On a day that was about as solar-ready as a day could be, Gov. Ned Lamont stood in the bright sunshine outside a Branford elementary school with a contingent of state and local officials and an even bigger group of fourth graders.
“It’s always good to talk about solar power on a sunny day,” he noted, telling the kids “big smiles” will get them on TV.
Lamont and his entourage were at Tisko Elementary — which has a solar system on its roof — on April 15 to push for passage of his bill that would make it a little easier and less expensive for other schools to do the same.
That legislation is only one, not to mention the smallest and simplest, of four major climate bills awaiting legislative action this session. But after last year, in which no climate change-focused legislation passed, there’s more than a little anxiety out there about what will emerge to make it to a vote, let alone pass.
“That’s why we do events just like this,” Lamont said, addressing that concern. “To remind people, people in the legislature, that this is really important to the greater community. And sometimes the Republicans say ‘I can’t do the environment it’s too expensive. Too much of a burden on middle class.’ We’re doing the environment here. We’re doing solar panels. It’s gonna be saving this school a heck of a lot of money and saving the environment.”
The signs are already dire for one of the bills – a broad-based measure aimed at the causes of climate change. On Monday, the Appropriations Committee stripped out all the sections of the legislation that would have a fiscal impact, leaving a bill that is a shadow of what it had been.
Its sponsor, Rep. Christine Palm, D-Chester, said the plan is to attempt to re-insert those components once the bill gets to the floor.
Tackling climate change causes and effects
Palm’s is one of two bills that have been the purview of the Environment Committee. Its original form took direct aim at the key cause of climate change, with more than a dozen initiatives that would lower the level of greenhouse gas emissions in Connecticut.
Among the initiatives: increasing the energy storage program; installing 310,000 residential heat pumps in the next 18 months; looking at the potential to lower and eventually eliminate the use of natural gas; establishing multiple incentives and programs to develop a green energy economy and the jobs to go with it; opting for nature-based solutions for climate change mitigation and adaptation; and just simply declaring there’s a climate crisis.
It has been a work in progress for months, with Palm getting universally high marks for engaging a huge range of stakeholders to hear their concerns and then addressing them. It seemed destined to have the best shot at passage given its designation as a priority bill by House Speaker Matt Ritter.
“It will get done,” he said. “I know Christine’s worked very hard on this.”
Palm conceded she’s learning on the fly as it’s her first — and last — omnibus bill. She is not running for re-election.
“The staggering number of people who have to be considered and talked with,” she said. “Unions, the IBEW — I had to meet with them. I had to meet with the Aquarion water people. Obviously the environmentalists.”
“I really appreciate Rep. Palm coming to us and wanting to engage with concerns we had on it,” said Peter Myers, public policy associate with the Connecticut Business and Industry Association. “We really highlighted a lot of our concerns and to Rep. Palm’s credit, she really engaged us and addressed as many concerns as possible in the bill.”
Myers said CBIA supports the increased battery storage provision, now removed by Appropriations, and using fee reductions to incentivize sustainability practices by businesses. “Even if it’s just studying it,” he said. “We think that’s a positive.”
Palm said she knows she needs to get a supported and well-constructed bill that won’t eat up tons of floor hours as the session runs short on time, forcing big bills like hers to be stripped down to just a few components, as it now is.
“That will happen over my dead body,” she said. “And I don’t believe that will happen because I know that the speaker is committed to this.”
Prior to the Appropriations action Monday Palm said nearly all of the bill was intact. “I’m just going to keep fighting for it.”
And now she faces an even bigger fight.
“It’s going to be hours-worth of testimony and back and forth and questions on the House floor. But we knew that going in,” said Rep. Joe Gresko, D-Stratford, co-chair of the Environment Committee. “And do I think any Republican will vote for it? I’d be surprised if any Republican voted for it, being an election year.”
