They say April showers bring May flowers, but in the Connecticut General Assembly, April showers came in the form of Senate Bill 1560, a bill that would bring disarray to Connecticut’s energy future.  

While presented as a climate friendly solution to make energy more affordable, this bill undermines the state’s renewable energy and energy efficiency programs with little to no benefit to the ratepayer. Senate Bill 1560 is comprised of three misleading and costly-long term policy actions:  

1. Destabilizes clean energy funding by replacing the systems benefits charge with a politically controlled Green Bond fund, making long-term investments in efficiency and renewable vulnerable to annual budget fights.  
2. Uproots investment in truly renewable energy by adding existing nuclear power to the definition of class 1 renewables, diverting money meant to support new clean energy projects toward subsidizing existing nuclear plants like Millstone. 
3. Duplicates and disrupts existing programs, creating a redundant new agency, adding confusion by re-creating programs that already exist, and interfering with regulatory work already underway by the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority and CT Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. 

Destabilizing clean energy funding  

Transferring funding for essential energy efficiency programs to the proposed Green Bond Fund would subject payment of program costs to the annual political wrangling that accompanies the release of bond authorizations and place successful programs in jeopardy. The proposed annual Green Bond Fund cap of $800 million represents a third of the state’s annual bond cap. Not to mention that if these costs move to bonding, the state of Connecticut will have to pay interest on that funding. If the goal is truly to make Connecticut a more affordable place to live, adding long-term costs won’t achieve that goal.  

The system benefits charge has been successful in providing sustained funding for clean energy and efficiency programs that lower costs for residents for decades. As it is currently implemented, for each kilowatt hour of energy you use, one tenth of one cent goes to renewable energy programs, and six tenths of a cent go to energy efficiency programs. Importantly, renewable energy and energy efficiency programs are the best ways for Connecticut residents to reduce the costs of their utility bills while also lowering system costs grid-wide! Since its inception, renewable energy programs funded by the systems benefits charge lowered energy burdens for more than  63,300 families and 8,125 businesses.   

Dismantling this funding will increase costs to ratepayers and taxpayers over time, and the Green Bond Fund will affect all Connecticut residents, not just those who pay a monthly electric bill from Eversource or United Illuminating. Additionally, electric load on the grid will be harder to manage, as efficiency programs compete with politically attractive local infrastructure projects in the annual bonding process.  

Uprooting investment in truly renewable energy 

The proposed change to the state’s Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of these standards. The RPS provides incentives for utilizing clean energy options to support the development of new renewable electric generation facilities. However, the proposed expansion of the definition of a Class I resource within the RPS to include existing nuclear energy will destroy the RPS by flooding the market with eligible “renewable” energy credits from existing legacy generators.