5th District Candidate Bill Stevens: 'Energy Independence is a Priority'

Last of a four part series written by Scott Benjamin

Fifth Congressional District Republican candidate Bill Stevens of Newtown, who works as a business development/finance officer for a New Jersey-based energy company, said energy independence is a priority.

Stevens said although he is “a proponent of all of the above,” it's a free market that should pick the options which includes fuel cell technology. Fuel Cell Energy, one of several Connecticut companies in the field, has its administrative offices in Danbury and a factory operation in Torrington.

U.S. Rep. John Larson (D-1) of East Hartford said fuel cell technology will become Connecticut’s biggest export. The reason being, he stated, is because the now defunct UTC Power in South Windsor, which was sold to an Oregon company in 2013, was considered the granddaddy of research in the field after it held the NASA contract from 1966 to 2010.

Stevens said “a lot has been done” since former Republican President Gerald Ford outlined a 10-year plan for energy independence in his 1975 State of the Union address and Democratic President Jimmy Carter announced in 1977 that the energy crisis was “the moral equivalent of war.”

“The good developments have been in fracking, the ability to tap into abandoned oil wells and the emergence of renewable forms of energy,” the candidate said.

“The bad part has been increased regulation and the continued discussion of climate change, which has made the talk way too political,” Stevens added. “When you talk about climate change it seems that the solution always comes from the government and it has to be funded by taxpayers.”