April 24, 2013 | BY JON LENDER, jlender@courant.com. The Hartford Courant

Environmentalists are blasting state energy and environment Commissioner Dan Esty for briefing clients of an investment firm in a conference call Tuesday about state plans and pending legislation on energy that could benefit Northeast Utilities which paid Esty $205,000 in consulting fees before Gov. Dannel P. Malloy appointed him in 2011.

To me, that seems like an improper thing for an environment commissioner to do, Smith said in a phone interview Wednesday.

Esty denied that on the phone later Wednesday, saying it’s his job as commissioner to talk to everyone including the investment community about what he’d described in the conference call as the Malloy administration’s push for a cheaper cleaner and more reliable electricity structure for the state of Connecticut.

Esty insisted he’d disclosed no confidential information, and said the proposed bill doesn’t favor NU.

But he did admit that the timing of his participation in the UBS conference call was terrible and he had apologized to legislative leaders about it because the energy bill was supposed to be to be voted on in the state Senate Wednesday.

Plans for Senate action fell apart in early afternoon amid questions by environmental advocates but also after the legislative liaison for Malloy’s office, Paul Mounds, raised a question with Esty about the commissioner’s participation in the UBS conference call on the eve of a planned vote on the bill.

Let me be clear I had no intent to get out in front of the legislative process, Esty said. This was booked weeks and weeks ago [with UBS]. But, he said, it looks like was stepping on the legislative process. Had I to do it again, I should have looked a calendar [and decided that Tuesday] was probably not a good day to do a call with a lot of folks interested [in the state’s energy plans and pending legislation].

I get that the timing here was terrible, and I was insensitive that the legislation was about to be taken up,’ Esty said. The vote has now been postponed, probably for a week, Esty said — adding that he thinks that’s good because it all allow all voices to be heard, and questions answered.

A day earlier, Esty talked for a half-hour in an afternoon conference call organized by New York-based UBS Securities. Good Morning Clients, a UBS executive wrote in an email promoting the call. With the state of Connecticut recently releasing its first-ever Comprehensive Energy Strategy, we are hosting a call with Commissioner Daniel C. Esty. The focus would be on energy strategy, including renewable energy sources among other issues, the email said.

Esty, a longtime Yale professor with expertise on the environment and energy policy, had been a corporate consultant and author on those subjects prior to becoming DEEP commissioner. One of his clients was Northeast Utilities, which paid him $205,000 for consulting work from 1997 to 2005. After Courant disclosures about that in 2011, Esty said he had put Northeast Utilities on a list of two dozen companies whose regulatory issues he would recuse himself from.

Northeast Utilities had no role in Tuesday’s conference call, but New York-based UBS which conducted the call had recently issued an update to clients in which it had changed its position on the utility company’s stock from neutral to buy, in part based on the state of Connecticut’s position with regard to hydroelectric power in renewable energy policy and what was being discussed as the potential contents of Senate Bill 1138.

The idea apparently was what’s good for hydroelectric power is good for the Canadian power producer Hydro-Quebec and Northeast Utilities, which is its partner in a proposed power transmission line that is causing controversy in New Hampshire because it would cross the national forest in the White Mountains.

We believe NU shares should see a flurry of positive events drive shares higher through 2013, UBS said in its emailed investment update about a week ago. We anticipate that in the near term Connecticut’s SB1138 has the potential to pass the House and Senate, revising the states’ [renewable energy procurement standard] to allow a portion to be met with large-scale hydro. This would in turn allow Hydro-Quebec (who is in turn having NU build the line on their behalf) to contract with the state and gain economic certainty around the line.