Facing backlash, Lamont defends decision to drop TCI from agenda
WINDSOR — Gov. Ned Lamont sought to reaffirm his environmental bonafides on Wednesday by championing his administration’s efforts to train workers for clean energy careers, while deflecting criticism from environmentalists angered by his decision to abandon efforts to join a regional climate change initiative in 2022.
Speaking at a workforce training center in Windsor that specializes in placing graduates in jobs installing insulation, sealing gaps in windows and doors and making homes more energy efficient, Lamont said the state would look to leverage a massive investment on federal dollars from the recently passed $1 trillion infrastructure bill toward such green initiatives.
Those investments, however, are unlikely to be matched with new funds from a proposed regional capand-trade program on vehicle emissions, the Transportation and Climate Initiative, which Lamont effectively declared dead earlier this week.
“Look, we’re getting a lot of money for resiliency, we’re getting a lot of environmental money, we have to put up our share of it,” Lamont said Wednesday. “TCI was one way that the state could put up its share, my hunch is it won't be this year.”
The governor’s comments related to the TCI prompted a flurry of criticism from environmental advocates, who accused the governor of bowing to critics of the program — and their incessant depiction of the TCI as a gas tax increase — ahead of an election year.
Save the Sound swiftly reacted to Lamont’s announcement Tuesday that he would not continue to push for the TCI. In a statement, the group cast the move as “politically convenient,” and a “abandonment of his top climate priority.”
The Acadia Center, another conservation group, was similarly blunt in its criticism, releasing a statement titled “Governor Lamont Strikes Out On Climate.”
Both groups pointed to a report released earlier this year by the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, which found that the state is not on track to meet its own goals for reducing carbon emissions. Vehicle emissions “remained stubbornly high,” the report concluded, despite falling emissions from power plants and industrial sources.
“There’s no choice, somebody’s got to do something and it’s got to happen soon and it’s got to be big,” said Lori Brown, director of the Connecticut League of Conservation Voters and one of the chief lobbyists for the TCI.
“And if you are looking at going into an election year and you’re afraid that doing anything that might get you some bad media or bad coverage or anger from constituents, think about all the constituents that are going to be furious at a do-nothing leadership or do-nothing Legislature or administration on climate,” Brown said.