Yesterday, House and Senate Republican leaders, Sen. Stephen Harding Jr. (Brookfield) and Rep. Vincent Candelora (North Branford) held a press conference at the state Capitol demanding Gov. Ned Lamont to call a special legislative session for the purpose of lowering the state’s exceedingly high electric rates.
“Call us into a special session now, this is an emergency,” said Harding Jr. “Let’s address this issue, let’s stop the bleeding now, and let’s once again make electric rates in this state affordable.”
Joining Harding and Candelora were fellow Republican lawmakers Rep. William Buckbee (New Milford) and Sen. Ryan Fazio (Greenwich), ranking members of the Energy and Technology Committee. The four lawmakers took time to say their piece, and offer their own suggestions for ways in which the state could reasonably hope to lower the burden of electricity on the state’s ratepayers.
Among these suggestions were the expenditure of General Fund and remaining ARPA funds on the public benefits portion of electric bills, utilizing cheaper forms of renewable energy such as hydro and nuclear power as opposed to wind and solar, appointing more commissioners to PURA, utilizing natural gas to lower prices in winter months, and capping the procurement rate of renewable energy at two to three times of fair market price.
“There is zero reason, zero reason, that Connecticut should be the second highest state in the United States of America when it comes down to electricity rates,” said Harding Jr. “It has to end.”
The reason for the state’s ever-rising electricity rates depends on who you ask; while Republican lawmakers have blamed the length of the COVID moratorium on electric shut-offs and PURA’s repeated rejection of proposed electric rate hikes, amounting to kicking the can down the road. Democratic lawmakers have placed the blame primarily on the 2017 decision to keep Millstone Nuclear Power Plant afloat, a Republican led proposal that mandated Eversource and United Illuminating to purchase half of their electricity from the plant through 2029 at a rate that’s 2.5 times more expensive than market price.
Additionally, Republicans have been intent on drawing attention to the $200 million public benefit portion of this year’s rate hike, which composes up around 23% of the cost of the bill, while Democrats have been pointing blame at Republicans for the Millstone Power Plant decision, the costs of which represent 77% of this year’s rate hike. Buckbee equated the four-year long moratorium, and the impact it has had on increasing this year’s public benefit portion of the bill, as if a restaurant full of people paid the tab of two people for four years straight.
“It’s unacceptable,” said Buckbee.
As the lawmakers fielded questions from reporters, Harding and Candelora addressed the Millstone decision. Harding said that it is “rich” to blame the decision on Republicans when Democrats have held a supermajority since 2010, and Candelora said that blame for the decision ought to be shared by both parties, but cited PURA as the party most responsible.
“No question R’s and D’s here supported that proposal, I’ve got members here that voted for it, members that voted against it,” said Candelora. “But let’s get to the point of it too, the cost was accumulated over two years because PURA has continued to deny our utility companies to recover in a timely fashion.”
After a string of denials of rate hike proposals, PURA controversially approved an $800 million rate hike for Eversource this April, approving the utility of seeking recompensation over the course of 10 months. While PURA Chair Marissa Gillett argued that Eversource should be allowed to seek compensation over a period of two years to smoothen out the rate hike, she was outvoted by Commissioner John Betkoski III and Commissioner Michael Caron.
“PURA decided to hedge their bets, not allow them [utilities] to recover costs and surprise, it all comes to at once,” said Candelora. “They’ve deferred, deferred, deferred, and now everyone has sticker shock.”
Candelora argued that PURA needs to be taken “out of the spare room of the governor’s office,” and argued that it has been politicized and compromised as an independent agency ever since it was placed under the purview of the state’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection under former Governor Dannel Malloy’s leadership. He also argued that Lamont appoint more commissioners to the agency, a point that Republicans have made repeatedly before.
“I don’t know how many times we can say that,” said Candelora.
In contrast, Rep. Liz Linehan (D-Cheshire) released a statement yesterday evening that placed the blame on Eversource for asking PURA for a 10 month rate hike period, speculating it may have been an attempt to drive up public outrage against PURA Chair Gillett. She also criticized Eversource for “focusing the source of this fee on the moratorium, when in reality, more than 70% of this fee is from purchasing power from the Millstone power plant.”
The lawmakers also made it a point to hammer Democrats on the refusal to use ARPA funds to help pay off the $200 million in the public benefits portion of this year’s electric rate. Harding Jr. recommended the state to place the public benefits portion of the bill under the purview of the state’s budgetary process, and to provide immediate relief to ratepayers by using unallocated funds to help pay off a portion of the bill. Candelora estimated that there is somewhere over $40 million in unallocated funds leftover from last fiscal year that could be used to pay off public benefits.
“We’re looking at one time revenues to fix a one time problem,” said Candelora. “That moratorium created a $200 million cost put onto taxpayers. We can offset that with one time revenue. We would have preferred if that was done with ARPA money back in February, now that they’ve squandered that we are offering other solutions, but the money is there. The will needs to be there, and apparently it’s not.”
Fazio demanded that PURA should work to facilitate an increase in competition amongst utility providers to incentivize them to drive costs down. He also noted that there should be a cap on the rate at which the state procures new energy providers, and slammed the state on its intent to look towards more expensive sources of renewable energy, such as wind, when cheaper alternatives like nuclear power exist.
“We’re saying that the government should not direct purchases of energy if they’re two, or more than two or three times higher than the competitive rate of electricity,” said Fazio. “That is part of why your public benefits charges are so high.”
Ultimately, the lawmakers seemed firm on the states’ obligation to lower electric rates, yet flexible in what ways it should achieve it. In spite of prior back and forth among party lines, including blame placed by the lawmakers unto their Democratic colleagues during the conference itself, Harding Jr. ended the conference on a bipartisan note.
“We can sit and fight all day over who got us here, but at the end of the day we’re here,” said Harding Jr. “We have to do something to lower energy rates in the state, we have proposals we believe can do that in immediacy and in the long term, and we’re calling on the Governor – let’s get us into a special session, let’s get it done, let’s reduce these energy rates.”
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No one is talking about the massive salaries of Eversource executives and other over-paid employees of electric companies. We should not forget the fact that the new “smart meters” have been shown by IEEE researchers to overbill end-users of electric power. Today’s modern electric devices create non-linear loads that confuse today’s “smart meters.” The “confusion” concerns electromagnetic interference that overrepresents customer usage.
If they want to fix it. Go back to being regulated in CT. It’s that simple. Why is nobody suggesting this?
It is funny that they blame it on the Republicans for a 2017 bill, when in fact if you look at the votes you would see that it was more like 2/3 dem and 1/3 rep. Also note that the benefit fund is not going to eversource but instead to pay for the democratic mandates to go green. For example go down to Hammonasset and you will see EV stations that people can use. Also note that Gov Lamont wanted us all to drive EV’s by 2035? This may sound great, but our power grid can’t take it, nor can many can afford the car never mind charging them? With such goals, we buy fossil fuel from Iran, how is that any greener than self reliance with our own fossil fuels?