As consumers complain about their high electricity bills, Gov. Ned Lamont says he is open to slicing rates by eliminating some charges from the bill.
Lamont said he is willing to explore items that comprise the “public benefits charge,” which is among four different categories on a consumer’s electric bill. Spikes in the public charges in the recent past have outraged Connecticut consumers who pay the third highest electric rates in the nation, behind Hawaii and California.
Under a highly complicated system, more than 50 different programs are funded by the public benefits charge. Those include subsidies for electric vehicle chargers and heap pump installations, along with renewable energy projects such as long-term subsidized contracts for solar power.
Republicans have called for eliminating the entire public benefits charge, but Lamont opposes shifting the costs to the state budget that will reach $28.7 billion in the next fiscal year that starts on July 1.
“To me, moving costs from the ratepayer to the taxpayer is just a shell game. I don’t think that really accomplishes much,” Lamont said when asked by The Courant. “But I’d be happy to sit down with the legislature if there are any programs that they don’t think belong that we shouldn’t be paying for at all. Let me know what they are, and let’s discuss that.”
Lamont added, “If you want to get rid of any of those programs, let me know what you’re thinking about. But you’ve got to pay for nuclear power. It’s not free. We do that as part of the public benefits charge.”
Republicans and Democrats have disagreed in the past on which charges can be eliminated.
After months of negotiations last year over a measure known as Senate Bill 4, lawmakers agreed to remove a portion of the public charges in a bipartisan bill that passed overwhelmingly in the Senate by 34-1 and the House of Representatives by 144-3. Sen. Ryan Fazio, a Republican gubernatorial candidate who led the charge on electricity charges, estimates that only about 10% of the public charges were removed last year.
Following the legislature’s vote, the State Bond Commission voted 10-0 to pay for the charges by borrowing $155 million instead of having consumers pay for the totals on their monthly bills. Now taxpayers, rather than ratepayers, will pick up the tab. Fazio, who said he helped negotiate the borrowing total down from $400 million to the lower number, was among the 10 commission members who voted in favor.
After working on the issue for nearly four years, Fazio said that he is willing to continue negotiating on issues where Republicans and Democrats have often disagreed in the past as they have made incremental progress on electricity costs.
“If they want to find religion this year, then I will be more the happier for it,” Fazio told The Courant on Monday. “Hope springs eternal, so I’m always willing to give it a chance.”
On the merits, Fazio said the issue is often highly complicated and technical and lawmakers have battled over exactly how to reduce costs.
“Our utility bills should not be a piggy bank for politicians in Hartford to be spending on all their politically and ideologically preferred programs,” Fazio said earlier. “We should cut special ratepayer subsidies for inefficient renewable energy products. We have so many different programs embedded in our public benefits that provide special subsidies to private companies producing different forms of politically preferred energy, especially solar and wind, that can sometimes cost eight times the wholesale market rate for electricity. That has the effect of increasing our public benefits charges in our electric bills by hundreds of millions of dollars.”
Sen. Ryan Fazio of Greenwich is calling for completely eliminating the public benefits charge on electric bills. He proposed his plan at a press conference in Hartford Feb. 2, 2026. (Christopher Keating/Hartford Courant)
House Republican leader Vincent Candelora of North Branford said it is difficult to reduce costs because Republicans and Democrats often cannot agree on the items to be eliminated.
First, Candelora said, referring to assistance for low-income customers and those struggling to pay, “They should eliminate the program that is allowing people to opt out of their electric bill and allowing other people to pay their electric bill. It has led to major costs.”
Another problem, he said, is the storm-related costs that have been accumulating and have not been paid. The bill has now reached more than $1 billion, and the debt increases by $8 million per month with interest, he said.
“It is accumulating over time, and eventually that bill is going to come due,” Candelora said. “It’s seven years’ worth of storm costs.”
While Democrats have pushed strongly in the past for electric vehicles, Candelora says the subsidies for EV chargers should be removed from the public benefits charge in a system that is not cost effective. Some electric buses can cost more than $500,000.
In 2021, Lamont unveiled the state’s first electric school mini-bus in Middletown, which cost $280,000, partly because it has four batteries that cost more than $20,000 each, officials said. A similar diesel-powered bus of the same size would cost only $80,000 — a sharp difference. A full-sized electric school bus in 2021 could cost $350,000, compared to $110,000 for the diesel version, officials said.
“The technology is not there for heavyweight vehicles to be electric,” Candelora said. “We are seeing failure after failure, especially in New England with the cold weather. Batteries don’t like the cold. To suggest that we could have electrified buses with charging stations makes no sense at all. … The point being that before we implement it, we need to make sure it will work.”
Under a complicated system, a consumer’s electric bill is divided into four sections: supply, transmission, local delivery, and public benefits. The public benefits can be 15% of the bill, and it is dependent on the level of usage.
The supply, or generation, charge represents the actual cost of the electricity under the deregulation law that was signed more than 20 years ago by Gov. John G. Rowland. The transmission costs are regulated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and the local delivery charges to maintain the poles and power lines are regulated by the state Public Utility Regulatory Authority.
PURA, which regulates electricity, has defended the public benefits charge. The authority says the charge covers a wide variety of areas that include “the costs of state-mandated programs that support energy efficiency, renewable energy initiatives (e.g., residential solar panels), Operation Fuel, low-income loan programs, and assistance for customers struggling to pay their electric bills.”
PURA added, “These programs benefit all ratepayers by promoting investments in a carbon-free electric grid, reducing reliance on fossil fuels, expanding demand management options like energy efficiency and solar power for homes and businesses, and contributing to the economic well-being, health, safety, and wellness of Connecticut residents.”
The Public Utilities Regulatory Authority regulates a relatively small portion of a consumer’s electric bill and has no power over the generation charges under electric deregulation. The authority’s offices are at the Joseph H. Harper, Jr. Building at 10 Franklin Square in New Britain. (Aaron Flaum/Hartford Courant)
Christopher Keating can be reached at ckeating@courant.com
