CHALLENGE

Please scroll down to see list of current donors. $561,379 raised in new donations as of 8/5/24

CHALLENGE: Will You Still Be In Business In 10 Years?
The State Wants To Cut Your Sales Up To 45% By 2030 and 100% by 2050

No picture can better explain the challenge to the heating industry than the graph above. This graph shows industry declining total Connecticut heating oil sales through 2050 as a percent of 2001 sales. These numbers aren't speculative. They enshrined in state statute.

Last year was a a rough heating season, with heating fuel sales about 10% below the previous year due to heating degree days.

But can you survive a 20% drop in sales, twice this year’s losses? The state’s goal is to reduce all fossil fuel sales 45% by 2030. And it doesn’t stop there. Fuel sales will continue to fall until they reach zero by 2050, but that’s academic since the harsh reality is that you’ll be out of business long before then.

How will the state put you out of business? Several ways. The state’s version of the Green New Deal, carbon taxes, and subsidizing electric heat pumps are the tools they want to use to defeat us, but we are not going to let that happen!

The same kind of reductions apply to gasoline and diesel sales, through the Transportation Climate Initiative which seeks to apply a 30% reduction in the supply of motor fuels over the next ten years. As we saw on the previous tab, here's what your gasoline and diesel sales will look like, the red line in the graph, compared to fuel demand, the blue line.

CHALLENGE: Lobbying Resources - David vs. Goliath
The Utilities and Environmentalists Dominate the Capitol in Hartford

164 lobbyists are registered in Connecticut by the utilities, environmental organizations & renewable energy companies, all working together at your expense.

DEEP, PURA and progressive legislators are all aligned in eliminating the fuel you sell.

How much are the utilities spending per year to electrify us out of business?

Eversource $1.7 million
United Illuminating/Avangrid $600,000

Total $2.3 million

CHALLENGE: Even Cities and Towns are Against Us

Picturesque Burlington, Vermont (pictured here) approved an ordinance that requires new buildings that connect to fossil fuel equipment to pay a “building carbon fee” of $100 per ton of CO2 emissions. Brookline, Massachusetts voted to ban oil and natural gas in new construction last year, only to be overturned by the state Attorney General for procedural reasons. Now Arlington and Lexington are seeking approval from the state legislature to adopt similar policies.

And don't think anti-fossil fuel, pro-electrification efforts are happening on the local level only in other states. CEMA has been actively addressing local electrification efforts in Branford, Guilford, West Hartford, and Naugatuck. And most other towns in the state are working towards these ends as well. A number of cities and towns also passed resolutions in support of TCI.

CHALLENGE: Electrify the Home!

The state's new electrification plan proposes to aggressively reduce carbon emissions from the heating sector, and by converting homes that heat with propane and heating oil to air-sourced electric heat pumps. These are the percentage of homes by heat source that the state proposes to convert to electric heat pumps:

Natural Gas heated homes : 40%
Propane heated homes : 60%
Electric Resistance heated homes : 80%
Fuel Oil heated homes : 60%

Using US Census data, converting 60% of fuel oil heated homes represents a LOSS of 321,252 homes with fuel oil, converted to electric heat pumps. In great contrast to just a few years ago, even natural gas heated homes are not immune to the electrification tidal wave. Though of course it's no coincidence that the same utilities supplying natural gas also supply electricity.

Though our industry has a low-carbon alternative fuel today, biodiesel, ready for implementation with new state laws ramping up the percentage of its use in heating oil over the next fifteen years, no acknowledgement of this is given by regulators. It's a good story we have and one that needs telling, with more resources. To learn more about Bioheat in Connecticut see HERE.

Lamont signing Executive Order 21-3

In Governor Lamont's Executive Order of Dec. 16, 2021, heating fuels are back in the crosshairs of the government, as he calls on DEEP (Dept. of Energy and Environmental Protection) to develop strategies to lower residential and commercial carbon dioxide emissions:

DEEP shall include in its next Comprehensive Energy Strategy an identification of strategies to provide for more affordable heating and cooling for Connecticut residents and businesses, achieve reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from residential and commercial buildings and industrial processes as needed to enable the state to meet the economy-wide greenhouse gas reduction target for 2030 and 2050 required by the Global Warming Solutions Act, and to identify strategies to improve the resilience of the state's energy sector to extreme weather events, fuel commodity price spikes, and other
disruptions.

