Events continue to reveal the limits of power during both in a far off war and peace at home.
President Donald Trump demanded unconditional surrender weeks into his ill-judged, impulsive war against Iran. The war that he claimed, “In the first hour it was over.” There was a second war in the place. The one in which his tiny team of negotiators surrendered to the radicals ruling that luckless nation.
Trump was willing to accept a humiliating defeat, memorialized in 14 points, to get through the midterm elections in November with gas prices close to $3 a gallon. Of the many unintended consequences of his feckless leadership has been the advance of electrification in nations that bore the brunt of the Iranians’ fightback: closing the Strait of Hormuz to shipping traffic.
While thousands of ships loaded with oil remained stranded in the Persian Gulf last week, the Trump administration announced it will spend $765 million to cancel four offshore wind projects.
Early this month, Energy Secretary Chris Wright made the erroneous announcement that solar panels are “irrelevant in the winter.” It is not too much to expect the nation’s chief energy official to know that the sun shines in the winter and solar panels operate more efficiently in the winter than in extreme summer temperatures. Do they prepare these nutty pronouncements in advance, or do they flow on their own under the bright lights of a congressional hearing? We will need to await a Niagara of memoirs to find out.
The rising price of energy extends beyond oil in Connecticut. We have been tormented by the cost of electricity for decades. It’s more expensive to keep lights burning here than in nearly any other state. Gov. Ned Lamont has been candid in sharing that his worst fear is a particular type of severe weather: Snow, wind and frigid temperatures could combine to increase demand beyond what the state’s utilities can supply.
With a primary in August and, if he wins that, a general election in November, Lamont is straining to offer some credible solutions to rising electricity costs. Momentous events of war and peace overshadowed a car crash of a moving press conference that started in the parking lot of a Cheshire office building. When the building’s owner objected to the disruptive presence of the governor and his entourage, they decamped to a spot across the street — an Eversource facility.
Lamont declined to answer questions not related to his utility proposals and instead adjourned the campaign event to a separate one outside his Capitol office. The bobbled unveiling may have revealed more than some dubious ideas on the intractable challenge of the state’s electricity rates.
After eight years in office with a mostly friendly legislature, the Greenwich Democrat has forgotten how to handle the daily challenges of a competitive campaign fought on several fronts, including one within his own party.
Lamont is uniquely vulnerable on electricity. The worst decision of his first term was opposing a 650-megawatt gas-powered plant in Killingly. Today, he’s a natural gas enthusiast scrambling to increase the state’s supply in the wake of offshore wind projects falling far below expectations. Now a natural gas enthusiast, Lamont has had no success in expanding the pipeline capacity from New York.
The energy squeeze continues to inspire bad ideas. One of Lamont’s is to require Eversource and UI, the state’s largest utilities, to bid for their franchises every 15 years. This could lead to a calamity. As the 15th year to renewal approached, the utilities could find it impossible to raise capital to fund essential expenses. The bonds they have issued could be seriously downgraded.
Photo illustration shows utility bills from Eversource and United Illuminating with the public benefits charge. (Shahrzad Rasekh / CT Mirror)
If, under the Lamont plan, a utility lost its franchise, its successor would have to purchase its vast infrastructure. Ratepayers would be required to pay for that, imposing a new and expensive burden on the people the proposal is intended to help.
The governor benefits in comparison with a bad idea of his Democratic primary opponent, state Rep. Josh Elliott, D-Hamden. Elliott, who is seeking to oust Lamont while also running for re-election to the House, wants municipalities to create their own electric companies.
In a nation where the rule of law still matters, Elliott would allow cities and towns to pay utilities a fraction of the value of their infrastructure (poles, wires, transformers, and easements) because to pay their real value would make his proposal a nonstarter.
Municipal utilities are largely unregulated, which makes misjudgments in purchasing power contracts a serious risk to local ratepayers. The state’s seven municipal power companies generate little electricity themselves but, when they do, they often rely on diesel power, a dirty source that the state is trying to reduce.
An examination of Elliott’s voting record in the legislature reveals he has not been willing to support public ownership of utilities. In 2024, the legislature voted to allow the South Central Connecticut Regional Water Authority, a public entity, to expand to include the more than 700,000 customers served by Aquarion, the water company owned by Eversource, in western Connecticut. Elliott voted against the bill. He likes public ownership of utilities except when he doesn’t.
The spotlight may require Elliott to spend much of the next eight weeks before the primary for governor fleeing from his own undistinguished record of a decade in the House. It is nevertheless a rare candidate who has voted against one of the few planks in his own platform. Democrats have found one in Elliott.
In a week when fantasy, secrecy and dissembling drove the most critical national policies, let’s resolve to embrace reality in Connecticut. Whoever is elected in governor in November will possess little power to make power less expensive.
Kevin F. Rennie can be reached at kfrennie@yahoo.com