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Connecticut lawmakers are promoting a climate “superfund,” presented as a bold step toward a greener future. On the surface, it sounds noble: make fossil-fuel companies pay for climate costs and invest the money into environmental projects.
But when you look past the slogans, the proposal looks more like virtue signaling than serious energy policy.
The bill’s — HB 5156 Climate Change Superfund and Bill SB 453 Insurance Surcharge on Fossil Fuel Facilities would impose significant financial penalties on fossil-fuel companies based on historical emissions. Supporters argue the money will fund climate resilience projects such as flood mitigation and infrastructure upgrades. However, the economic reality is much simpler. Energy companies do not absorb those costs; they pass them on to consumers. The result is effectively an indirect tax on the people of Connecticut every time we fill our gas tanks, heat our homes, or buy goods transported by truck.
We have already seen how this works. In 2022, during a period when families were already struggling with post-pandemic inflation, Connecticut’s diesel tax jumped roughly nine cents per gallon, bringing the total diesel tax to nearly 50 cents per gallon. Diesel powers the trucks that deliver most of the goods Americans rely on every day—from groceries to building materials. When the cost of diesel rises, transportation costs increase, and those increases ripple through the economy in the form of higher prices. That said, energy policy is economic policy. When the government raises the cost of energy, it raises the cost of everything.
There is also a deeper issue that policymakers rarely address. Connecticut is aggressively pushing electrification—especially electric vehicles—without fully addressing whether our electrical grid can support that transition. If millions of vehicles are plugged in every night, the demand on our grid will increase dramatically.Now here is the rub,solar and wind power produce only about 4.5 percent of what we use. In fact, Connecticut imports electricity from other New England states, including hydroelectric power from Canada and wind from offshore projects. So the power used in CT can contain more renewables than what is generated inside the state.
Clean energy is an admirable goal, but it must be grounded in reality.Wind and solar power cannot meet the full demand of a modern economy on their own. Reliable energy sources remain essential, particularly as electricity demand is expected to grow rapidly with the expansion of technologies such as artificial intelligence and large data centers.
Connecticut should be focusing on reliable, affordable energy while continuing to improve environmental performance. Modern natural-gas or propane turbine generation, along with other cleaner fossil-fuel technologies, can provide stable electricity while significantly reducing emissions compared with older systems.
Another reality that must be acknowledged is scale. Connecticut’s emissions represent only a tiny fraction of the global total. Even if the state eliminated every fossil fuel tomorrow, the impact on global climate trends would be negligible. Meanwhile, major economies such as China and India continue expanding energy production to support their economic growth.
That does not mean Connecticut should ignore environmental stewardship. It simply means policy must balance environmental goals with economic reality.
When policies drive up the cost of energy without providing reliable alternatives, the result is not sustainability—it is scarcity. Families struggle to afford heating and electricity, businesses face higher operating costs, and the state becomes less competitive.
A cleaner future is a goal worth pursuing. But if that future is built on policies that make energy unaffordable, it will not be sustainable for the people who live and work in Connecticut. Because when energy becomes unaffordable, it eventually becomes unavailable and that helps no one.
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