Let's Emancipate the Clean Energy Fund
by Bob Duff
Sep. 23, 2006

The recent two-day shutdown of parts of Stamford due to Connecticut's woefully inadequate electric supply and transmission system should serve as a wake-up call to our state. Changes are already underway thanks to landmark legislation passed and now being acted upon. However, more needs to be done in ways that allow us to be charter our own destiny.

Perhaps there's no better place to start than with the Connecticut Clean Energy Fund. The purpose of the Clean Energy Fund is, as its name implies, to promote the development and commercialization of clean energy technologies and to stimulate markets for electricity from clean, renewable sources.

The Clean Energy Fund is important for several reasons. First, Connecticut is energy-starved. We don't have enough energy producers in the state and, as a result, consumers pay hefty fees when heat waves strike and electricity providers like CL&P have to search far and wide for extra power. We also see the adverse effects of our energy deficit on businesses and residents.

The Clean Energy Fund is also important because it seeks to develop non-polluting and renewable sources of energy, such as solar, wind, waves, hydroelectric, fuel cells, photovoltaic cells, biomass, landfill gas and other such technologies. There's a double benefit of less pollution and less reliance on fossil fuels such as crude oil and natural gas – fuels we don't always have easy access to, and whose prices are currently skyrocketing.

But the $117 million fund could work better. How? By removing it from the oversight of Connecticut Innovations, Inc., (CI) that quasi-public state agency created by the legislature in 1989 to kick-start and nurture various high-tech companies around the state.

The problem, as I see it, is that the relationship between Connecticut Innovations and the Clean Energy Fund has cast adverse and unnecessary doubt on the fund's operations and, in the process, is hindering the fund's goal of providing adequate, clean power for the state.

For example, in 2004 a top Clean Energy Fund official filed a whistleblower complaint with the attorney general's office alleging that a $500,000 loan was approved for a biomass project that involved a CI board member who has since resigned his post. CI conducted its own internal investigation into the matter, but has since refused to share its results with legislators or the public. That is unacceptable, and it casts doubt on CI's ability to review and approve Clean Energy Fund projects in a manner consistent with legislative intent and – more importantly – the proper investment of the ratepayer's money.

Then there was former state Department of Economic and Community Development Commissioner Peter Ellef, who – as a co-chief of staff for former Gov. Rowland – tried to steer a Massachusetts fuel cell company to Connecticut with the help of CI, but only if that company paid an inflated rent to a friend of Gov. Rowland's, and paid that friend $200,000 in cash (CI is an associated agency of the DECD.) Ellef and that friend of Rowland – William Tomasso – are now serving time in federal prison for that and other schemes to defraud the state. Again, a potentially valuable initiative was derailed due to politics infecting the selection and oversight of a Clean Energy Fund project.

The Clean Energy Fund has the staff and the budget to operate independently. Over the years it has repeatedly demonstrated its commitment to rewarding ratepayer investments with more energy and cleaner energy. Now it's time for the state legislature to consider cutting the strings that tie the Clean Energy Fund to Connecticut Innovations. The result could only benefit us all.

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