Energy chief: impediments to carbon-free progress

HARTFORD — Connecticut’s top environmental officer says decades of deregulation, President Donald Trump’s favoritism toward fossil fuels and the regional market system is slowing the state’s conversion to clean, carbon-free electricity.

Katie Dykes, commissioner of the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, told a conservation-minded audience this week that the state faces major challenges as it tries to switch to 100 percent renewable energy for electicity generation by 2040. She urged the Legislature to help enact solutions.

“Natural gas is not a bridge fuel; it’s a fossil fuel,” Dykes noted during a summit on environmental issues focused in part on using clean energy to combat climate change.

“It is a commitment of mine to turn this around and put in place the mechanisms we need to begin to move away from natural gas,” Dykes said. ”We will work hard with legislators to address many of the natural gas preferences that are in our statutes today.”

Dykes also included a threat to leave the ISO New England regional electric grid, the system operator, based in Holyoke, Mass., that’s responsible for controlling the flow of electricity through the region.

Environmentalists have long argued that market forces — aided by state and federal policies — are driving investment in gas plants at the expense of clean energy, citing an already approved Killingly gas power plant as a prime example.

Although Connecticut recently procured over 800 megawatts of wind power from a farm in ocean waters off Rhode Island, that’s just a fraction of the 100 percent zero carbon electricity goal by 2040.

Peter Shattuck of Anbaric Development Partners, which specializes in electric storage and transmission systems, said the traditional electric grid and market structure. originally built for coal, gas and oil-fired electric plants, must change.

“If we want to get to 100 percent renewables, we need a grid built for renewables, not fossil fuel,” Shattuck said.

Deregulation at fault?

Dykes said the state and region need a new formula to bring in more clean electricty.

“The decision to deregulate our power sector is coming into collision with our climate progress,” Dykes said.

“With new leadership at the [Federal Energy Regulatory Commission] under Trump, FERC has all but declared war on states for choosing energy efficiency and is driving investment to more natural gas plants,” Dykes said.

“It makes no sense to participate in a deregulated structure if it forces us to invest in resources we don’t want and don’t need,” Dykes said, referring to ISO New England.

“This is forcing us to take a serious look at the cost and benefits of participating in the ISO New Egland markets,” Dykes added.

Matt Kakley, a spokesman for ISO New England, disagreed with the Dykes’ asessement.

“We strongly disagree that the ISO has not been a leader on carbon,” Kakley said.

“The ISO’s leadership has been proactive for years in discussing the need to price carbon as a way to address the states’ climate change goals,” Kakley said “So, the notion that the ISO has not taken a leadership role in this dialogue is a clear contradiction of the ISO’s frequently stated position on carbon.”

Kakley noted the markets the ISO administers are open to all forms of energy and, referring to the Killingly plant, pointed out that states control what is built within their borders.

“It was the Connecticut DEEP and other agencies who approved the permits for the plant,” Kakley noted.

New Green Deal

Samantha Dynowski, state director of the Sierra Club of Connecticut, said regulators don’t even charge gas companies for building pipelines across the state.

“We continue to encourage pipelines that carry frack gas through the state,” Dynowski said. “No one is being charged to build those. In 2019, 400 legislators wanted the law off the books but its still on the books.”

Dynowski said she would like to see the General Assembly pass a Green New Deal.

“Make sure the goal to 100 percent clean and renewable energy, including transportation and buildings,” Dynowski said.

Charles Rothenberger, climate and energy attorney for the Connecticut Fund for the Environment and Save the Sound, said activists have long argued that expanding gas plants harms progress on renwable sources of power.

“We were pleased by the commissioner’s remarks recognizing that natural gas is not a fuel of the future and we strongly support rapid development of more solar and offshore wind resources to get Connecticut to 10 percent clean renewable energy,” Rothenbrger said.