For years, Connecticut’s position atop the list of states with the priciest electric bills has served as an election-year mantra for Republicans and other critics of the state’s climate-conscious energy strategy.

But as energy costs have jumped in many parts of the country over the last year — driven in part by data center development and rising gas prices amid the war with Iran — Connecticut is bucking the trend.

Electricity prices are falling, faster than anywhere else in the country.

Connecticut’s residential electric bills declined by about 10% between June 2025 and June 2026, according to data published by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. At the same time, residential rates across the U.S. rose by about 5%, on average.

As a result, Connecticut went from having the fifth-highest residential electric rates among states and the District of Columbia. The state now places 12th — behind neighbors New York, Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

The majority of that decrease is attributable to changes to Connecticut’s public benefits charge, the portion of electric bills that goes toward funding various state-mandated energy programs and agreements to purchase power from carbon-free generators, such as the Millstone Nuclear Power Station in Waterford. Those fixed-rate contracts act as a hedge against the price of natural gas, which supplies most of New England’s power.

For Gov. Ned Lamont, who oversaw negotiations for the current contract with Millstone in 2019, the timing is fortuitous. Just two years ago, the Millstone agreement was widely blamed for a sudden spike in electricity rates amid a summer heat wave. Now, as he seeks reelection to a third term, that same contract has helped to turn the public benefits charge into a credit on customers’ bills as the price of gas-driven power has risen relative to nuclear.

“Everybody says, ‘Ah, I hate the public benefits charge.’ That’s because coming out of COVID, the price of natural gas was virtually zero,” which meant Millstone’s 5-cent-per-kilowatt hour price “was costing money,” Lamont said in a recent interview. “We’ve more than made up for that in these ensuing couple of years, that’s for sure.”

But others are less keen on giving the governor credit for recent rate cuts, which they describe as an aberration in the state’s long-running struggle to control electric prices.

Lamont’s opponent in the gubernatorial race, state Sen. Ryan Fazio, R-Greenwich, has attacked the governor’s record of supporting programs such as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, rooftop solar incentives and credits for renewable energy projects — all of which are paid for through fees baked into customers’ electric bills.

“The governor has repeatedly passed new fees and taxes in our electric bill — whether public benefits fees or fees in the supply charge — which have raised Connecticut’s electric rates,” Fazio told reporters earlier this month.

Fazio predicted that many of the savings currently passed along to ratepayers through the public benefits charge are likely to expire over the coming months.

“It’s all temporary, it’s going to snap back,” Fazio said. “Everybody knows that it’s just one blip.”

Taking credit

Experts largely agree that, regardless of the winner of the gubernatorial election on Nov. 3, Connecticut’s electric rates are unlikely to continue their decline. What is less certain is how competitive those rates will be with surrounding states.

Eversource, the state’s largest utility company, has already filed a request for a double-digit rate hike that would take effect next year, if approved by regulators. In addition, costs associated with the generation of electricity typically rise in the winter, when Connecticut and other New England states face shortages of natural gas used to fuel power plants.

Electric rates for both Eversource and United Illuminating are officially set by the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority, which is made up of five members all appointed by Lamont. Those rates are divided into several categories — distribution, transmission, generation and public benefits — and state regulators only have full control over distribution charges.

Lamont has expressed confidence in the current roster of PURA commissioners, who took over last year following the resignation of the agency’s controversial former leader, Marissa Gillett. And he said the Millstone contract would continue to insulate ratepayers from some of the volatile swings in supply prices at the regional level.

PURA regulators make adjustments in the public benefits charge up to twice a year to settle up on the costs of power purchase agreements such as the Millstone deal. The current calculation, which provides customers a credit of between $30 and $34 on the typical monthly bill, is due to last through April. (Fazio also argued that the current credit level was inflated by PURA declining to issue larger refunds to customers starting in 2025.)

“We all know that the public benefits charge is very volatile,” Fazio said. “If you do a deep dive into all the line items in the public benefits charge, even currently, you’ll find that it’s mostly one-time credits.”

Fazio predicted that over time, the public benefits charge will revert back to being a cost for customers, amounting to around 15% to 20% of most residential electricity bills. He said he agreed to support S.B. 4 because the final version of the bill did include around $100 million in permanent cuts to programs within the public benefits charge, though he said the larger amount of savings was timed to occur during an election year.

“It was obviously, you know, for political purposes, and the governor deserves for that to be acknowledged,” Fazio said.

Lamont said he disagrees with Fazio’s analysis about the future of the public benefits charge, but stopped short of promising it would continue to produce its current level of savings over the long term.

“I think we’re in a pretty good place,” Lamont said. “I can’t predict forever, but I can say we’re about the only state in the country that reduced rates over the last 12 months.”

Room for agreement

Fazio serves as the ranking Republican on the state legislature’s Energy and Technology Committee, where he works with Democrats, including Lamont, in shaping the state’s energy policies. In 2025 he served as a negotiator on Senate Bill 4, a bipartisan effort to provide relief from high electricity costs, in part, by borrowing up to $300 million to offset portions of the public benefits charge. Lamont signed the bill into law.

