Millstone bill heads to full legislature

Opposition says power plant owners don’t need any help

Legislation would help the power plant owner compete in a state renewable energy procurement program.

Legislation that would help the owner of the Millstone Nuclear Power Station in Waterford compete in a state renewable energy procurement program easily passed the legislature’s Energy and Technology Committee Tuesday.

The 17-7 vote comes after weeks worth of efforts by Dominion Energy, the Virgina-based utility that owns Millstone, and a coalition of groups opposing Senate Bill 106. The two sides have sought to convince Connecticut lawmakers and the public of the validity of their respective position.

The vote allows the bill to be heard by the full state Connecticut House of Representatives and Senate. Kevin Hennessy, Dominion’s director of federal, state and local affairs for New England, said moving the bill out of committee “puts consumers first.”

“Under this legislation, Connecticut’s retail electricity prices will be reduced,” Hennessy said Tuesday. “The auction process will give Dominion and all other bidders a strong incentive to offer the lowest prices possible. If Dominion comes in with the lowest bid and it is accepted, consumer prices will go down; if other suppliers outbid Dominion by offering lower prices, the result again will be lower prices for consumers.”

Allowing Millstone access to the market would also help the state meet its renewable energy goals, Hennessy said.

“This is Connecticut controlling its own destiny,” he said during a New Haven Register editorial board meeting last week. “It makes a heck of a lot of sense to buy locally produced, clean power.”

Dominion currently sells the electricity that Millstone produces into the futures market, with third parties buying the power rather than utilities such as Eversource or The United Illuminating Co. Those third parties, which sometimes include hedge funds, then resell the power they have purchased, to electric utilities.

Dominion does not sell the power from Millstone in to New England’s daily regional spot market “because we hate the volatility (in pricing),” Hennessy said.

State Rep. Lonnie Reed, D-Branford, co-chairwoman of the state legislature’s Energy and Technology Committee, has said the legislation is needed to ensure that Dominion doesn’t decide to close the power plant. Dominion officials haven’t threatened to close Millstone, according to Reed, but trends in the nuclear power industry merit consideration of legislation that could help the company.

Opposing Dominion’s efforts to gain access to the market are a coalition of consumer advocacy and environmental groups as well as rival power plant operators. The opponents say passage of the legislation would give Dominion an unfair advantage that would stifle the growth of wind and solar power in Connecticut and would not be beneficial to the state’s electric ratepayers.

Connecticut Petroleum Council Executive Director Steven Guveyan said the Energy and Technology Committee’s approval of the Millstone bill amounts to “nothing less than corporate welfare that could raise costs for Connecticut consumers who already pay some of the highest electricity prices in the nation.” The statewide trade group is a division of the American Petroleum Institute, which represents America’s oil and natural gas industry.

“Instead of providing subsidies for nuclear power generation, the State of Connecticut should embrace the free market that has allowed clean-burning, affordable and abundant natural gas to lower energy costs for consumers in the region,” Guveyan said. “Moving forward, we urge every legislator in Connecticut’s General Assembly to reject this misguided legislation that could harm consumers and distort the energy markets.”

John Erlingheuser, AARP Connecticut’s director of advocacy, questioned Dominion’s claim that the legislation would reduce the state’s electric rates.

“AARP is focused solely on rates, but why would a publicly traded company that is supposedly losing money want to get lower rates, thus lowering their profits for the shareholders expecting a high return for their investment?” Erlingheuser said.

Dominion must be willing to provide financial information to lawmakers and show that it is losing money operating Millstone before being granted access to Connecticut’s renewable market, he said.

Other opponents say it is inappropriate to refer to nuclear energy as clean, renewable power.

“Senate Bill 106 would redefine old, nuclear sources as ‘clean energy’ and give Dominion a special deal at the expense of cuttingedge, truly renewable technologies,” said Claire Coleman, climate and energy attorney for Connecticut Fund for the Environment, which is based in New Haven. “Connecticut’s future lies in clean, safe, locallyproduced energy like wind and solar, not nuclear plants that cause more problems than they solve.”

Kate Cohen, state director of Connecticut Public Interest Research Group, said the price of nuclear power would undercut the cost of electricity produced by solar and wind, just like natural gas has done to nuclear energy.

Bill Dornbos, Connecticut director and senior attorney at Acadia Center, a regional environmental group said Senate Bill 106 will ”interfere with the transition to renewables like increasingly cost-competitive solar and wind.”

Mike Trahan, executive director of SolarConnecticut, the trade group for solar industry businesses in the state, said allowing Millstone to bid into the state procurement process now reserved for renewable energy resources such as large-scale hydropower, solar, wind and trash-to-energy facilities is akin to letting former major league pitching star Roger Clemens face a Little League baseball team in a game.

“That seems to be what this bill does by allowing nuclear power to compete in the same pool with renewables,” Trahan said. “If the Millstone plant is thought to be deserving of a five-year financial cushion, then I sense most ratepayers would support the solar industry getting at least a similar investment. As it is, Millstone gets a five-year deal and instate commercial solar gets 12 months.”

A group of independent power producers has created a campaign called “Stop The Millstone Payout.” Matt Fossen, a spokesman for the group, said the Millstone bill “is a bad bill that will raise rates for Connecticut consumers and businesses, who are already struggling to get by in a state that has some of the highest utility bills in the country.”

“Dominion is a highly profitable company that does not need a corporate handout and has no intentions of closing Millstone,” Fossen said.