Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont outlined three legislative proposals to address the threat posed by climate change at a virtual press conference Wednesday. They include codifying the state’s goal of a zero-carbon electric supply by 2040 and joining the Transportation and Climate Initiative Program (TCI-P) to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles.

Lamont, joined by Department of Energy and Environmental Protection Commissioner Katie Dykes, state Sen. Christine Cohen, state Rep. Joe Gresko and Connecticut Green Bank CEO Bryan Garcia, said Superstorm Sandy in 2012 was a “wake-up call” for him on the damaging effects of climate change.

“I saw what coastal flooding could do to our communities, what it could do to our homes, what it does to our electric grid,” Lamont said.

Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont | State of Connecticut

Dykes said that “the science is clear: Climate change is real; it’s human-caused; and it has already altered Connecticut’s climate.” She said the sea level in Long Island Sound could rise 20 inches by 2050, increasing the frequency of coastal flooding and creating storm surges “on the level of what we saw from Superstorm Sandy” without a significant reduction in carbon emissions. Average temperatures in Connecticut could increase by 5 degrees Fahrenheit by 2050, including a five-fold increase in the number of days above 90 F and a decrease in frost days from 124 to 85 days per year.

Cohen, who represents an area that includes the shoreline communities of Branford, Guilford and Madison, said that if lawmakers “don’t provide real solutions for curbing global warming and sea-level rise … whole neighborhoods will cease to exist because of flooding.”

In December, Lamont joined Massachusetts, Rhode Island and D.C. in committing to TCI-P, which aims to cut greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles by 26% from 2022 to 2032 and invest $300 million per year in cleaner transportation choices and public health improvements. (See NE States, DC Sign MOU to Cut Transportation Pollution.)

“We cannot address climate change if we do not put in place a program that can help us invest in clean transportation options,” Dykes said.

TCI-P projects to increase retail gas prices in participating jurisdictions by 5 cents/gallon beginning in 2023, assuming fuel suppliers choose to pass down 100% of allowance costs to consumers. Multiple consumer protection safeguards, including a cost-containment reserve, are designed to limit the program’s impact on prices at the pump and would kick in at 9 cents/gallon.

“There are folks that have been cherry-picking studies that were done quite a while ago with very skewed assumptions to suggest that the price of gas for consumers would be higher than this,” Dykes said. “I don’t know what else to say except that those are inaccurate projections.”

“We can issue more credits that keep [an increase] at 5 cents and not more than 5 cents,” Lamont said. “Maybe it trends up to 9 cents over a period of time; again, we can control that and set those limits, so I think that’s worth noting.”

Dykes was also asked about the power outages experienced this week in ERCOT, MISO and SPP because of extreme winter weather. She called it “a catastrophic situation,” with several million people without electricity in “dangerously cold temperatures.”

She added that she is glad that FERC and NERC will be investigating the situation, which is something that Connecticut officials will be following “closely” to ensure that ISO-NE “is appropriately planning” for potentially similar weather events. “Protecting the grid has to be the first priority.”