The Connecticut State Senate and House of Representatives passed State Bill 493 recently, but a veto from the Nutmeg State’s republican governor, M. Jodi Rell, has state democrats scrambling for votes to overturn her decision. Rell says the Bill, entitled “AN ACT REDUCING ELECTRICITY COSTS AND PROMOTING RENEWABLE ENERGY”, will accomplish neither of its two stated goals.
      Fed up with the nation’s second highest electric rates (Hawaii is number one), Connecticut residents, businesses, and municipalities are frustrated with their state government’s reluctance to provide relief. The Bill, a revised version of an earlier piece of legislation (SB 463), aims to cultivate Connecticut’s home-grown clean-energy industry by incentivizing energy efficiency, providing loans for investment in renewables, and subsidizing clean-generation with grants for residents, businesses, and municipalities. Among some of the Bill’s more ambitious objectives is a promise to install a minimum of 30 Megawatts of residential solar PV by the end of 2021, and financing for a tariff fund to subsidize up to 50 Megawatts of utility-scale solar PV capacity.
      The Bill would give municipalities new powers, allowing them to create loan programs and issue bonds in order to promote renewables and energy efficiency. It would also loosen requirements for a $200-500/kilowatt grant on “distributed resources”, such as on-site solar PV. Currently, the grants are only given if the project results in a reduction in Federally-Mandated Congestion Charges (FMCCs), a fee associated with interstate electrical transmission.
      In addition to removing the FMCC eligibility clause mandated in 2005, the Bill would cap the grant at $200/kilowatt for installers and $250/kilowatt for electric companies, decreasing down to $25 in 2013. The Bill also seeks better coordination between electric companies, businesses, municipalities, financing, and regulatory agencies. It also calls for more frequent compliance auditing, and the creation of a yet unnamed agency to review and approve guidelines for the new programs.
      The original proposal, SB 463, sought to fund the new loan programs by lowering Connecticut’s RPS and transferring the savings electricity companies would gain as a result into a special account used to subsidize the loan programs. But last minute changes to the Bill preserved incentives for energy efficiency, Combined Heating & Power (CHP), and solar PV, but removed the RPS reductions (Summary Section “B” Highlighted in YELLOW), leaving the original target of 20% by 2020 intact.
      The amended Bill, SB 493, was passed by an 81-40 vote in the Connecticut House and a 20-14 vote in the State’s Senate. Whether the democrats in the senate can rally enough votes to overturn the Governor’s veto remains to be seen. Until then, the future of Connecticut’s renewable energy program is uncertain.
 
Source(s):
http://www.cga.ct.gov/2010/TOB/S/2010SB-00463-R00-SB.htm (Full-text SB463)
http://www.cga.ct.gov/2010/TOB/S/2010SB-00493-R00-SB.htm (Full-text SB493)
http://www.cga.ct.gov/2010/VOTE/S/2010SV-00324-R00SB00493-SV.htm (Senate Vote)
http://www.cga.ct.gov/2010/VOTE/H/2010HV-00214-R00SB00493-HV.htm (House Vote)
http://www.cga.ct.gov/2010/rpt/2010-R-0178.htm (Summary)