How much do Connecticut and Governor Lamont want to commit to buying a lot of politically correct electricity to reduce “global warming” before ascertaining and understanding its price? Not as much as they used to. Reality is catching up with political correctness in energy costs. For Connecticut residents and businesses are angry at their sharp […]
Get Instant Access to This Article
Subscribe to Hartford Business Journal and get immediate access to all of our subscriber-only content and much more.
- Critical Hartford and Connecticut business news updated daily.
- Immediate access to all subscriber-only content on our website.
- Bi-weekly print or digital editions of our award-winning publication.
- Special bonus issues like the Hartford Book of Lists.
- Exclusive ticket prize draws for our in-person events.
Click here to purchase a paywall bypass link for this article.
How much do Connecticut and Governor Lamont want to commit to buying a lot of politically correct electricity to reduce “global warming” before ascertaining and understanding its price?
Not as much as they used to. Reality is catching up with political correctness in energy costs.
For Connecticut residents and businesses are angry at their sharp recent increases in electricity prices, especially since the increases were political choices by the governor and General Assembly.
For many years, the governor and legislators have chosen to hide in electric bills the costs of various social programs having nothing directly to do with the generation and distribution of electricity, including a program that requires electricity users who pay their bills to pay as well for electricity users who don’t pay for years at a time.
As this is a public welfare expense it should have been covered by the state budget, where elected officials could be held accountable for it, and not hidden in electricity bills, where blame is misdirected to the electric utilities.
Now that the soaring price of electricity has gotten people’s attention, they have discovered and resent the government’s dishonesty.
The bigger cause of the recent electricity rate increases is the commitment state government made by law in 2017 to purchase half the electrical output of the Millstone nuclear power plant to keep the plant in business. Since Millstone produces nearly half the electricity used in Connecticut, its closure would jeopardize the state’s energy security.
In addition, the power Millstone produces can be portrayed as politically correct.
That is, Millstone generates no “greenhouse gases,” just deadly radioactive waste with a half life of thousands of gubernatorial and legislative terms, waste for which the federal government has not yet gotten around to creating a depository, and whose politically incorrectness has been temporarily suspended.
For a while, the Millstone guarantee saved Connecticut electricity users a lot of money, but now other sources of electricity, especially natural gas, have fallen in price and are less expensive than nuclear. Energy prices change, and state government did not prepare the public for the possibility.
The Millstone guarantee may save money again before it expires in 2029, but at the moment it’s a loser.
So now Gov. Lamont is backing away from Connecticut’s agreement to join Massachusetts and Rhode Island in buying a lot of electricity from offshore wind projects that aren’t operating yet and whose electricity almost certainly will be much more expensive than electricity produced any other way.
Indeed, it’s questionable whether offshore wind will even work or survive the first hurricane or nor’easter that comes along.
The governor is musing about recommitting to offshore wind if Massachusetts and Rhode Island will join Connecticut’s commitment to buy power from Millstone, thereby spreading the risk of volatile energy costs. Maybe Massachusetts and Rhode Island would pay for some extra security from Millstone.
But the more electricity prices rise under the pressure of political correctness, as they will rise, the more Connecticut should question political correctness in energy. Even if one really believes that big changes in climate are man-made and not produced by the same natural factors that caused big changes many times over millions of years before the industrial age, one is obliged to believe something else before committing the state to still more expensive electricity.
That is, one is obliged to believe that anything little Connecticut does with its energy sources will make any difference to the world’s climate.
The nonprofit environmentalist organization Global Energy Monitor recently reported that China is developing enough new coal mines to produce another 1.28 billion metric tons of that dirty fuel every year. A spokeswoman for the group noted that China’s government maintains long-term contracts guaranteeing the profitability of coal mines.
Meanwhile, Connecticut subsidizes what it considers “green” power.
Chinese coal is sure to erase in just a few minutes whatever savings Connecticut could achieve in “greenhouse gases” in a year, even if the state stopped using conventional energy altogether. So, how much more does Connecticut want to pay just to feel politically correct about electricity?
Chris Powell is the former managing editor of the Journal Inquirer. He has written about Connecticut government and politics for decades.