The head of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, the nation’s first carbon emissions trading and reduction program, has been named to a key position in the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. Jonathan Schrag will become deputy commissioner in charge of DEEP’s energy division, a key component of the newly-constituted agency and one with […]

EAST HAVEN–Nearly two weeks after Tropical Storm Irene sent two feet of water through the first floor, Rick and Karen Ruggiero’s home on Cosey Beach sits locked up, an official sign stuck in the siding declaring it “unsafe for human occupancy.” Their terrace, just feet from a tattered seawall and, beyond it, the water of […]

The activation this week of two charging stations in Connecticut underscores the limited, even haphazard infrastructure available to the early owners of electric vehicles, an evolving market whose needs the utilities are trying to anticipate. To great fanfare, a single charger opened in one of the Westport train station parking lots on Monday and another […]

Every five years since 1965, the state has reviewed and updated its plan for maintaining, expanding and improving its network of parks, forests, trails and other facilities. The process is under way again–but this time with some significant financial constraints to overcome. The Department of Energy and Environmental Protection is holding the first of a […]

NEW HAVEN — The last time a comprehensive conservation and management plan was created for Long Island Sound was 1994. The estuary was severely stressed from pollution, toxins, garbage, poorly regulated development and general neglect. But the phrase “climate change” had yet to enter the public lexicon, the concept of sea level rise was barely […]

WILLIMANTIC–Richard Berger and Nancy Roman were on a reconnaissance mission last week for White Flower Farm, the nationally known nursery in Litchfield where they work. “We’re here because of the rising energy costs,” said Berger, White Flower’s facilities engineer. “And the rising costs to heat our greenhouses”–26 of them, about two acres worth. Berger’s tried […]

After a 40 year run, the Council on Environmental Quality–the state’s tiny environmental watchdog–could be put out of business by the governor’s budget-cutting plan and its responsibilities shifted to the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. “It’s really very disheartening,” said Barbara Wagner, the chair of the all-volunteer board that oversees the Council and its […]

NEW HAVEN — Louis Magnarelli, director of the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, likes to point out a 1999 photo in one of the agency’s publications. In it, a concerned Dannel P. Malloy, then the mayor of Stamford, is peering through an electron microscope at the West Nile virus, which CAES had just been able to […]

NEW HAVEN — The four dozen members of Connecticut’s solar industry packed in a steamy corner room at Gateway Community College had come for answers about how the massive energy legislation passed this session would affect their industry. What they got were two thick wads of printouts and nearly 90 minutes of explanation from a […]

This morning, when state employees stroll into the Italian-style brick and glazed tile 1920 building at 79 Elm Street in Hartford that once housed an insurance company, the bronze sign over the entrance will still read Department of Environmental Protection. The guard at the front desk will do his job no differently than ever, and […]

Not the kind of news you really want to hear going into one of the biggest beach weekends of the summer: The water at Connecticut’s ocean beaches was a lot more polluted last year than it’s been in awhile. The Natural Resources Defense Council’s annual report on the nation’s marine beaches showed there were 143 […]

Supporters of the 2½-year-old Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative like to remind those who would criticize, if not outright kill, this first-in-the-nation carbon dioxide trading and reduction program of two things. First, the idea for it came from a Republican, former New York Gov. George Pataki. And second, it was modeled on a federal program to […]

SB1 – the massive omnibus energy bill that establishes Connecticut’s first energy department in three decades, creates new energy programs, alters old ones, sets ambitious policy goals and overhauls parts of the energy business – is headed for a vote in the Senate as early as today, even as its final details are unresolved. “It’s […]