Utility customers could see relief in electric bills
HARTFORD — Gov. Ned Lamont is considering the use of leftover federal pandemic relief to lower the state’s recent eye-popping electric bills, he said following an hourlong meeting with legislative leaders Wednesday.
Lamont conferred with three Republican lawmakers and a pair of majority Democrats, Rep. Jonathan Steinberg of Westport and Sen. Norm Needleman of Essex, and discussed a variety of potential ways to address bills that spiked over the summer. The governor told reporters afterwards that there are no easy answers because Connecticut has supply problems and got locked into a contract with the Millstone nuclear plant in Waterford back in 2017.
While it was understood electric rates would rise over the summer due for various reasons including Millstone and the state’s energy assistance program, customers expressed shock over just how high their bills jumped. Multiple aspects of bills are tied to electricity usage, which increases over the summer, but the extent of the increase took many by surprise with some customers reporting increases of several hundred dollars. The Public Utilities Regulatory Authority voted to again increase rates in September.
Lamont said that in October, he can unilaterally allocate federal COVID funds, explaining that could be a way to offset at least a small portion of bills. He said that rather than a special legislative session this fall on the issue, potential solutions, including spreading out some utility payments over multiple years instead of the current 10 months, are better left to either the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority or the next General Assembly, which meets in January.
“The question is, most of this (federal) money is committed or allocated or not and that’s what we’ve got to do is a real analysis on this right now,” Lamont told reporters in his State Capitol office after lawmakers left. “It’s not enough to make a big difference but it’s enough to make a small difference.”
Lamont said there is a general agreement among state policy makers that the deal to keep Millstone working, at a guaranteed five-cents-per-kilowatthour, was a good idea. “Occasionally it has saved our rate payers money, but now it’s costing rate payers money,” he said. Lamont noted that socalled public benefits charges amount to 20 percent of consumer bills, with the Millstone section nearly 80 percent of the public benefits. “We’re talking about a tiny little slice of the pie, here. But that said, we’re going to take look at that. What should rate payers be subsidizing? I think efficiency is very important.”
“We were candid with each other,” said Steinberg, co-chairman of the Energy & Technology Committee. “I think we all would have loved to come up with some immediate solution that would address the real pain people are feeling, however most of the things we really do to benefit rate payers and our reliability of energy are longer-term solutions. The Republicans continue to push for a special session. I’m just not sure that there is enough ‘there’ there to justify it.”
Later Wednesday afternoon, state Sen. Ryan Fazio, R-Greenwich and Senate Minority Leader Stephen Harding said that a special session of the General Assembly is still needed to take advantage of the approximately $700 million in unallocated federal pandemic relief under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. Harding stressed that current law requires an estimated $40 million scheduled to go to higher education, but it would be more important to provide consumer relief.
“We’re the only one providing any sort of relief,” said Harding, stressing that GOP lawmakers in February asked the legislature to help pay for some of the many charges that end up on residential electric bills. “We have money that we can expend here. I have a hard time believing that you could find better priorities than to use it to pay down some of these rates for the hard-working people of Connecticut.” Harding said if Lamont were to call a special session within the next few weeks, more ARPA funding could be used for rate relief.
Fazio, a ranking Republican on the legislative Energy & Technology Committee, said he shares Lamont’s concerns about the long-term electric needs of the state. “That is a major concern 10 years from now,” he said. “We still have a cost problem. We still have the thirdhighest costs in the country and the highest costs in the region. We are imposing too much costs on our residents.” Republicans have asked for sections of the public benefits charges to be removed from electric bills, including consumer charges not collected in the pandemic; the cost of installing electric vehicle chargers; and the 2017 contract with Millstone to continue operations.
Lamont said the total amount of ARPA funds that might remain to help consumers will be determined within the next 10 days.
Lamont described the session as cordial. “I think we had a very constructive meeting,” he said from behind his desk in his second-floor office. “We all agree that the fundamental problem we have right here is supply and demand for the state of Connecticut. How can we reduce our demand through efficiency and more importantly, how do we get the additional power generation here in Connecticut?”