Signs so far are that he’s correct. Republicans on the Appropriations Committee voted against it even in its skeletal form — including Rep. Patrick Callahan, R-New Fairfield, who is also ranking House member on the Environment Committee.
“I think incentives to spur people’s intellectual capacity to come up with solutions to problems is a good idea. And as Christine has said, this bill is more carrot than stick,” Callahan said. “I’m just curious of what the price tag is going to be.”
And, he added, also where the power is going to come from for all the electrification. “So there’s a big question mark.”
Sen. Stephen Harding, Republican leader and a ranking member on the Environment Committee, had a different concern — what he termed “the unfettered authority that the bill gives a (Department of Energy and Environmental Protection) commissioner and that he or she can implement basically whatever they deem fit to meet certain carbon emissions.”
He said that could be taxes or programs lawmakers might object to, but have no say over. “I have many significant reservations about giving any unelected bureaucrat that type of authority to implement policy that would impact the daily lives of the people of the state of Connecticut,” he said.
Helping municipalities help themselves
The largest bill of all is another from the governor, Senate Bill 11 — three-dozen sections over dozens of pages focused on climate resiliency. It’s an issue very much on the state’s radar given the torrential rain and flooding intensified by climate change it experienced in the last year alone.
Recent years have also brought intense heat and drought. The first two major predictions for this year’s Atlantic hurricane season are for more frequent, bigger storms than have ever been predicted — partly a function of the extreme ocean heat brought on by climate change.
It’s a wide-ranging bill with everything from open space preservation to hazard mitigation and evacuation plans, fund reserves for climate impact work, zoning regulation changes geared to climate issues, a variety of monitoring practices for critical infrastructure, and more.
But the biggest portion of the bill — fully one-third of it — authorizes municipalities to create taxing districts for the purpose of providing funds for resiliency projects.
“This is a bill to help municipalities help themselves to be stronger against climate change,” said Sen. Rick Lopes, D-New Britain and co-chair of the Environment Committee, who said it will help the state be more proactive and not just reactive to climate-fueled emergencies. “In all honesty, no one’s asking for it. And municipalities that stand to benefit the most from it are not asking for it. That’s difficult to get over. I think if they understood it better. … They’re not taking the effort to understand it and that’s a concern.”
Randy Collins, associate director, public policy and advocacy at the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities said that was the part of the bill his organization liked. “They’re local options,” he said. “But it does seem like it’s a heavy lift. Now, if you can tie this to some grant fund, some type of funding that can be made available — I think that would encourage more communities to do these types of things.”
Rep. Holly Cheeseman, R-East Lyme, was also on board with having an option and not a mandate.
“The section that got that me was the ability of the governor to declare a civil preparedness emergency to deal with climate,” she said. “There were heads exploding on that one.”
Harding doesn’t dispute that climate resilience needs to be dealt with — often referring to dealing with it as a “noble cause.”
“There’s nothing wrong with us looking at those issues. In fact, we should be looking at those issues,” he said. “I just don’t know what is prescribed in (the bill) is necessarily the avenue by which we need to take a look at an approach to climate change as it faces us. … And I think we should be looking maybe at some of those alternatives as opposed to what is laid out in Senate Bill 11.”
Callahan, who said the bill was a lot to digest, wanted the creation of a tax district to be subject to approval by voters, not just a decision by the governing body of the town as the bill language states. But he like the parts about preserving open space. “That’s my concern so far with SB 11.”
Lopes said his goal was to get it through the Senate, even if it gets slimmed down, to give the House running room for significant debate. “We’re trying to get it passed as soon as possible.”
As for solar — the governor’s bill stayed intact in the Appropriations Committee on Monday, albeit with no Republican support.
Solar bills
“I’m very frustrated,” said Rep. Jonathan Steinberg, D-Westport and co-chair of the Energy and Technology committee, which is handling the governor’s solar schools bill and a much larger solar expansion bill he has been pushing. “I had higher aspirations. I knew I wouldn’t get everything done this year. I feel very much constrained. I’ll be lucky if we can get some of these things done over the next two years.”
