In his first campaign news conference, Republican gubernatorial candidate Ryan Fazio outlined plans Monday to lower the high cost of electricity, asserting that Connecticut’s longstanding efforts to promote carbon-free energy have burdened ratepayers without mitigating climate change.
Fazio said he would end Connecticut’s 21-year commitment to RGGI, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, and oppose further state spending on building an EV charger network, subsidizing the installation of climate-friendly heat pumps or anything else increasing the cost of or demand for electricity.
“Affordability should be the priority,” said Fazio, a state senator from Greenwich and a prominent GOP voice on energy. “And just the simple mathematics of it is, if Connecticut dropped off the face of the earth, it wouldn’t have any significant effect on carbon emissions globally.”
Fazio is one of three declared GOP candidates for governor. All have indicated that the high cost of living will be central to their campaigns to unseat Gov. Ned Lamont, a fiscally moderate Democrat seeking his third term as governor in a cycle widely deemed favorable to Democrats.
Fazio’s press conference on energy came as the governor prepares to propose a one-time rebate inspired by energy costs, one element of the State of the State speech that Lamont is to deliver Wednesday on the opening day of the General Assembly’s three-month session.
A six-point plan Fazio released and his answers to questions about climate change put him in sync with President Donald Trump, albeit employing rhetoric less heated than that of the president, who has called climate change “a hoax” and a “con job” as he rolled back clean air standards and ordered halts on off-shore wind projects.
“Wind is itself an unreliable source of energy, but there are times and places where it could work because it’s affordable, and that’s especially in the middle of the country where the land is flat and it’s affordable to build wind farms on land,” Fazio said. “But in the northeast and offshore, it’s just not the case.”
He offered no opinion on the stop-work orders from the Trump administration that twice halted work on the nearly complete and fully permitted offshore Revolution Wind, which is set to power 350,000 homes in Rhode Island and Connecticut. Each time, a federal judge has overruled the orders.
“I don’t think I fully understand the reasons, and I’ve urged the federal government and the state government to work together to resolve their differences on the issue,” Fazio said.
Ultimately, Fazio said, if Trump managed to kill the nearly completed Revolution Wind, all financial losses would fall on its developer, a partnership led by Ørsted, a global energy company. If it comes on line, it would raise costs to ratepayers under the terms of its contracted price to sell the power.
Fazio repeatedly said Connecticut is too small to mitigate climate change, even though its policies were part of a larger mosaic of regional initiatives, such as RGGI.
“That’s an unnecessary cost in my mind. And there’s no evidence that it’s changing the earth’s temperature,” Fazio said. “It is a small program in a small region of one country in the world, but we know it’s increasing costs.”
Connecticut currently has the third-highest electric rates in the U.S. after Hawaii and California, Fazio said. The rest of New England tends to follow close behind.
Fazio said he agreed with Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Accords on climate. He said he favors a cost-benefit approach towards how society should cope with rising temperatures and sea levels, suggesting it might make more sense to adapt to those trends, not to fight them.
“I think it is important to consider the environment in all of our decision making, especially to protect clean air and clean water,” he said.
Rather than renewables, he favored a greater reliance on relatively inexpensive natural gas, calling for greater pipeline capacity and generating capacity.
As the ranking Senate Republican on the legislature’s Energy and Technology Committee, Fazio’s choice of energy as his first policy initiative since becoming a candidate last summer was no surprise. He proposes to eliminate the “public benefits charge” on electric bills that funds various policy initiatives ranging from mandates for renewable power sources to subsidies for the poor.
The charges typically account for about 20% of consumer’s bill from Eversource, the dominant electric utility in Connecticut, and slightly less for customers of the smaller United Illuminating. They are a collection of state and federally mandated initiatives that include energy efficiency and electrification programs, assistance for low-income customers and contracts to purchase power from specific sources, such as a fixed rate for power purchased from the Millstone nuclear power plant.
Those costs were obscured until a legislative mandate that Fazio and others pushed in 2023 made them visible on the monthly bills of ratepayers.
“And now they’re mad about it. They’re flipping mad about it, and they should be, because our utility bills should not be a piggy bank for politicians in Hartford to be spending on all their politically and ideologically preferred programs,” Fazio said.
Fazio call the public benefits programs “a hidden $1 billion tax.”
“We should eliminate some of the programs immediately, phase out others, and a few remaining programs that are worthwhile can be and should be funded through the normal budget process, where they would have to be justified every two years,” Fazio said.
Bob Stefanowski, the Republican nominee for governor in 2018 and 2022, also attempted to use energy costs as a wedge issue, with limited effect. Similarly, Republicans highlighted the issue in many legislative races in 2024, when Democrats won majorities of 25-11 in the Senate and 102-49 in the House.
But Lamont’s rebate idea and Fazio’s plan are reflections, however, that both parties have concluded that affordability in general and electric costs in particular are on the minds of voters.
Fazio outlined his plan at a press conference in Hartford, accompanied by the ranking House Republican on energy, Rep. Tracy Marra of Greenwich.
The Lamont campaign initially ignored it, wryly referring questions for comment to his two Republican rivals, Erin Stewart and Betsy McCaughey, whom he must defeat to face Lamont. But it reconsidered, issuing a statement from Roberto Alves, the Democratic state chair.
“Ryan Fazio’s proposal isn’t a serious solution, it’s a collection of reckless ideas that would destabilize our energy grid and drive up costs,” Alves said. “Gov. Ned Lamont is laser-focused on lowering the cost of living for Connecticut families. That’s why he’s made historic investments in early childhood education, held utilities accountable, and created an emergency fund to protect families from Donald Trump’s cuts that hurt Connecticut every day.”
