The Energy Price Sideshow

It’s too hot. The oversized family SUV is growling for another $80 meal at the gas pump. And the electric bill is beginning to take on the proportions of a mortgage payment. People are cranky. There ought to be a law!

At least that’s what the governor and a growing bipartisan group of legislators are thinking. Governor M. Jodi Rell said Monday that she thinks state lawmakers should convene a special session to consider legislation designed to lower the cost of energy in Connecticut.

It is an election year, so Democratic legislative leaders cloaked their agreement with the Republican governor on this point in an attack on her proposal for reductions in the gross receipts tax on gasoline and petroleum products to immediately reduce prices at the pump. Democratic House Speaker James A. Amann chided the governor for proposing a rollback of the one tax that subsidizes transportation projects, including mass transit improvements, that will enable to the state to conserve energy. Still, he said a special session is likely, but not until September, when all state elected officials will be burning rubber in their high-octane bids for reelection.

Other issues Mrs Rell wants on the table in a special session include the elimination of zone pricing for Connecticut, which allows oil companies to charge different prices to different stations in different locations for the same brands and grades of gasoline; a 25 percent rollback in the tax on utility consumption; incentives, including subsidies, for Connecticut farmers who grow renewable energy source crops suitable for use in ethanol and biodiesel fuels; and financing for creation of ethanol-producing plants in the state.

Most of the governor’s proposals have merit as far as they go, but we wonder how much of the urgency is the result of this week’s heat wave and the recent surge in electric rates. (Connecticut’s average price for a gallon of unleaded was the third highest in the nation this week — $3.20 — and state residents are paying the fourth highest price in the nation for electricity, just under 16 cents per kilowatt hour.)

With cooler weather and the concomitant freeze on rational discourse and compromise that attends most elections, we suspect by the time the legislature comes up with viable strategy for energy price relief, prices at the gas pump and in our utility bills will have prodded most of us to solve the problem on a personal level through conservation — and that is the key to addressing the problem on a global level.

In the end, supply and demand rules the marketplace and calls the tune for innovation. With so much uncertainty in this simmering world about the stability of our oil supplies, our best hope for leveraging a change in prices is on the demand side. And what we can demand from the marketplace is a more conservative approach to energy use, in the cars and trucks we buy, in the appliances we use, and in heating and cooling our homes. Fiddling with taxes and incentives is a sideshow mostly benefiting politicians facing reelection. Let us not be distracted.