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Part of the reason Connecticut’s overtaxed residents are suffering from an affordability crisis is that they are also suffering from an energy shortage. If the supply of energy were sufficient to meet the demand for energy, the price of energy would be lower. All Connecticut legislators who have even a nodding understanding of the law of supply and demand – called a “law” because economic laws are and should be both predictable and inescapable – should have known before they went gaga over a promising new and untested energy source, turbine windmills, that energy affordability is directly related to all Connecticut businesses.
If you don’t have sufficient energy production, all goods and services become more expensive, and if the assets of those who purchase the byproducts of energy -- all goods and services produced in the United States – do not increase commensurately, their affordability quotient will be reduced. To put it in the simplest terms possible: If, because of high energy prices, the purchaser of goods and services cannot increase his own assets to meet an assault on his budget by rising energy costs, he will suffer the “affordability crisis” now upon us, according to all the campaign readouts issued by politicians who are directly responsible for the affordability crisis.
The news from the Hartford Courant on the energy front – “Study: Green shift clashes with gas reliance” -- is not reassuring.
Here is the lede to the story:
A white paper by a Boston-based research group -- “New England’s Energy Transition: Colliding With Reality” – warns that New England consumers face higher electric costs and shrinking supply because of policy shifts toward renewables and away from natural gas, which remains the mainstay of the regional energy portfolio. The study “shows that, in spite of the billions of dollars spent in New England over the past 25 years on zero carbon energy programs, the region’s reliance on fossil fuels — notably natural gas — for electric generation within the six states has increased, to the current 55.4 percent from 54.6 percent in 2000.”
Translation: Several years ago, spurred on by environmental purists, the whole of New England, including Connecticut, made a conscious choice to wean itself from fossil fuel based energy products – including natural gas, considered at the time a cleaner form of energy than oil and coal. The weaning has not occurred, possibly because such a withdrawal would instantly bankrupt everyone dependent on relatively clean natural gas – that is to say, all residents of New England. Half the energy needs in Connecticut are met by severely neglected nuclear plants. Technological improvements in the nuclear production of energy are very promising indeed.
The research report tells us, “After 25 years, New England has nearly eliminated coal, sidelined oil, lost two nuclear plants and built thousands of megawatts of wind and solar. Yet the region remains about as dependent on fossil generation as it was in 2000… The region is now driving up operating costs for its existing gas fleet while simultaneously discouraging investment in new natural gas capacity. Yet it is pursuing this policy shift without first proving that a dependable alternative system can be built at sufficient scale and at a price consumers can afford.”
And the Courant supplied the following gloss on the report: “What changed is the fossil mix. While coal and oil nearly vanished, by last year a decades-long shift to natural gas had accelerated to the point where gas output surpassed what had been the output of all fossil fuels combined in 2000. Pushing the gas expansion was the Great Recession in 2008, which slowed electric demand growth, and the boom in shale-gas. [Natural] Gas was also considered environmentally acceptable compared to coal and oil, the report says.”
Some formerly dunderheaded politicians are beginning to realize that New England’s war on fossil fuel related energy suppliers has created a gap in energy supply that cannot be filled by the wishful thinking of environmental purists. Left leaning politicians in Connecticut especially have yielded to the Siren’s Song that will plunge Connecticut below water -- because wishful thinking of any kind never trumps reality. If Connecticut’s energy supply does not increase to meet future demand, the unforgiving law of supply and demand tells us, the demand, no longer affordable, will disappear. Profitable tax producing people and companies with wheels on their feet will move to more promising states.
To close Connecticut’s energy gap, the report sensibly recommends, “permitting new high-efficiency natural gas generation and expansion of the pipelines to deliver relatively low cost gas from Pennsylvania, something that has so far been blocked by environmental challenges in New York. It also recommends maintaining dependable energy resources until replacements are proven reliable, determining whether [its current amelioration programs] are phasing out energy sources before they can be replaced, studying whether programs like behind-the-meter residential solar unfairly allocate grid maintenance costs; and evaluating competing energy portfolios on the cost, emissions and reliability of the complete system required to support them, including transmission, storage, firming, fuel infrastructure and other supporting resources.”
In the matter of energy production, critics of Connecticut’s single party state government have sometimes suggested that nuclear energy ought to have a prominent place at the legislative table. The Democrat top-heavy government’s “investment” in wind power appears to be working as many prominent left of center Democrat legislators thought it would – to drive competing sources of energy from the field, a resolution that only worsens Connecticut’s expanding energy gap and does not align with campaign promises often made by Democrats to attack the state’s “affordability crisis,” caused in part by progressive politicians who are insensible to the economic distortions their programs have created.
Stop misallocating tax money, reduce unnecessary and destructive regulations, move surplus money, whenever possible, from government coffers back to people’s wallets and purses through appropriate tax cuts – and get out of the way of capitalist creativity: That’s the road to prosperity for both government budgets and a vibrant enriching economy. President John Kennedy’s “incoming tide that lifts all the boats” will restore a broken economy if is permitted by progressives and socialists Luddites to rise. There will be no rising tide in Connecticut without a fierce focus by the legislature on energy diversification, because abundant energy lies at the root of rising cost of every product and service in the state.
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