Connecticut
Putting New Energy Into Clean Power

By JAN ELLEN SPIEGEL
April 16, 2006

MAYOR JOHN DESTEFANO Jr. of New Haven and Mayor Scott Slifka of West Hartford
are at war.

"A friendly one," Mr. Slifka clarified.

"This isn't a contact sport, so no one will get hurt," Mr. DeStefano said.

But it is a battle all the same.

As part of events leading to Earth Day on Saturday, Mr. DeStefano and Mr. Slifka
have made a little wager over which city has more homeowners and businesses
signed up for the Clean Energy Option, one among a host of voluntary and
mandatory initiatives in Connecticut aimed at increasing the use of clean
energy.

That the two mayors have bet New Haven pizza against West Hartford soft drinks
is a measure of the enthusiasm with which these communities and others have
embraced the state's latest foray into clean electricity generation. It is a
striking turnabout from a complicated earlier attempt begun in 2000, which so
confused consumers that it had failed by 2003.

With the goal of creating a market for clean energy that eventually will make it
more affordable than using fossil fuels, Connecticut has assembled a
collaboration of government, nonprofit, business and private programs. Its
underpinning is state law that requires and promotes clean-energy use.

But Connecticut's clean energy push relies substantially on a series of
voluntary programs. It has benefited from a perfect blend of smart marketing,
clever interprogram coordination, President Bush's endorsement of clean energy
in his State of the Union address and a number of chance --- if unpleasant ---
factors, including high energy prices, Hurricane Katrina and the war in Iraq. It
has met with so much success that many observers say the state could become the
national prototype for how to run a clean energy initiative.

"They are an early emerging model in clean energy as economic development," said
Lewis Milford, executive director of the Clean Energy States Alliance, a
Vermont-based nonprofit consortium of such funds.

Mr. Milford said Connecticut helped pioneer the notion that clean-energy-related
businesses could be built to be self-sustaining rather than just depend on
government support.

Alan Nogee, director of the Clean Energy Program at the Union of Concerned
Scientists, based in Cambridge, Mass., said that although it was hard to compare
individual states, "There is really more of an organized and creative effort to
promote clean energy purchases in Connecticut than anywhere else that I'm aware
of."

So far, more than 7,100 electricity users have signed up in about 11 months for
the Clean Energy Option, a program mandated by the state and run by its two
largest electric utilities to offer clean energy to residents. Another program
has commitments from more than 20 cities and towns to buy 20 percent of their
power for municipal buildings from clean energy sources by 2010, and another
several dozen are considering signing on. Clean energy sources include wind,
hydroelectric plants and methane gas collected from landfills.

The Department of Environmental Protection has become the first state agency to
buy 100 percent clean energy as part of a pledge by the entire state government
to reach 20 percent by 2010. Connecticut Light and Power and United
Illuminating, the state's largest utility companies, are also buying 2 percent
of their power from clean sources, as required by law, and will increase that
level to 7 percent by 2010, when the legal standard will rise that high. And in
December the initial steps were taken toward building the first new clean energy
plants in Connecticut, also as required by law.

The linchpin in Connecticut's campaign has been the interconnectedness of the
programs: the 20 percent by 2010 campaign and the Clean Energy Option, a new,
far simpler method homeowners have for selecting clean energy than they had
under the earlier program.

Together they are known as the Connecticut Clean Energy Communities
Program. Communities that join the 20 percent by 2010 campaign can receive a
free solar panel for a municipal building for every 100 users who sign up for
the Clean Energy Option. The state's smallest communities can qualify if 10
percent of their residents sign up, and there is also a solar panel
qualification if a local commercial user makes a large enough purchase.

Wesleyan University is buying 1 million kilowatt hours of clean power, and that
earned Middletown one of the two solar panels it has qualified for so far. The
panels will be paid for by the Connecticut Clean Energy Fund, a pool of money
financed by a surcharge on nearly every electric bill in the state.

Because residents are also paying a premium for the clean energy --- an
additional $3.85 to $8 a month for a home that uses 700 kilowatt-hours --- it
behooves them to push their city or town to purchase clean energy, because an
increase in the number of users will force production of more clean-energy
plants, which is what eventually will drive down the price, experts say. Cities
and towns tend to be among the biggest power users in the state, so their
purchases have the potential to make a faster impact.

"What we're doing is creating a demand, and that demand will drive the price
down," said Ron Klattenberg, a Middletown councilman who is also the chairman of
the city's Clean Energy Task Force.

But Mr. Klattenberg admitted that even in a community with as many advocates for
the environment as Middletown has, clean energy has been a slow sell.

"It's a tough subject," he said. "It's hard for the average person to understand
rates and conservation. It's an area most people don't think about it. They just
flip on the switch, and the lights go on. It has been a challenge."

To a large degree the municipal backing for clean energy is financially
driven. Mr. Klattenberg said Middletown's initial interest was an offshoot of a
desire to trim its exploding energy costs. In the 2005 fiscal year, the city
spent $1.58 million on electricity. In the first eight months of the current
fiscal year, it has already spent $1.3 million. So the city has been prompted to
explore ways to reduce that bill, including putting solar panels on an
elementary school when it gets a new roof and converting the methane in the city
landfill to electricity.

