The Connecticut Public Utilities Regulatory Authority is reconsidering its plan to keep secret the winners of the state’s $1 billion renewable energy credit program, after the Hartford Business Journal requested those identities be made public under a Freedom of Information request.
PURA on Wednesday reopened the case for the first round of the Zero-emissions and Low-emissions Renewable Energy Credit, or ZREC/LREC, program in response to HBJ’s Freedom of Information Act request on June 20, according to a regulatory filing.
The six-year ZREC/LREC program seeks to proliferate renewable energy generation in Connecticut by providing funds through 15-year contracts for the electricity produced by installations using Class I renewables such as solar, fuel cells, wind, and hydro. Winners of those contracts are chosen in a competitive bid. Over the course of the program, installations will receive $720 million in ZRECs and $300 million in LRECs.
Because the program is administered by electric utilities Connecticut Light & Power and United Illuminating using ratepayer funds, PURA initially agreed to the utilities’ request that most of the information about the winning bids be protected as proprietary and not disclosed to the public.
In December, CL&P and UI gave 87 ZREC awards, all to solar projects, and 10 LREC awards, all to fuel cell projects. The only information disclosed about the bidders were the city where the installation would be located, the size of the project, the type of technology used, and whether the bid was awarded a contract.
HBJ filed a FOIA request with the state Department of Energy & Environmental Protection, which oversees PURA, asking for the release of more information about the winning bidders, particularly the name of the applicant, the exact address of the proposed project, the business or agency that will host the project, the size of the renewable installation, and the technology used in that installation (solar, fuel cell, etc.). The HBJ request also asked for that information to be released in all future ZREC/LREC rounds.
The Office of Consumer Counsel previously requested this information be made public, but PURA denied that request on May 23.
In reconsidering its ruling, PURA notified CL&P and UI that they must refile all the information about the bidders from the first round with no information kept in secret except for the bidders’ bank account numbers. That PURA notification also said CL&P and UI must disclose all the same information in future ZREC/LREC rounds. The PURA notification did not include the smallest category of ZRECs, which is not competitively bid.
After PURA goes through the necessary steps to reconsider its decision, the ZREC/LREC information should be released in the next few months, said DEEP spokesman Dennis Schain.
The only ZREC or LREC winners currently known to the public are ones who made their own announcements about their planned clean energy installations, namely a Hartford Hospital fuel cell project and a Hartford landfill solar project.