To the Editor:

Governor Lamont, you are currently proposing a special session of the Connecticut legislature to consider a bill styled after California’s electric car mandate forbidding the manufacture of fossil fuel-generated cars after the year 2035. One week after this legislation was passed in California the state had to ask their electric car owners to refrain from charging their vehicles during daytime hours because there was a power shortage. This is exactly the problem you would be creating in Connecticut if you pass this legislation because no one is addressing the lack of planning for more continuous power energy (green energy is not continuous), which will be necessary if our cars and trucks are all converted to electric.

According to Dave Walsh, energy expert and former Mitsubishi Power Systems president, the mathematics for a world relying solely on green energy does not work. He says that it costs four times as much to build a solar plant than a natural gas plant, while power output is only 25 percent of that of a natural gas plant. This is because on average, a solar plant only produces energy six hours a day. A wind farm is rated to produce energy for eight hours a day but costs 9.5 times that of a natural gas plant to build. Can you imagine the electric rates that our citizens would have to pay to cover the cost of building these plants? President Obama once predicted electric rates would triple but that seems like a low estimate with the above realities. Combined with the spike in interest rates and inflation of building material costs, bad economics is why the original European wind farm developers are pulling out of construction of many of their US plants.

Charging stations are another big problem with this plan. California passed their unwise bill with only one charging station per 27 electric cars, the worst ratio in the nation. So, say Connecticut can halve that rate, and all those chargers are working at any one time, it sure looks like the state might have to go back to the “odd, even days” system we old timers remember in the gas crisis of the 70s.

Another warning sign is that many corporate advocates of electric cars are already pulling back. Ford, months ago, cut their production of electric vehicles in half and this month cut it back some more because they can’t sell them. And Hertz just decided to reduce their electric car fleet by one third, because electric cars are not popular and they cost much more to repair.

In conclusion, Governor, a climate change advocate, Bjorn Lomborg, has stated that this precipitous rush to carbon-neutral is going to cause more economic pain and suffering than climate change ever would. He would suggest the first rule should be, “Do no harm,” and I would have to agree that this is the best course of action for now, aside from building more nuclear and natural gas plants to increase our continuous energy supply.

Steven Landin

Newtown