With the Energy and Technology Committee’s approval deadline for bills this session on Thursday, committee leaders, the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, the governor’s office and environmental advocates are racing the clock on one of the most consequential energy bills in years. Solar policy could stop them — again.
Jan Ellen Spiegel
Jan Ellen is CT Mirror's regular freelance Environment and Energy Reporter. As a freelance reporter, her stories have also appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Yale Climate Connections, and elsewhere. She is a former editor at The Hartford Courant, where she handled national politics including coverage of the controversial 2000 and 2004 presidential elections. She was an editor at the Gazette in Colorado Springs and spent more than 20 years as a TV and radio producer at CBS News and CNN in New York and in the Boston broadcast market. In 2013 she was the recipient of a Knight Journalism Fellowship at MIT on energy and climate. She graduated from the University of Michigan and attended Boston University’s graduate film program.
Posted inEnergy & Environment
Solar is again the flashpoint in CT’s new energy strategy
The final version of Connecticut’s new energy strategy and the bills that would implement it are before the legislature. So is a controversy that has dogged the plan since it was first released – solar policy.
Posted inEnergy & Environment
DEEP wants sneak environmental permit rule reversed
Slid into last year’s budget during final negotiations was a provision that limits the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection to 90 days to either approve or deny a laundry list of nearly four-dozen permits. If DEEP doesn’t take action, the permit automatically goes into effect. DEEP calls the sneak change “awful public policy,” and the fight is on.
Posted inEnergy & Environment, Money
CT’s clean energy edge: Going, going . . . or coming back?
Connecticut, once a national leader in clean and renewable energy and energy efficiency, has slipped behind many other states, including its neighbors. Most of the finger-pointing is at the state’s budget problems and questionable choices by the legislature. But the state may have started to lose its energy edge before then. The question is, can it get it back?
Posted inCities & Towns, Energy & Environment, Housing, News
Sandy + 5; Irene + 6: Coastal resilience still elusive and expensive
More than six years after Irene, five years after Sandy, and tens of millions of dollars later, Connecticut’s shoreline communities have been slow to embrace resiliency and now look much as they did before the storms hit. But there are exceptions.
Posted inEconomic Development, Energy & Environment, Money
Green Bank says the budget plan would effectively shut it down
The Connecticut Green Bank – an international model for funding clean energy projects – says it would have to shut down under the latest budget proposal. The bank says it would lose essentially 100 percent of the funding it uses to leverage much larger amounts of private financing.
Posted inEnergy & Environment
DEEP taking heat on its proposed changes to solar policy
Provisions in the Connecticut Comprehensive Energy Strategy that would drastically limit the number of solar systems people and businesses can put on their roofs and could change the payment structure for excess electricity those systems generate have riled the state’s solar industry and those who support it.
Posted inEnergy & Environment
With no plan for replacing Millstone, what are CT’s options?
Regardless of what the Connecticut legislature decides on Millstone, it won’t change some basic realities: One day the nuclear plant will close, and Connecticut doesn’t have a plan for that. The question of how to replace Millstone elicits all kinds of ideas. But parameters matter: Are we talking short-term, long-term, cleanly, at what cost to ratepayers?
Posted inEnergy & Environment
CT’s delayed energy plan could mean trouble for Millstone bill
With TV ads and ferocious lobbying on both sides of the issue, it’s unclear whether any legislation to help out the Millstone Nuclear Power Station will survive this legislative session. A delay in the release of an updated state energy strategy isn’t helping matters.
Posted inEnergy & Environment
Complaints persist even as shared solar (finally) nears finish line
After years of delays, shared solar may finally be close to its first test in Connecticut. But along with some cheers from its supporters, there’s still an awful lot of complaining over how it’s being handled.
Posted inEnergy & Environment, Politics
CT fires its first shots in battle with Trump over environment
The state could turn out to be one of the most uniquely qualified to challenge the Trump administration on environmental policy. “Connecticut fights way above its weight in a number of the areas on the national scene,” Attorney General George Jepsen said. “Environmental issues is one of those areas.”
Posted inEnergy & Environment, Money
Will CT catch or miss the boat on offshore wind energy?
Connecticut has the potential to become a major player in, and economic beneficiary from, offshore wind, all without putting a single turbine in state waters. But it may need to move fast and put a little economic skin in the game.
Posted inEnergy & Environment, Money
Trump would slash CT environment funds; hit to Sound feared
The Trump administration called massive cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency an attempt to ease the burden of unnecessary federal regulations. Connecticut’s environmental commissioner called it an assault on public health and the environment.
Posted inEnergy & Environment, Transportation
Easing auto emissions rules would set back CT clean-air efforts
Anticipated action by the Trump administration to roll back auto emissions standards would threaten Connecticut’s greenhouse gas emission goals, its air quality and its push for more electric vehicles.
Posted inEnergy & Environment
New farmland harvest – solar energy – creating political sparks
Two well-intentioned environmental polices – one encouraging more renewable power and the other the preservation of farms and forestland – are colliding. They are pitting farmer against farmer and environmental interest groups against one another, putting state departments at odds, and raising the always explosive issue of private property rights versus state policy.