Lamont is trying everything he can do with an executive order without going through the legislature. Here are additional things he's doing with state buildings and properties.

By 2030, all electricity purchased and generated by the Executive Branch will be 100% zero carbon.

By 2023, DEEP and DAS shall develop a plan to retrofit existing fossil fuel-based heating and cooling systems at state buildings to systems capable of being operated without carbon emitting fuels.

By 2023, DEEP and DAS shall develop a plan.and a budget to achieve zero-GHG emissions for all new construction and major renovations funded by the state or in facilities owned/operated by the Executive Branch, targeting construction beginning in fiscal year 2024 and after.

The state shall deploy an average of 10,000 kWDC of new solar capacity annually for the next 10 years, primarily sited new projects sited on state buildings or property.

The state shall commit to reducing executive branch building GHG emissions by at least 1% annually.

CHALLENGE: Electrify the Road!

Though we dealt the Transportation Climate Initiative (TCI) a setback recently, don't think it won't come back. Its supporters are even more motivated than ever to pass it. TCI does two things. It raises the cost of gasoline and diesel by forcing suppliers to purchase "allowances" which they can pass on to consumers, as an effective tax on gasoline and diesel. It also reduces the supply of those fuels by 30% over the next ten years, as the graph at the top of the page shows. This will result in supply shortages, and price spikes as fuel suppliers bid up the price of fuel to obtain ever scarcer supplies. The hundreds of millions of dollars collected by the state will be directed to cities to build walking and bike paths, to electrify mass transit, and to provide credits to purchase electric vehicles. The accompanying chart shows the utopian objectives of this program, as envisioned in a similar cap-and-trade scheme for California.

As mentioned above with the building sector, Gov. Lamont's Executive Order 21-3 also tackles the state's vehicle fleet for reducing emissions:

By 2030, all newly leased light duty state vehicles shall be zero emission vehicles.

Statewide battery electric bus fleet by 2035. The DOT shall cease purchasing or providing state funding to third parties for the purchase of diesel buses by the end of 2023. DOT shall create an implementation plan which identifies any barriers to full bus fleet electrification. [This was put on hold after one of the EV buses caught on fire and burned to the ground]

Assess the need to adopt California Medium and Heavy-Duty ("MHD") vehicle emissions standards. DEEP shall assess the need to adopt the California Air Resources Board ("CARB") standards for MHD vehicles as part of the state's efforts to meet air quality and climate change goals. DEEP shall develop and publish the assessment no later than January 31, 2022. At the conclusion of the assessment process, DEEP shall determine if adoption of the CARB standards is necessary to attain health-based air quality standards and necessary to meet statutorily required emission reduction targets under the GWSA.

The Fight Against CARB

In 2023, the state moved aggressively to electrify the transportation sector. After we defeated their efforts at TCI, they moved on to formalizing the regulations to adopt California's CARB rules that would eliminate the sale of electric vehicles, both passenger cars and heavy-duty trucks.

The first step was to oppose the adoption of these regulation in the summer of 2023. We got hundreds of people to oppose the regulations and almost 2,000 submitted comments opposing the regulations. Needless to say the state ignored these comments and proceeded to submit them for approval to the Attorney General and the legislature. While the Attorney General rubber-stamped the regulations, the legislature wasn't to be pushed around.

CEMA created an effective multi-industry coalition to lobby legislators, using the new resources enabled by our Defense Fund. We succeeded in flipping a couple of Democratic legislators, which is all it took to prevent the regulations from going forward.

But the state was persistent and tried to push the regulations through a special session. This time we took a different strategy since we needed dozens of votes to stop this, not just one or two. Again using our Defense Fund lobbying resources, we targeted legislators in low-income districts, whose constituents could not afford EVs or have ready access to charging stations. Once again this proved the right strategy and the state again conceded defeat.

