Costs remain hurdle for CT plan to reduce emissions
Gov. Ned Lamont’s hopes of drastically reducing Connecticut’s carbon emissions by imposing new tailpipe standards on trucks and rolling out a new fleet of state-owned electric vehicles met a familiar foe on Friday, as lawmakers questioned the feasibility of the move due to inflation and rising energy prices.
That message came Friday not only from Republicans, but from several Democrats representing eastern Connecticut who raised concerns during a public hearing over a pair of bills aimed at helping achieve Lamont’s goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 80 percent by 2050.
The first piece of legislation, an amendment to the state’s existing Clean Air Act, seeks to slash emissions by expanding incentives for the purchase of electric vehicles, while also transitioning the state’s fleet of school buses and lightduty vehicles to be entirely electric by 2035.
The second bill, proposed by Lamont would impose California’s emission standards on medium and heavy-duty vehicles — essentially those vehicles ranging in weight from a typical delivery truck to an 18-wheeler.
Both of those efforts were developed in the wake of Lamont’s decision last year to abandon a regional climate initiative that became saddled with a dubious “gas tax” label during a time of rising fuel prices.
The price of gas has since only risen higher, approaching an average of $4.50 a gallon on Friday.
While neither of the bills debated during Friday’s public hearing sought to raise revenues from the sale of gas, lawmakers fretted the policies would still place additional costs on consumers from the higher price of electric vehicles, as well as the burden those vehicles would place on the power grid during recharging.
“The average middle-class person does have extreme difficulties paying for things, especially right now,” said state Rep. Devin Carney, R-Old Lyme. “The last thing they want to see is something like this bill or previous bills that have come out of this chamber directly, or sometimes indirectly, impacting energy costs.”
State Sen. Cathy Osten, D-Sprauge, raised similar concerns about the lack of available infrastructure in more rural areas to support electric vehicles, as well as the high price to purchase electric and other fuel-efficient models.
“If you don’t address the affordability component of it, you’re losing fully a third of the state,” Osten said. “The state cannot continue to put eastern Connecticut on pause.”
Lamont’s commissioner for the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, Katie Dykes, along with Transportation Commissioner Garrett Eucalitto, sought to assuage those concerns Friday by pointing out that much of the funding for their climate efforts comes from the $1 trillion infrastructure package approved by Congress last year, and the state was providing additional incentives to switch to less-polluting vehicles.
Within that legislation and other federal programs, Dykes said up to $50 million could be made available to Connecticut over the next five years to purchase electric buses, in addition to tens of millions of dollars for installing electric vehicle charging stations and other carbon-reduction projects.
The lawmaker’s Clean Air Act Legislation would also authorize up to $15 million in bonds to help municipalities modernize traffic signals, reduce congestion and the spewing of emissions.
Reductions from that bill would be bolstered by the tougher emissions standards on medium and heavy-duty trucks, which according to DEEP, would have the equivalent impact of closing a coal-fired power plant.
“We’ve seen progress in reducing emissions from our electric grid, emissions from our transportation sector continue to rise,” Dykes said. “This at a time when we need to be on a path to reduce those emissions by about a third.”
In written testimony submitted to the Environment and Transportation committees, the Lamont administration did raise several issues with the language of the Clean Air Act legislation, mostly related to various funding mechanisms within state government. While overall supportive of the effort to transition the state fleet to electric vehicles, Lamont’s administration also added that it was concerned the market for those vehicles would prevent that switch from happening within the eight-year timeline presented by lawmakers.
The Department of Administrative Services “continues to commit to transition as quickly as possible based on budget considerations, market conditions and availability, and matching the appropriate vehicle to the needs of our client agencies,” the administration said.