State Policy Roadmaps
Connecticut
Advanced Energy United’s resource, "Advanced Energy Creates Opportunities for Connecticut: A Policy Roadmap for Connecticut’s Governor," outlines how Connecticut can increase the capacity and efficiency of the state’s energy infrastructure through grid resilience technologies, support expansion of affordable advanced energy generation and storage, unlock grid reliability through EV integration; and promote customer-facing technologies to make energy more affordable for consumers across the state.
To achieve these goals, Advanced Energy United’s recommendations for Connecticut’s Governor focus on these core tenets:
- Build it: Connecticut must prioritize reforms to planning, siting, permitting, interconnection, and procurement of advanced energy resources. Energy prices are too high in part because there are too many barriers for advanced energy to connect to the grid and provide low-cost power. While there are also federal barriers, Connecticut can lead on building advanced energy to meet load growth from AI and ensure households and businesses have reliable energy.
- Make it Flexible: Connecticut can lower costs right now by making it easier to adopt technologies that make electric demand flexible. This means scaling up distributed energy resources (DERs), energy efficiency (EE), virtual power plants (VPPs), and advanced vehicle and building electrification solutions via state programs, plans, and rates. These innovative technologies make it easier for grid operators to keep costs down in realtime and in the long run. They also prepare the grid for increased electricity demand from increased building electrification, domestic manufacturing, electric vehicles (EVs), and heat pumps.
- Make it Affordable: Energy costs will be higher if we do not properly plan energy investments. Our governor can take steps to ensure that our public utilities are planning, optimizing, and delivering the right types of energy investment at the lowest possible cost, while also identifying least-cost financing avenues for projects both big and small and working with our partners around the region to better share energy across state lines.
- Encourage the Growth of Connecticut’s Electric Vehicle (EV) Industry: Connecticut ranks 5th across the country in electric vehicle registrations, which gives drivers, utilities, and utility regulators a powerful new energy tool in the toolkit: access to significant mobile battery capacity and flexible demand. When used well, EVs and their batteries add electrons to the grid, provide backup power during grid failure, and put downward pressure on electric rates and transportation costs for residents and businesses. That means that Connecticut is primed to take advantage of the many benefits of electric transportation. To take its EV integration to the next level, Connecticut can do more to support equitable access to EV charging, energize chargers faster, and ensure electric fleets can participate in grid programs.
To download the Connecticut state policy roadmap, please complete the form.
