts have famously had to contend with residents complaining that the turbines would obstruct their ocean views, while fishermen and environmentalists have also questioned the impact larger wind farms will have on wildlife. Recently, a plan to import clean, reliable hydroelectric power from Quebec to power homes in New England was put on hold when Maine residents voted to block the construction of a transmission line through the forest.
In a text published this week in The Boston GlobeU.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., and Conservation Law Foundation President Bradley Campbell have pushed for legislation that would reform the permitting process for large infrastructure projects of national importance such as offshore wind, transmission lines and mass transit.
“In order for Connecticut to have a more stable energy price structure, we need to have a greater amount of renewable energy coming into the state,” Murphy told CT Insider this week. “It’s difficult [have] happen when it takes so long for the renewable projects and transmission capacity necessary to bring renewable energy sources to Connecticut to be licensed and approved.
Because the current market has made the cost of renewable energy projects more attractive to developers and utilities — while reducing demand for new fossil-fuel burning plants — Murphy said he’s confident that allowing reform can attract a coalition in Washington, including more conservative Democrats and some republicans.
“If you handle permitting in a source-neutral way, you’re actually giving a big advantage to renewables,” Murphy said. “Because that’s where the incentives are.”
In Connecticut, lawmakers have even rallied around previously taboo ideas, such as the expansion of nuclear power as a way to encourage the state’s transition away from fossil fuels.
Earlier this year, Lamont signed legislation partially lifting the state’s 10-year moratorium on nuclear power, allowing new reactors to be built at the existing Millstone nuclear power plant site in Waterford. Although the plant’s owners have not announced plans to build any reactors, officials have floated the idea that the plant could one day be home to new technology for smaller, modular units with about half the output of a traditional large reactor.
In 2019, Lamont announced a deal to keep Millstone — by far the state’s largest carbon-free energy source — operating for at least another decade.
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