CT. Mirror Photo
Rep. Lonnie Reed, D-Branford, left, clean energy advocate Leticia Colon de Mejias and Rep. Derek Slap, D-West Hartford
A coalition of legislators and energy efficiency advocates pledged Tuesday to work to restore at least some of the roughly $175 million stripped from green programs in the new two-year state budget.
But none of the nearly dozen legislators who attended the bipartisan press conference identified alternative spending cuts or revenue increases to offset any restoration of funds for clean energy.
“Energy efficiency is an undervalued economic tool for our state economy, our residents and our businesses, said Leticia Colon de Mejias, CEO of Energy Efficiencies Solutions and chairwoman of Efficiency For All — a coalition of clean energy businesses and nonprofit advocacy groups. “… Diverting energy efficiency funds is not just disappointing, it is fiscally irresponsible and will result in higher electricity bills for Connecticut’s households, businesses and state properties.”
Click here to read the story in the CT. Mirror.
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It's clear that energy efficiency and renewable energy generation are also undervalued tools for reducing the State's budget in future years. It's true that there are significant up-front costs, but the sysems pay back the cost and generate future savings. Drilling a geothermal well is expensive, true, but once you have a well, it doesn't wear out, it doesn't depreciate, it keeps absorbing heat in the summer and releasing it in the winter for as long as you circulate the heat-exchange fluid through it.
I don't understand why so many Legislators voted to sweep the energy efficiency and renewable energy funds and then turn right around and struggle to get some of them back. Why don't they draw a line in the sand from the beginning and say that they won't vote for a budget that reduces these funds? This is an existential problem for Connecticut. The Governor's Council on Climate Change has set an interim goal of reducing the state's greenhouse gas emissions by 45% from the 2001 level by 2030. That's only twelve or thirteen years from now. The rate of average global sea level rise is getting faster, and increases of as much as three feet over 2000-2005 levels by 2100 are considered likely. The longer we wait to reduce our CO2 emissions, the worse it is likely to be.