Dan Esty, the commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Energy & Environmental Protection, will resign in February and return to his position at Yale, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy announced Wednesday.
Esty is the first DEEP commissioner, which was reorganized from the old Department of Environmental Protection in order to set energy policy for the state. Esty played a significant role in the formation of the new agency and setting its structure and power after it was created.
Yale granted Esty a three-year leave of absence from his tenured professorship to serve as DEEP commissioner. He was first appointed as commissioner in March 2011, and his last day will be Feb. 3.
Malloy said he will announce a successor in the coming weeks.
Esty, who was an energy adviser on Barack Obama’s presidential transition team, took the lead role in establishing much of the energy policy for the state since Malloy came into office.
Esty conceived and help launch the Clean Energy Finance & Investment Authority, the first-in-the-nation public bank that raised private capital for renewable energy projects. He also help organize the state’s renewable energy credit program to be more stable for the industry compared to other states’ programs, while maximizing the number of solar and fuel cell projects that could be built with the money.
In his resignation letter to Malloy, Esty also touted the progress made in the environmental permitting process at DEEP, noting the lean techniques used to make the process more efficient and helpful for the business community.
Esty also faced controversy in the amount of power DEEP wielded. New York solar developer Allco Finance Ltd. sued Esty over the $1 billion contract DEEP arranged for a Maine wind farm.
Esty’s wife, Elizabeth Esty, was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2012.
