What to Do About Energy Prices

Lamont and CT General Assembly

The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men/ Gang aft agley,/ An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,/ For promis’d joy! -- Robert Burns 

  

There are only two ways to reduce the price of energy: 1) increase the supply of energy, and 2) reduce the demand for energy, always a questionable proposition. All things else being equal, energy demand in Connecticut is more or less a constant. 

 

Reducing energy demand is a backhanded way of increasing supply. Fewer users of energy = an increase in the supply of energy without disturbing the current distribution balance through the addition of new energy suppliers. This arrangement suits lazy politicians of long standing, and energy companies of long standing that fear competition. 

 

Bottom line: method 2) better suits prevailing energy companies, not a few dependent on grateful legislators, by restricting access to the market of energy producers that might compete with prevailing energy suppliers to bring down prices. Competition of any kind and the introduction into the free market stream of more choices almost always reduces the costs of products and services. Monopolies, indecently assisted by bought politicians, nearly always result in price increases. The political setting of prices by legislative fiat – price controls – almost always leads to legislatively enforced higher prices. 

 

During his “State of the State” address just prior to the reopening of Connecticut’s new legislative fiscal year, Governor Lamont set some neo-progressive teeth on edge when he said this: “Nuclear power already provides most of our carbon free power. That’s why we’re working with the federal government to find ways to expand nuclear capacity here in Connecticut.” 

 

Lamont’s message to no-energy-growth, neo-progressive politicians in Connecticut’s General Assembly caused further teeth grinding. He warned the legislators, “before you rule out natural gas ... that’s where most of our power comes from and will for the foreseeable future, especially without more nuclear power.” 

 

Lamont’s message, directed mostly at environmental Luddites, was simplicity itself, which is the opposite of legislative complexity, a breastplate that ensures a status quo that has become unaffordable and increasingly unenforceable: Competition is good and without competition prevailing companies may easily “conspire” – good word that – with incumbent politicians to cleverly avoid real cost saving measures. 

 

What does it all mean? CTMirror asked in a recent story -- “Lamont preserves options on electricity cost control.” 

 

It almost seems as though Lamont is here throwing down a gauntlet. Is it possible that the governor of Connecticut, said to be a “moderate” Democrat, has passed over to the dark side and thrown his lot in with Supply Siders?” Or is he just being cautious, holding out to the General Assembly, like Oliver Twist, a near empty bowl of energy and pleading “Please, sir, I want some more?” 

 

In the meantime, technological progress, particularly in the nuclear energy sector, has far outpaced the deliberations of politicians. Small modular reactors are being developed and fission reactors are on the drawing boards. Technology is the giant in the fairy tales who, pursuing the princess, takes one step forward and finds himself far beyond her. There has been no talk in Connecticut of “investing” in nuclear energy development. 

 

In the last few years of the Lamont administration, the General Assembly, directed by neo-progressive Democrats with their brains on fire, have put most of their energy eggs in favored baskets: environmentally friendly wind turbines whose parts are not bio-degradable and solar energy, useful when the sun is shining. In addition, national Democrats who prefer electric vehicles, have sought to cripple the production of gas-powered vehicles. Their war on the internal combustion engine is little more than a tilting at windmills, one of many reasons the Biden administration was shown the door during the recently concluded presidential election. Given the choice, Americans generally prefer evolution, slow organic grass roots improvement in the direction of perfection, to absurd revolutionary schemes that intend to make the world over from scratch. 

 

One can only hope that the best laid plans of neo-progressive mice and men – when they are destructive of the social and economic order – will go the way of the Biden administration.