The measure now moves onto the General Session as a whole during their regular session from February to May this year.

CODES: The New Stealth Attack

On December 16, Gov. Lamont issued a new executive order that, among other things, called for more energy efficient building codes. Such changes to codes fly under the radar and can be slipped in with hardly any notice, banning new construction using fossil fuel appliances, or even requiring existing buildings to retrofit with non-fossil fuel appliances. This is another reason the industry needs CEMA to be ever vigilant.

As reported in the Hartford Courant, DEEP Commissioner Katie Dykes touted the executive order’s new building and appliance standards and its commitment to an all-electric statewide bus fleet by 2035.

“These are things we can do within existing authority that will help get us further along the way toward meeting those greenhouse gas emissions by 2030,” she said.

Dykes went on the say that the executive order isn’t a replacement for broader legislative action but said it is a step toward achieving the state’s emission-reduction targets.

Gov. Lamont then emphasized the social justice aspect of his order. “We need to do everything we can to ensure our working class families aren’t suffering the consequences of inaction both with health and with their wallets,” the governor said. “This executive order takes a whole-of-government approach, sending a message to our residents that climate change is something that affects all of us and we must work together to create the change we seek.”

OUR CHALLENGE TO YOU

In all our past successes, including the most recent one against CARB regulations, CEMA uses its resources frugally and efficiently. But we don't always win, and successes will be harder to come by in the future with our limited resources. That's why our challenge to you is to support our effort with additional funding.

Your current dues support our ongoing operations, with perhaps only a quarter of staff time being devoted to lobbying. We need more resources to keep in the game to protect the industry from all the threats listed in these pages.

We are encouraged by CEMA's counterpart, the Fuel Merchants Association of New Jersey (FMANJ), which sells less than half the gallons we do in Connecticut, but which recently raised $1.2 million to fight efforts to electrify their state's economy.

There are three areas in which we would deploy additional resources:

Our Plan for Success

1. We need to expose consumers to the real costs of government climate plans through a public relations campaign. This campaign will help change the opinion of legislators who are already sensitive to the energy costs of their constituents. We will focus on electrification of both the heating and transportation sectors. We have brought in a full-time PR consultant to work all media outlets with our side of the story and she's been hired on for a second year.

2. We need to fund the fight against the state and utilities in utility regulatory bodies, since this is where they sneak in regulations largely out of public view. We will add regulatory experts to fight them on their turf.

3. Cities and towns are moving towards changing building regulations to eliminate new fossil fuel construction. We need to track such proposals and oppose them wherever they occur in Connecticut's 169 towns and cities. We will invest in additional political influencers to do battle at the legislature and in your community! We hired a new political director last year, who will continue into 2023.

You know that we will return your additional investment in the industry ten-fold as we've always done. Our recommended donation is 44 points or 0.44 cents per gallon of fuel you sell in Connecticut. CEMA's leadership has committed $200,000 of our reserves to kickstart this campaign. We would like to raise in addition three times this number from members. To donate, just click on the button below which will take you back to the donation website. If you prefer to just donate a flat dollar amount, if you're an industry vendor or wholesaler, just email Chris Herb with your pledge at [email protected].

Watch CEMA's April 18, 2023 Press Conference

Putting Donations to Work to Stop a Bill Empowering the State to Implement TCI, Cap and Trade and Other Electrification Policies.

While we're undergoing a software update, to pledge a donation, please email Chris Herb [email protected], and we'll send you an invoice. Or Click on the Button Below to Make an Online Donation.

Donate Online

Please note that such donations may not be entirely tax deductible per IRS Code section 162(e). Specifically, deductions may not be taken as follows:

- Amounts paid for direct legislative lobbying expenses at the federal and state (but not the local) level may not be deducted as a business expense.

- Grass roots lobbying expenditures also are not deductible.

- Amounts paid for contact with certain federal officials would not be deductible under IRC 162(e).

You will receive a letter from CEMA at the end of each calendar year indicating how much of your donation was used for non-deductible purposes in that year.