Ned Lamont announces bill in front of all-electric buses.
Gov. Ned Lamont inhaled the sweltering heat-wave air of the city with the country’s seventh-highest asthma prevalence — and touted a new state law aiming to make that air easier to breathe.
That city is New Haven. Lamont arrived on the Green on Friday morning to tout Public Act 22 – 25, the Act Concerning the Connecticut Clean Air Act. Lamont signed the bill, which was originally proposed by the state legislature’s Transportation Committee, on May 10.
At a press conference on the Green, state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) Commissioner Katie Dykes called the act “the most significant clean transportation and climate legislation we have adopted in Connecticut’s history.”
The law creates environmental reforms in the state’s transportation sector, which is the source of 37 percent of the state’s greenhouse gas emissions and 67 percent of polluting nitrogen oxides.
It was enacted soon before the Supreme Court ushered in new limitations on the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s power to limit greenhouse gas emissions, and as Congress fails to take action on the climate crisis.
“When you have senators who refuse to make meaningful change in Congress, when you have a Supreme Court that is taking us in the wrong direction, it is clear that Connecticut has to step up and lead, and that we did,” said New Haven State Rep. Roland Lemar, who co-chairs the legislature’s Transportation Committee.
“There are [many] excuses for inaction,” said Lamont, “but we don’t take any excuses in Connecticut.”
DEEP Commissioner Katie Dykes on the Green Friday.
Much of the law supports electric vehicle infrastructure across the state, including requiring new parking lots to have electric vehicle charging infrastructure; mandating new buses to be electric by 2024; phasing in electric school buses statewide by 2040; creating an electric car rebate program prioritizing “environmental justice communities”; and requiring that landlords allow tenants to install electric vehicle charging stations.
The law also allows DEEP to raise emissions and pollutions standards for medium and heavy-duty vehicles to California’s standards. It supports municipal governments in optimizing traffic lights to streamline cars’ paths and minimize idling.
Read the text of the act here, and a previous story here in which Lemar discusses the importance of the traffic-light segment.
“Every day, when I put my daughter on the school bus to go to school, I think about her future here in New Haven,” a city intersected by highways whose exorbitant asthma rate evinces the quality of its air, Mayor Justin Elicker said at the Green event. “This is a game changer.”
Video of Friday's press conference.
The landlord imperative is interesting because a tenants request for an EV charging station could have ripple effects of cost (charging station, excavation of power back to house and breaker box, and probable upgrade of house amperage). Gut tells me it’s. A 10K job. My understanding of the law is that the tenant pays and the owner only has to put up with the look of the EV, but keep in mind that UI has a hair trigger for amp upgrades leading from a pretty modest exterior electrical box and riser pipe to a very gigantic one that homeowners may not like.