The governor’s bill would formalize a competitive solar and storage program for new and renovated schools that in essence allows for more systems and generous grant funding. But one component that requires all school districts to conduct a solar feasibility assessment by this October is facing considerable pushback because of its cost and the tight time frame.
“If you want to make this optional and schools that want it, fine,” said Cheeseman, who is a member of the Energy Committee. She called the assessment requirement an unfunded mandate that may end up showing the school isn’t even suitable for solar power. “If they can find a way to lower their energy costs and then allow municipal government to access some of that excess power to use to power their facilities, fine.”
Cheeseman is also skeptical of the broader solar bill, which is designed to juice up solar development by setting extremely aggressive goals. It requires communities to clear the way for a large number of solar canopies — the kind of installations you might see over parking lots — and it makes yet another stab at getting the sluggish community solar program moving by doing yet another study. Community solar would provide apartment residents, low-income renters and others the means to access solar power.
And it would make a bigger push in the longstanding Lead By Example program, which among other things provides solar to state and local government buildings.
“I don’t believe we should be prescriptive in choosing one renewable resource over another and that’s exactly what this bill does,” Cheeseman said. She pointed to the potential of offshore wind and grid-scale storage as better alternatives if their prices are right.
But plans in the bill to change how municipalities are compensated for large-scale solar have come in for some of the most intense criticism. Because towns lose tax revenue if land becomes a solar field, the bill would pay towns a flat rate per megawatt for the maximum power the solar system can generate. But there is widespread disapproval of the rate — $8,000 per megawatt per year — as too low and causing towns to lose money. There is also concern that small rural towns — where most large solar winds up — will be unduly hurt.
“We need to make sure that towns aren’t left holding the bag for these large scale developments,” said Collins of CCM. “The other piece that we have been consistently talking about is that we need to develop language that functions like an escalator. I mean, property taxes don’t stay stable.”
House Speaker Ritter acknowledged the conundrum of solar, even among his caucus.
“There are people like me and Jonathan who believe strongly in it and want to see it succeed. It’s also expensive,” he said. “That is the rub in the back-and-forth that you’ll hear if you sat in our Democratic caucus.”
The big picture
It’s jobs, said Aziz Dehkan, executive director of the Connecticut Roundtable on Climate and Jobs, who attended the governor’s solar bill event.
“Somebody’s got to do it,” he said of the employment all four bills could potentially create. “If we’re going to go into a new economy, build a green economy — it’s all about jobs. It’s not just about climate crisis. It’s about how to translate the climate crisis into a new economy. And that’s what we’re trying to do.”
“The more we can build, the bigger an energy grid. And it’s a win for everybody. So I don’t see what anybody’s complaint would be,” he said. “It helps the economy; it helps the grid. And it’s good for everybody. How many times do I have to repeat that?”
But is there still a risk of a do-nothing year on climate like last year?
“That’s a good question for the legislature,” said DEEP Commissioner Katie Dykes after celebrating the solar at Tisko Elementary. “I think that the governor’s bill on resilience has some really, really important and fundamental changes related to planning that the sooner we can get those in place, the better. Decision making and incentives will be aligned to protect communities in the long run from the impacts of climate change.”
Her boss went further out on a limb for SB 11.
“I think it’s gonna pass. I think it’s got some pretty good legislative support,” Lamont said, while acknowledging the pushback. “We’ve got to make sure people understand how important it is, and in this case, how it saves you money. And it’s just all a reminder of resilience that if we don’t do this, think of what the storm damage is going to be and how much that’s going to cost us next time.”
But co-chair Steinberg, who’s seen these inaction scenarios play out badly for a number of years, would not be surprised by a repeat of last year.
“Yeah. And the year after that, the year after that, the year after that. I don’t see anything changing,” he said. “All I know is I didn’t sign up to do nothing.”