Lamont met separately with the Trump’s Secretary of Energy Chris Wright and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum while in the nation’s capital in late February for a meeting of the National Governors Association. A spokesman for the governor said each meeting lasted approximately 30 to 45 minutes. While the meetings generally covered the region’s energy challenges, Lamont said they also waded into specific discussions about federal permitting for state-of-the-art nuclear reactors as well as the future of Constellation Energy’s liquefied natural gas import terminal in Everett, Mass. Connecticut, like the rest of New England, gets the majority of its electricity from nuclear and natural gas, with the much of the remainder split between renewable sources such as solar and wind, along with imports from Canada. Trump promised to dramatically lower the cost of energy, largely by increasing the production of oil and natural gas, Lamont pointed out. But in New England — where there are no mines or wells extracting fossil fuels — the high cost of electricity is driven in part by the need to transport natural gas long distances across pipelines running through multiple states. Increasing the region’s supply of natural gas, therefore, will require expanding pipelines crossing over from Canada or New York, or constructing new facilities capable of offloading LNG from ships. Either of those options would likely require buy-in from Connecticut’s neighboring states.
After D.C. meeting, Lamont sees path to working with Trump on energy