U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm will visit Connecticut on Thursday to visit a pair of local clean energy technology companies and highlight investments in energy under the Biden Administration’s infrastructure law and pending social and climate spending bill.
Granholm will be joined by Katie Dykes, commissioner of the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, to tour EVSE, a subsidiary of Control Module Inc. EVSE designs and manufactures electric vehicle charging stations.
Granholm will later tour the Precision Combustion Inc. manufacturing facility in North Haven with Gov. Ned Lamont, followed by a press conference. Precision Combustion makes components and technologies which reduce emissions in coal, oil and gas industries.
The recently passed $1 trillion infrastructure law includes $7.5 billion to support the construction of electric vehicle (EV) charging stations across the country, which experts view as a crucial investment in electric infrastructure as sales of EVs continue to rise. Anxiety over a week charging infrastructure has historically been one of the main reasons consumers give for choosing against an electric vehicle.
Connecticut currently has about 480 EV charging stations, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. Many of those are the slower charging stations, called Level 2, which provide between approximately 10 and 20 miles of battery charge per hour.
Those numbers are dwarfed by Tesla’s Supercharge stations, which the company says provides up to 200 miles of charge every 15 minutes, but there are only about 20 of those stations in Connecticut.
Some of the law’s spending supports initiatives laid out in President Joe Biden’s plan to reduce methane emissions, announced in early November at the United Nations summit in Glasgow. There, leaders agreed to reduce methane emissions globally by 30% by the end of decade.
Precision Combustion, in North Haven, is an energy innovation company that already manufacturers emission-reducing technologies. The company is developing what it describes as “ultracompact, high efficiency” catalytic reactors for power generation and fuel processing, among other uses.
Granholm will visit Providence later on Thursday and spend Friday in Boston as part of the two-day tour of the Northeast.
Seamus McAvoy can be reached at smcavoy@courant.com
![By STEPHEN GROVES (Associated Press) WASHINGTON (AP) — Congress gave one of its highest final tributes on Monday — a lying in honor ceremony at the Capitol — to Ralph Puckett Jr., who led an outnumbered company in battle during the Korean War and was the last surviving veteran of that war to receive the […]](https://www.courant.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Medal_of_Honor_Recipient_54861.jpg?w=551 "By STEPHEN GROVES (Associated Press) WASHINGTON (AP) — Congress gave one of its highest final tributes on Monday — a lying in honor ceremony at the Capitol — to Ralph Puckett Jr., who led an outnumbered company in battle during the Korean War and was the last surviving veteran of that war to receive the […]")