Connecticut was conspicuously absent Friday when winners were announced in a groundbreaking, tri-state auction to select offshore wind developers who will provide energy to more than a million homes across southern New England.
The auction was run jointly by Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts in an effort to enable offshore wind farm developers, who have suffered from rising costs and supply chain constrictions, to save money by bidding larger projects across three states and reaching a broader market.
All three states solicited proposals from project developers after the joint effort was conceived a year ago. But only Massachusetts and Rhode Island announced Friday that they have chosen project developers based on those bids.
Connecticut officials, still experiencing political blowback from a surge this summer in the public benefit portion of customer electric bills , would not explain the state’s absence Friday. A brief statement by the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection , which ran the state’s end of the bid solicitation, said Connecticut will act at some point.