Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro of New Haven hosted a town hall Tuesday about rising energy and gas prices. Attendees shared their fears about a seemingly worsening situation amid the war in Iran.
“The administration and members of the cabinet have described these prices as ‘a small price to pay’ in order to achieve their goals,” DeLauro said. “It's not a small price. It may be a small price for billionaires and millionaires, but for most families, gas is not a small price, nor an optional one.”
Connecticut already had one of the highest energy costs in the nation, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, when the war spiked prices at the pump to over $4 a gallon.
“That is occurring in the midst of a cost of living crisis,” DeLauro said.
For town hall attendees, it has been a compounding problem. Many who spoke shared that they faced chronic illness or advanced age.
“I'm a very low-income person,” said a Middletown resident who identified himself as Ian. “I have a small business. I have cancer.”
DeLauro and guests from the energy sector and the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection answered attendees’ concerns about access to financial assistance.
“People on fixed income can freeze or reduce their energy costs with Eversource,” DeLauro said. “There's a low income discount rate, winter protection — no shut-offs November to May.”
There were a handful of questions about rising gas prices, which DeLauro deferred to DEEP Commissioner Katie Dykes.
“Remember that prices at the pump are going to change a lot, especially with geopolitical events,” Dykes said. “So not every jump in prices is price gouging, but these are the circumstances where we could see bad actors taking advantage.”
DEEP said the state is monitoring gas prices. Dykes said gas prices that have spiked more than 15% in price in the last 90 days should be reported to the Connecticut Attorney General’s office.
Long-term solutions
Environment and energy officials offered individual home savings options through energy efficiency programs like installing better insulation, more efficient appliances and lower cost heating and cooling through heat pumps.
“All of these things can help folks to bring their bills down, especially as we look forward to the summer when air conditioning costs are going to be on a lot of people's minds,” Dykes said.
But, on the state and federal level, the proposed solution that kept coming up was wind energy. DeLauro pointed to a major renewable energy project in Long Island Sound.
“Connecticut is counting on Revolution Wind to meet nearly 5% of our electric distribution company load starting next year,” DeLauro explained.
DeLauro said the project would save New England customers as much as $500 million by 2028, but the Trump administration issued several stop work orders on the project and has fought similar wind developments off the coast of New York and New England.
“We fought really hard against illegal efforts by the Trump administration to try to block this [Revolution Wind] project from coming online,” Dykes said. “We were able to celebrate, just last month, that the project is now delivering power to the grid.”
Dykes said Connecticut has historically led the charge on renewable energy sources because “here in our state, we're not mining coal; we're not drilling for oil.”
DEEP is working with Connecticut’s utilities and sister states as it looks into nuclear power and battery storage, in addition to offshore wind.
“The beauty of renewable energy is that the fuel is free,” Dykes said. “The wind is free.”
