Please Follow us on Gab, Minds, Telegram, Rumble, Gettr, Truth Social, Twitter
The Connecticut General Assembly began there legislative session for 2025 last week. Once again citizens can be reassured energy prices are only going up. The energy and technology committee held its first meeting with industry experts and lobbyists. Lobbyists and industry insiders were invited to a private lunch after the meeting to discuss other matters the public is not privy to.
Connecticut has the highest costs in the country to run power utilities, bypassing the island of Hawaii in energy expense. Households and small businesses alike struggle to pay extreme energy bills monthly. Rates are rising faster than inflation. At every turn PURA is a champion of the industry that regulates and controls it. It’s a tinder box of failed fiscal policy that only makes it far worse for citizens. Everything is adversely affected by the extreme costs to supply energy, food, housing, and quality of life. State Rep. Nick Gauthier (D) of the 38th asked about Connecticut municipal utilities, and how they decreased rates for consumers. Most people in Connecticut do not know about the handful of places in Connecticut that pay affordable rates for utilities that run more efficiently than Eversource or United Illuminating Company.
Take a listen:
State Rep. Nick Gauthier (D) of the 38th district asked about Connecticut municipal utilities, and how they decreased rates for consumers.
— Jennifer Sparks aka JCherry (@JCherrySparks) January 13, 2025
Most people in Connecticut do not know about the handful of places in Connecticut that pay affordable rates for utilities that run more… pic.twitter.com/BBteKdtBwJ
Claire Coleman, State Consumer Counsel could not answer Rep Gauthier’s question. Commissioner Dykes refers to municipalities as “municis” as she makes excuses for price gouging and profiteering.
The State of Connecticut is the sole reason that citizens are trapped in an energy monopoly that clearly favors investors and CEOs to the people. Energy supply must be decentralized. Nowhere is the urgency of decentralization more clear than in our State House. PURA and the giant bureaucracy created by politicians use energy as a means to push pet policies that benefit venture capitalists and private energy investors, all while smiling for the camera and repeating the climate change narrative. Meanwhile energy prices soar and the climate is actually worse off. Just look at the costs involved for “green energy” both fiscally and environmentally. Green energy is purely a marketing term not based on the ecological health of our environment. Politicians answer to the money, not constituents, or the planet for that matter. Connecticut runs on public, private-partnerships. The citizen is a hostage.
“PURA is a quasi-judicial agency that interprets and applies the statutes and regulations governing all aspects of Connecticut’s utility sector. Among other things, PURA sets the rates charged by investor-owned utilities, advances the modernization of the electric distribution system, regulates the retail electric supplier market, implements federal requirements for natural gas pipeline safety, ensures adequate water system infrastructure investments, reviews mergers and acquisitions, provides education and outreach for consumers, and regulates the expansion of telecommunications infrastructure.” PURA
There are six municipal utilities in Connecticut that run much more efficiently and for much lower costs to the consumer. A municipality can own and operate the power source for the people who live in its jurisdiction and decentralize the monopoly enjoyed by Eversourse and UI. Our wealth and prosperity are being eaten by corruption and a bloated bureaucracy that feeds itself of bad policies. “Net Zero” will not protect our planet, it will only enrich the portfolios of the political class and its financiers while we struggle to pay for it. The choice is ours. Let’s revive municipal utilities and control our own power locally. Let’s reclaim the energy of the Constitution State!
“Over 2,000 communities in the U.S. rely on not-for-profit electric utilities that are locally owned and operated by the people they serve. Connecticut’s municipal electric utilities came together in 1976 to form CMEEC, the Connecticut Municipal Electric Energy Cooperative.”
"Connecticut's six existing municipal utilities were created in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. All of them own their local distribution systems (the poles and wires in front of homes and businesses). In most cases, the municipal utility built rather than bought these systems. Several utilities each own a small amount of transmission facilities. The municipal utilities financially participate in CMEEC's generation facilities, notably the 77 megawatt (summer rating) Pierce power plant in Wallingford. This means that the utilities are responsible for the costs of these facilities and share in their benefits. Most of the utilities buy power through CMEEC rather than participating directly in the wholesale market. Several of the utilities also provide water and other types of utility service.”
Energy technology committer/ grid discussion
Other sources:
https://www.eversource.com/content/docs/investors/q4-2023-earnings-call-slides.pdf?sfvrsn=2ee3d490_1
https://www.cga.ct.gov/2009/rpt/2009-R-0090.htm
Katie Dykes Commissioner, DEEP
Eversource Year End Report 2023
