Renewable Energy Effort to Cost Ratepayers $180 Million

Connecticut is doing more than its share to promote renewable power and reduce greenhouse gases in the region, but it’s coming at a very steep cost to ratepayers—in the billions of dollars.

Among the best in championing renewables, we’re also the worst in the continental United States for residential and commercial energy costs.

Yet proposals continue to appear at the legislature that would make energy even more expensive and further exacerbate this serious drag on Connecticut’s economy.

The Finance Committee this week held a public hearing on a bill that includes a proposal (in Section three), creating a program to incentivize the development of renewable power and our brownfields and waste disposal facilities.

Cost? An additional $180 million to ratepayer bills over the life of the program.

State policymakers need to recognize that expanding subsidization of renewable power inability to access adequate supplies of natural gas and large scale hydropower, are cementing our status as the most expensive state in the nation for residential and commercial energy outside of Hawaii and (sometimes) Alaska. 

The time has come to let the marketplace and private capital markets play a greater role in the development of renewable power without additional ratepayer subsidies.

We need to value our nuclear generation at least as high as other zero-emission fuel sources. And we need to take aggressive action to get Connecticut integrated into the lower-cost, clean-energy infrastructure that’s likely to drive the national and global economies for a generation or more. 

The alternative will mean fewer jobs, fewer tax revenues, and economic stagnation, at best.

For more information, contact CBIA’s Eric Brown at 860.244.1926 | eric.brown@cbia.com | @CBIAericb