RENEW Urges DEEP to Replace Retiring Fossil Fuel Plants with Renewables

RENEW and the Conservation Law Foundation jointly filed comments with the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) on its draft 2012 Integrated Resource Plan. In our comments we urge DEEP in its final draft to better protect ratepayer interests and the environment by recognizing that obsolescence and the market are rendering much of the region’s coal and oil fleet uneconomic and to plan for the inevitable retirement of many of these units with replacement of their capacity through new renewable resources, energy efficiency and demand response. As the lack of adequate amounts of long term contracting for large scale renewable resources keeps needed projects on the drawing board, we recommend in our comments DEEP exercise its long term contracting authority under Section 94 of Public Act 11-80 to take control of Connecticut’s renewable energy future.