For some communities, the extra cost of clean energy can be a deal-breaker.
Bethany, with 1,700 households, has committed to 20 percent by 2010, but First
Selectman Derrylyn Gorski said is impossible for the town government to make the
switch.

"We can't sign up for clean energy until we have enough rebates in place to
offset the cost to the town," she said, explaining that the companies providing
clean power typically promise towns incentives --- like rebates of about $20 ---
for each household that signs up for the Clean Energy Option. By Ms. Gorski's
calculation, that would mean the town would need about 26 households or
businesses to sign up to offset the increase of 1 cent to 1.5 cents per
kilowatt-hour. As of early April, Bethany had enrolled 22 households.

The Town Council in Coventry has already declined to participate in 20 percent
by 2010 because of the costs, said the town manager, John Elsesser. But a
seventh-grade ecology club later tried to persuade the council to change its
mind, holding an informational meeting for council members this month at the
Town Hall Annex.

"We're telling them that there are options available and you have a choice to
make our town a green town, and that renewable energy is way better for the
earth," said Valerie Stickles, 12, before the meeting. "I just think of when I'm
older and if I do have children I don't want them to live an unhappy life in a
world that's gross. I want them to live in a clean world."

Bryan Garcia, who hatched the idea of the solar panel incentive, pointed to the
potential of solar panels in low-income housing as a way to help residents
limit, if not eliminate, the cost of electricity. Mr. Garcia, the director of
energy market initiatives for the Connecticut Clean Energy Fund, the funding and
operational arm for Connecticut Clean Energy Communities, said that Hartford,
which signed onto 20 percent by 2010 in February, was planning a
Spanish-language event to help involve its Hispanic community.

Mr. Garcia said that data on the state's solar panel rebate program, a component
of the clean energy initiative that offers rebates to homeowners who install
solar panels, shows that 44 percent of the installations have been by people
with incomes less than $100,000. He said it was distributed fairly evenly
throughout the state, though Fairfield County posted the lowest numbers.

An irony in the state's clean energy push is that Connecticut generates
virtually no clean power of its own, which means that when individuals and
communities buy clean power, for the most part it is not actually delivered to
them. What they are essentially buying is a credit that clean power will be put
into an electric grid somewhere in the country on their behalf.

A year ago, the State Department of Public Utilities Control designated two
companies, Community Energy of Wayne, Pa., and Sterling Planet of Norcross, Ga.,
as the state's two clean energy providers. The plan operates through Connecticut
Light and Power and United Illuminating.

Sign-up is through the provider, either online or through inserts that are
periodically placed in bills. Customers can choose one or the other company at
100 percent or 50 percent clean power. If a power problem occurs, all service is
handled through the utility companies. One of the main issues that held clean
power enrollment to just 3,500 statewide in the pre-2003 clean energy plan was
the confusion customers had over whom to call if their power went out.

Community Energy's clean power is 50 percent produced by wind, largely at wind
farms in Pennsylvania. The other half comes from power plants that rely on the
methane gas produced by landfills in the mid-Atlantic region.

Sterling Planet's power sources are one-third mid-Atlantic landfill gas;
one-third wind, mainly from Wyoming; and one-third hydroelectric, from a dam in
Jewett City at what once was the Wyre Wynd wire factory on the Quinebaug
River. The dam is privately owned, by Duncan S. Broatch, who said it can produce
about 10 million kilowatt-hours a year, or enough to support 2,800 homes. It
produces the only clean energy in the state program that is made in Connecticut.

That dearth of clean energy produced in Connecticut has prompted formation of
Project 100, another component of the state's clean energy initiative. The
project requires C.L.&P. and United Illuminating by 2008 to enter into minimum
10-year contracts for an annual total of 100 megawatts of clean power produced
in Connecticut, enough to run about 75,000 homes.

In December, the Connecticut Clean Energy Fund announced its recommendation for
new clean energy plants. It recommended a 15-megawatt biomass project in
Watertown, a 4-megawatt fuel cell operation in Wallingford, and a 15-megawatt
wind farm in Florida, Mass., the power from which will be delivered directly to
Connecticut. By law, all future projects will have to be inside the state.

About one-third of the municipalities committed to the 20 percent by 2010
program have signed power contracts, according to SmartPower, a private
nonprofit marketing group that works in conjunction with the Connecticut Clean
Energy Fund and uses some money from the fund to implement 20 percent by
2010. West Hartford's is the most ambitious agreement, starting out at a 10
percent clean energy level.

The competition between West Hartford and New Haven to enlist households and
businesses in the clean energy drive has also spurred action from other
communities, prompting a wager between Bethany and Cheshire, for example, and a
possible one between Middletown and Hartford, a SmartPower spokesman said.

"It's like anything in life," Mayor DeStefano of New Haven said. "It's more
interesting when there's a competition."

He added, "What I'm interested in at this point is how do you bring lots of
these projects to scale, how do you bring projects in to be more affordable?"

Mayor Slifka of West Hartford, noting that New Haven is twice his community's
size, said: "Our residents should be very proud of themselves if we're even
close. If we end up losing, but it resulted in more people signing up across the
state, then it would be a win."

Councilman Klattenberg of Middletown, following the fight, as are his
counterparts elsewhere, was far more bold in his assessment.

"My position," he said, "has always been that we'll beat both of them."