The Connecticut Energy Advisory Board is finalizing a report in which it may recommend the state back off a statutory goal of obtaining 20 percent of its energy from renewable sources by the year 2020 ”“ with implications for businesses considering investments on that front.
At a legislative committee meeting last month, state Rep. Lonnie Reed of Branford said CEAB has been “telegraphing” that possibility, even as Connecticut policymakers appeared to abandon plans to meet the goal by allowing hydropower imports to count against the renewable portfolio standard in place. Critics said that could have siphoned funding and development for other types of renewable energy systems at a cost to jobs in Connecticut.
State Sen. Donald Williams Jr. made his energy bill the first one introduced in the current legislative session, a position reserved for a jobs bill last year. The bill drew some 120 comments, including from perhaps the person whose opinion counts most ”“ Daniel Esty, the Yale University professor appointed by Gov. Dannel P. Malloy to lead his proposed Department of Energy and Environmental Protection.
Testifying on the energy bill, Esty said it is important to provide incentives in cases where a technology offers “a trajectory to economic viability.”
“I do believe that there are reasons to aim at a more neutral approach that incentivizes all renewable energy approaches more broadly and not try to pick winners,” Esty said. “We really can”™t afford to put money into things that, once the subsidies or support goes away, fall off the table and can”™t be sustained on their own.”
Esty cited the example of federal subsidies given to Midwest farmers as an inducement to produce corn for ethanol-based fuels.
“Having spent 25 years in this field I will promise you that is not the fuel of the future. Of all the directions we could have gone, that”™s one of the worst. So it gives me little confidence that technology specific or company specific bets are a good thing.
“We don”™t want to be the ones positioned to pick the winner because ”¦ you make me pick, I”™m going to pick the corn-based ethanol of tomorrow. So I want to see the market test out those technologies but ”¦ we”™ve got to get people into the starting gates; and if they don”™t have an incentive that gets them into the race, we haven”™t done what we need to do.”
On grounds it would increase energy rates, last year then-Gov. M. Jodi Rell vetoed a bill introduced with days to go in the legislative session that would have among other measures replenished funding for incentives on solar panel installations for homes and businesses.
Connecticut dropped out of the top 10 states nationally for new solar installations to 18th overall, according to a study published last month by the Solar Energy Industries Association and GTM Research of Cambridge, Mass.
New Jersey, which has kept up its solar incentives even as Connecticut”™s have expired, ranked second behind only California ”“ but only at a “staggering” cost, according to Bob Maddox, a member of Connecticut Renewable Energy Investment Board and chairman of the renewable subcommittee of the U.S. Green Building Council.
“We”™ve all heard the jokes about ”˜dirty Jersey,”™” Maddox said. “Well, they”™re trying to change their image and they want to be known as ”˜sunny Jersey,”™ and so this was integral to ”¦ what New Jersey wanted to do (in) cleaning up their image as a state. It”™s economic development.
“I think there is a better, smarter way for us to do the same thing to build lots more solar without basically opening the wallet of the ratepayer and just say, ”˜pay, pay, pay ”“ and hopefully one day this will all work out,”™” Maddox said.
