The New Year brings a number of reasons to be hopeful. The new General Assembly has many strong champions of clean energy and climate action – from both parties.
And as highlighted in our recent op-ed, Governor Lamont’s campaign platform could easily become the foundation for a Connecticut Green New Deal – a comprehensive plan for putting people to work protecting the climate while tackling racial and economic inequity.
Governor Lamont has proposed even more aggressive targets for expanding renewable energy and reducing greenhouse gas emissions than those we won in last year’s legislative session. CRCJ’s board chair John Harrity and I served on the Energy Policy Committee for the Transition Team, helping to shape the committee’s recommendations as a Green New Deal for CT. (All of the transition policy committee reports are now posted on the Governor’s website.)
One of the key recommendations from the policy committee is a mandate for 2000 MW of offshore wind by 2030 as a key strategy for achieving the state’s climate and renewable energy goals. Establishing an aggressive long-term commitment to offshore wind is urgently needed following the very disappointing decision by CT DEEP to purchase out-of-state nuclear power rather than a larger amount of offshore wind.
So we are hopeful, but we also have much more work to do together in the coming months!
