Who is a member?
Our members are the local governments of Massachusetts and their elected and appointed leadership.
Separate bills passed by the House and the Senate to address rising energy costs and the state’s evolving energy needs are now in a conference committee, which was established in mid-July to reconcile differences between the bills.
The House and Senate conferees held their first meeting on July 29.
The Senate passed its version of a sweeping energy affordability bill on July 1, following the House’s passage of its bill in March.
The House and Senate bills take different approaches to addressing energy affordability while continuing to make progress on clean energy efforts statewide.
The House bill (H. 5175) focused on changes to the Mass Save program, which provides services, rebates, incentives, and training to promote energy efficiency statewide. The bill would create nearly $1 billion in savings by reducing funding for the program through 2027.
The Senate bill (S. 3166) would narrow the scope of the Gas System Enhancement Program, which is designed to repair or replace aged natural gas infrastructure, in order to realize $1.46 billion in savings.
These proposals would result in lowering related surcharges on consumer bills.
The House and Senate bills also include several policy provisions relevant to cities and towns.
Both bills would give municipalities the option to ban third-party competitive energy suppliers, marketers or brokers from renewing or executing new contracts in their city or town. The provision would not impact municipal aggregation programs.
The Senate bill would strike a section of state law that caps the amount of solar generation — currently set at 10 megawatts — for which a city or town may obtain net metering credits. Rather than removing the cap, the House’s bill would raise it to 20 megawatts.
Both the Senate and House bills would require municipalities to use an online platform created by the state and designed to streamline and accelerate the permitting process for small, residential solar arrays. If a municipality does not use the state’s platform, an equivalent would have to provide baseline efficiencies (including online submission for permit documents and forms and electronic approvals).
The Senate bill would require the state platform to be provided at no cost to cities and towns, and includes more explicit responsibilities for the Department of Energy Resources to facilitate the use of the platform.
The Senate adopted an amendment supported by the MMA to allow cities and towns to use Section 53G consultants for the new local clean energy siting and permitting process.
On July 29, the MMA submitted a letter outlining municipal priorities to the conference committee.
Gov. Maura Healey got the process started last year when she filed a bill that sought to lower energy costs for consumers, bring more energy into Massachusetts, increase utility accountability and promote innovation. (See the bill’s website for details.)