The principle behind the Climate Superfund is simple: we must make fossil fuel companies pay for the climate damage they have created, rather than leaving those costs to our neighbors and families.

Without a Climate Superfund, Connecticut will continue to build financial burdens from climate change, including disaster relief, infrastructure repairs, and public health costs that will disproportionately impact low-income and vulnerable communities. 

Critics of the Climate Superfund often raise the concern: won’t the fee to fossil fuel companies simply be passed along to residents in the form of higher energy bills? That’s an important question to address, and one that several economists have already answered. 

As Nobel Prize–winning economist Joseph Stiglitz explained in a letter to New York’s governor, the Climate Superfund fee is based on companies’ past pollution, not their current production. That means it’s considered a fixed cost, which is something oil companies can’t simply pass on to consumers without risking their profits. In other words, this policy makes polluters pay their fair share for the damage they’ve already done without raising gas prices for the rest of us.

Additionally, the global prices of crude oil is set through supply and demand in a global market. Even large fossil fuel companies cannot raise pump prices in Connecticut without losing market competitiveness or incentivizing consumers to change behavior. 

In New York, the Climate Superfund bill will raise $3 billion annually over 25 years without increasing energy costs to residents. When similar settlements have occurred, including the federal Superfund law for toxic waste, there was no evidence of increased costs for customers.

The Climate Superfund will advance clean, affordable energy in Connecticut. Many households, especially in low-income communities, already spend a disproportionately large share of their income on utilities. A superfund can increase the state’s capacity for financial aid, such as utility assistance to alleviate energy poverty. Additionally, if funds from the climate superfund are directed towards retrofits, weatherization, and clean heating technology in low-income communities, this could help lower long-term energy costs and reduce energy burdens.

The Climate Superfund should be designed to provide stronger governance in how funds should be spent including prioritized funding for environmental justice neighborhoods and community engagement in project selection. This helps advance “energy democracy,” where communities have a voice in how funds are spent and can shape their local energy systems.

Republicans have staunchly defended unprecedented state efforts in recent years to shrink Connecticut’s massive legacy of pension debt, even though it’s leached billions from education, health care and other core programs in the process.

But the GOP has begun to modify that stance, willing to scale back that effort if — and only if — those dollars go back to middle-class households in the form of big tax cuts.

Citing high energy costs, inflation above federal targets and Congress cutting deeply into human services, Republicans say Connecticut families need more help badly now, but not through new state programs.

And with many Democrats already renewing their push for a new child-based income tax cut and the next state election less than 12 months away, the 2026 General Assembly session could be swamped with tax-cutting ideas.

GOP: CT households must benefit directly from big surpluses

“For my constituents, it’s about over-taxation,” House Minority Leader Vincent J. Candelora, R-North Branford, said during a floor debate last month. “We are seeing billions and billions of dollars flow into our coffers.”

The GOP leader was referring to the aggressive series of state budget caps that have generated unprecedented surpluses averaging more than $1.8 billion, or 8% to 9% of the General Fund, every year since 2017. About $4 billion from those bounties has been used to bolster budget reserves, but the bulk, about $10 billion, has been dedicated to whittling down the massive pension debt Connecticut amassed over seven decades prior to 2011.

The primary beneficiaries of those payments, Candelora said, involve tens of thousands of state employees, municipal teachers and retirees from those two fields.

“But what about the other 3.4 million people, the people that are telling us we can’t afford to continue to pay property taxes in the state of Connecticut?” he added. “I think we need to start looking at the people that are slipping into poverty, slipping into need, because everything in the state of Connecticut has become unaffordable.”