Despite programs and resources that address high residential energy costs in Connecticut, there remain obstacles to accessible solutions.
Connecticut pays the highest total energy costs in the country, according to a recent survey by WalletHub. Energy affordability is an issue that affects the state’s disadvantaged communities disproportionately.
There are, however, several paths to mitigating the problem, Brenda Watson, executive director of the nonprofit Operation Fuel, said during a Connecticut Green Bank webinar on energy affordability last week. The “top-down structure” of energy policy and regulation shaped by state regulators and investor-owned utilities is a model that leaves some people “at the bottom of that pyramid” in terms of energy affordability and equitable infrastructure, Watson said.
“We deserve a voice in some decision-making,” she said.
Infrastructure is “unbalanced and inequitable,” Watson said, adding that “hopefully that doesn’t happen in the future.” Nevertheless, she said that an equity-focused modernization of the grid has been “an eye-opening, learning experience” for her.
“But it also provides a bit of hope that we have regulators in place who want to solve for this issue as we consider what an equitable modern grid looks like: the ability to minimize blackouts, having positive health impacts on reducing energy burden, reducing air pollution and redlined communities and expanding access to clean energy,” Watson said. “That’s just — in my opinion — very basic. We can’t talk about energy affordability without a thorough examination of how we got here in the first place and what can be done in the short and long term.”
From a regulatory perspective, there is “always room for improvement,” according to Stephanie Keohane, head of the Clean and Affordable Energy Unit at the Connecticut Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA).
Regulators have made advancing the “energy affordability dialogue” in Connecticut’s disadvantaged communities a critical part of PURA’s Equitable Modern Grid framework.
In Hartford, Conn., the average energy burden is 6.3% of gross household income, nearly double the statewide number of 3.7%, according to Alycia Jenkins, a campaign organizer for the Connecticut chapter of Sierra Club. Jenkins works on the Ready for 100 initiative, which seeks affordable, community-based, 100% clean and renewable sources of energy with a focus on racial, economic and environmental justice.
More than 50% of Hartford’s population lives in high energy burden census tracts, and 21 of 22 of those tracts are majority Black and Hispanic.
Gov. Ned Lamont recently signed a bill into law that pushes the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection to establish a retrofit program for affordable and low-income housing. The law paves the way for energy efficiency options like the installation of rooftop solar and weatherization upgrades, while targeting health hazards such as asbestos, lead, radon, gas leaks and mold.
Jenkins said that when landlords upgrade multifamily homes or apartment buildings, the focus has to be equity and environmental justice instead of gentrification. Energy efficiency should not price people out of the city, Jenkins added.
Watson said “socially conscious” landlords have complained that programs past, present and future need to streamline their enrollment processes, which can be arduous and turn potential benefits into additional burdens.
“That has turned some landlords off from the process altogether,” she said.