That money — in addition to dividends produced by the Millstone contract and other power purchase agreements — allowed regulators to order a sharp reduction in the public benefits charge in March, to the point that it now appears as a monthly bill credit.

And, when the State Bond Commission met earlier this month to consider a second round of borrowing authorized by S.B. 4, both Fazio and Lamont quickly endorsed the move.

But Fazio said Democrats missed an opportunity with that legislation to pass more systemic changes that would get rid of the public benefits charge for good — either by retiring some of its programs or moving others into the state budget. Doing so would save ratepayers up to $1 billion annually, he estimated, based on averages of past costs.

Lamont has dismissed Fazio’s proposals as merely shifting costs from utility bills onto tax bills. He said the decision to use state bonds to lower bills was the result of a one-time agreement among lawmakers, and it mostly went toward paying off the pile of unpaid electric bills that had accumulated during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Just taking something out of the public benefits charge and moving it into the general fund for the taxpayers to pay is a shell game, and it’s not the type of thing I want to do,” Lamont said. “I balanced the budget eight years in a row, I don’t want you to, you know, trip over the cart.”

Fazio said Lamont and his team initially pushed for borrowing up to $800 million to provide additional relief during the negotiations over S.B. 4, but the number was whittled down to $300 million. (A spokesman for Lamont’s campaign did not dispute those figures, but said in a text message that the governor’s support for bonding was a “limited, negotiated mechanism only for near-term rate relief, not an argument for shifting all public-benefit costs to the General Fund solving all underlying problems.”)

“He is contradicting himself,” Fazio said. “What I’ve said is that I support a spending cap within the state budget, and that if there are energy programs that are discretionary in nature — that can justify their own existence through the appropriations process — that those should be part of the state budget process coming under the spending cap.”

One aspect of Lamont’s energy policy that Fazio declined to second-guess was the decision to sign a deal with Millstone, which was opposed by some Republicans at the time. “I think the governor probably made the right decision back in 2019… I think it was a difficult decision either way,” Fazio said.

Both Fazio and Lamont said they would be open to negotiating a new contract with Millstone’s owners ahead of the current deal expiring in 2029. Lamont’s administration, led by the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, began soliciting bids for new contracts with Millstone and New Hampshire’s Seabrook Nuclear Power Station earlier this year.

On Wednesday, Fazio also called for legislation that would allow nuclear and hydropower plants to be eligible to sell credits as part of the state’s Renewable Portfolio Standard program, which incentivizes the production of renewable energy. Critics argue that such a move would crowd out other resources, such as solar and wind generators, from participating in the program.

War’s impact

Last winter produced severe cold snaps that scrambled the region’s power grid, forcing generators to rely on expensive supplies of oil to keep plants running.

That was before the U.S. and Israel launched attacks on Iran in late February, driving up oil prices. The war’s impact on natural gas prices has been more limited, both due to increased U.S. production and the more regional nature of the market.

But as the war drags on into another winter, its impacts on the region could become more pronounced.

“To the degree we we have a normal cold winter or even a colder-than-average winter, my expectation is we’re going to see a dramatic runup in the natural gas prices, unless there is some phenomenal resolution to the issues in in the Mideast,” said Dan Dolan, president of the New England Power Generators Association.

Constraints on the regional supply of natural gas leads to higher supply costs, which contribute to New England having higher electricity costs on average than the rest of the country. Other factors include higher labor costs and the need to replace aging infrastructure, experts say.

Despite falling outside the top ten states for residential electric rates, the average price of electricity in Connecticut, around 24.32 cents per kilowatt hour, is still well above the national average of 18.34 cents.

Overall rates for the first half of this year have also risen by about 24% since 2020.

Fazio has sought to tap into voters’ lingering frustrations over electric rates by placing the issue at the center of his messaging. One of his recent ads features footage from a Chamber of Commerce event where Lamont said, “If everybody was anxious about electric rates, they’d be turning out the lights.”

But in addition to dismissing Fazio’s proposals as unrealistic, Lamont says that national Republicans — in particular President Donald Trump — are making it harder to keep costs down by eliminating tax incentives for solar and attempting to halt the development of offshore wind projects that would diversify New England’s energy mix.

The Iran war has also driven up the price of heating oil, which is used to heat about one-third of Connecticut homes in winter. The average price of oil reached $5.88 per gallon on Monday, according to data collected by the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. That was the highest statewide average recorded since 2022, and an increase of more than 75% since this time last year.

“These are problems that emanate from the federal government,” Lamont said. “They’re being passed along to consumers in Connecticut.”

Fazio said there was no doubt the ongoing war in Iran was leading to higher oil and gas bills, and he said he identified with the “non-interventionist” wing of the Republican Party. However, he declined to criticize Trump’s handling of the conflict.

“The governor of Connecticut doesn’t have any constitutional responsibilities or input on issues of war and peace,” he said. “I always am rooting for a just and lasting peace.”

CT Mirror reporter Mark Pazniokas contributed to this story.