Connecticut Initiates 2022 Comprehensive Energy Strategy Assessment

The Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection on Jan. 6 announced the start of the process to develop the 2022 Comprehensive Energy Strategy (CES) to plan for the effective management of the state’s energy supply, distribution, and demand. The CES is expected to analyse Connecticut’s future energy needs, identify strategies to reduce cost for taxpayers, ensure reliability and alleviate public health and environmental impacts of Connecticut’s energy use, such as emissions of greenhouse gases and criteria air pollutants. The plan will address issues regarding thermal decarbonization and energy affordability of buildings, such as major levers to promote the installation of clean heating and cooling resources.

The CES will also focus on strategies to bolster the resilience of the state’s energy sectors to extreme weather events, fuel price spikes and other disruptions. Further, the strategy will recommend legislative and administrative actions that will help attain interrelated environmental, economic, security, and reliability objectives.

Furthermore, the CES is projected to build upon other recent planning documents, such as the integrated resources plan for the electric sector, the electric vehicle roadmap for the transportation sector and the latest annual greenhouse gas inventory report.

The agency is expected to apply five interrelated lenses in developing the CES with stakeholder input namely, climate, equity, affordability, economic development, and resilience.  The agency is actively engaging with stakeholders through the process, via public hearings, technical meetings, and opportunities for written comment.

Legislation enacted in 2018 – An Act Concerning Climate Change Planning and Resiliency – set a mandatory emissions reduction target of 45 percent below 2001 levels by 2030, and integrated greenhouse gas reduction more explicitly into the CES and resource plan. The 2008 Global Warming Solutions Act set goals of reducing emissions by 10 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 and 80 percent below 2001 levels by 2050.

The agency will be holding a public meeting on the scope of the strategy  on Feb. 17 and will be accepting public comments until Mar. 3.