Who is a member?
Our members are the local governments of Massachusetts and their elected and appointed leadership.
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 improving energy affordability while continuing to make progress on clean energy efforts statewide.
The House bill (H. 5175) focused on the Mass Save program, which provides services, rebates, incentives, and training to promote energy efficiency statewide, cutting nearly $1 billion from the program for 2025 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.
The 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 to allow cities and towns to use Section 53G consultants for the new local clean energy siting and permitting process.
The two bills are now headed to a House-Senate conference committee that will work to reconcile differences. Members of the committees have not yet been named by either chamber.
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.)