Chris Powell: Conn.’s foolish EV promotion program

Graphic by Mliu92

MANCHESTER, Conn.

Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont and leaders of the Democratic majority in the General Assembly are planning to call a special session of the legislature next week to enact the strict California standards for auto emissions that were declined by the General Assembly's Regulations Review Committee in November. Back then two Democratic legislators on the committee from working-class districts seemed to understand that the California standards, outlawing sale of new gasoline-powered cars as of 2035, would leave the working class much poorer than the elites who can afford to toy with electric vehicles.

The governor is said to be giving assurances to legislators, especially those from racial and ethnic minority groups, that the ban on new gas-powered cars could be postponed by new legislation if the performance of electric cars doesn't improve as much as is hoped and if the necessary huge expansion of the state's electricity grid and production doesn't proceed fast enough. The governor and other advocates of the California standards insist that mass conversion to electric cars is inevitable.

But if electric cars are inevitable because they will be so good that everyone will demand them, why must consumer choice be prohibited? Why must Connecticut commit to an expansion of its electricity grid that will cost billions of dollars when there is no plan for it and no idea of how it is to be financed?

The inadequacy of electric vehicles was powerfully demonstrated by the recent frigid weather across the country, with thousands of EVs stranded because batteries don't hold their charges in extreme cold and charging stations are not nearly as common as stations only selling gasoline. And would the people of Connecticut approve outlawing new gasoline-powered cars in another 11 years if they had to decide right now on how to pay the conversion costs? Of course not.

The California standards legislation is mainly a lot of politically correct posturing to lock Connecticut into a future that almost certainly will  not turn out exactly as hoped. It is a "buy now, pay later" scheme whose cost is open-ended.

Repealing or postponing the California standards if things don't progress as hoped won't be so easy. By that time, various interest groups will have sprung up to profit from the new policy whether it's working or not and they may be influential enough to block any changes.

Hearst Connecticut newspapers reporter and columnist Dan Haar has noted the special tawdriness of the special session idea. The Democrats, Haar writes, want to enact the California standards before the legislature's regular session begins in February, while the public is not paying close attention and public hearings won't be required.   

Before anything is put into law, the governor and other advocates of the California standards should offer a detailed plan and specify its costs and its method of financing, thereby allowing the public to make an informed decision while there is still a choice about paying. 

Besides, Connecticut has far more compelling claims on public policy and public finance than whatever its gasoline-powered cars may be contributing to "climate change." Nothing Connecticut or even the whole country can do with auto emissions will come close to offsetting the carbon dioxide and pollutants that inevitably will be put into the atmosphere in coming decades by China, India, and the rest of the developing world.

State government has been prattling about equalizing, integrating, and improving public education at least since the state Supreme Court decision in Horton v. Meskill, in 1977, and 47 years and tens of billions of dollars in extra expense later nothing of substance has changed. Indeed, in recent years Connecticut's per-pupil costs have risen even as school enrollment and student performance have declined.

On top of that, homelessness and crime now are rising in the state amid other signs of social disintegration.

So why should anyone think that state government will succeed with a similarly grandiose project, conversion to electric cars, and that even if it was successful it would make any practical difference anyway?    

Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years (CPowell@cox.net).