HOUSE AND SENATE The negotiators released a compromise on climate change on Sunday afternoon, which provides a fairly detailed roadmap for meeting the net zero emissions target by 2050 and setting an interim target for 2030 that is more aggressive than the Baker administration last week required.
The Baker government last Thursday called for emissions in 2030 to be reduced to 45 percent below 1990 levels, but the legislature's climate change law sets the target at 50 percent for 2030 and 75 percent for 2040. Both the House and Senate had the 50 percent target set for 2030 in their original bills, which were unveiled in July (House) and last January (Senate).
The 5 percentage point difference doesn't sound like much in a 30-year process in total, but it could be a sticking point for the Baker administration when the time for the legislative session expires on Tuesday evening.
In a comment last week, Kathleen Theoharides, the governor's secretary for energy and the environment, announced the 45 percent target for the first time and insisted it was the right approach.
“If you go beyond 45 percent there is a real risk that it will unnecessarily disrupt the economy and be likely to be extremely costly, especially for people who can least afford it,” Theoharides said Thursday. “45 percent balances being aggressive enough to make sure we hit zero without costing our economy.”
Parliament and Senate climate laws went into conference on August 6 and took five months to get published. Two other major pieces of legislation dealing with transport and economic development entered the conference in July and have yet to emerge. It is unclear whether the legislature has the bandwidth to issue the other bills in the short remaining time.
The Climate Change Act contains a number of provisions that set out how and under what conditions the state should move forward. Perhaps the greatest impact, however, is to give these terms the power and durability of the law.
“Without the force of the law, anything can go away with the next governor,” Lexington Senator Michael Barrett, the Senate's lead negotiator on the bill, said in a telephone interview.
Barrett and House negotiator Rep. Thomas Golden Jr. of Lowell, chairman of the legislature's telecommunications, utilities and energy committee, issued a joint statement calling the legislation a climate toolkit.
“It's not abstract or general,” they said. “It's detailed. It's about the practical. It tirelessly focuses on reducing greenhouse gases, creating jobs and protecting the vulnerable. It's about the how, as in “How to do this one step at a time, starting now”.
The bill would require the executive branch to set emissions targets in five-year increments instead of ten-year increments. In addition, specific targets need to be set in six industrial sectors – electricity, transport, commercial and industrial heating and cooling, residential heating and cooling, industrial processes, and distribution and service of natural gas – and numerical benchmarks are set for the introduction of electric vehicles, charging stations , Solar technology and heat pumps. The Baker administration set a goal last week of having 750,000 electric vehicles on the road by 2030.
The bill also approves a large increase in offshore wind production. The state utility companies have already procured 1,600 megawatts of offshore wind at the direction of the legislature, although none of these megawatts has yet been approved or built. Legislators have also authorized, but not asked, the executive to add an additional 1,600 megawatts. The climate change law would require the procurement of an additional 2,400 megawatts and leave the existing agency in place to add 1,600 more.
Other key provisions would raise the renewable energy standard from 2 percent to 3 percent between 2025 and 2029. The standard for renewable portfolios requires that electricity sellers obtain a certain amount of their electricity from renewable energy suppliers. By increasing the percentage in the last few years of this decade, the state would increase its reliance on renewable energy to 40 percent by 2030 and subsidize the development of new renewable energy sources. For the first time, the bill also brings municipal utilities within the scope of the standard for renewable portfolios.
Under the law, municipalities could enact net-zero energy regulations, as Brookline attempted in November 2019 when it passed a statute banning any new fossil fuel infrastructure when building new buildings or major rehab. Earlier this year, Attorney General Maura Healey ruled that Brookline's statute could not be implemented because it was required by state building and gas codes.
The bill also takes responsibility for writing a new statewide net zero stretch energy code outside of the voluntary committee on building codes and standards and passes it on to the Department of Energy Resources.
An initiative promoted by parliament would anchor the term “environmental justice” in national law, define the population for environmental justice and offer them new protection. “Environmental justice is number one I've heard of in the state,” said Golden.
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editor, Commonwealth
over Bruce Mohl
Bruce Mohl is the editor of CommonWealth magazine. Bruce joined CommonWealth from the Boston Globe, where he held various positions in business and politics for nearly 30 years. He covered the Massachusetts State House and was head of the Globe's State House in the late 1980s. He also reported for the Globe's Spotlight team and won a 1992 Loeb Award for reporting on conflicts of interest in the state pension system. He was the political editor of Globus in 1994, reporting on consumer issues for the newspaper. At CommonWealth, Bruce helped launch the magazine's website and has written on a variety of topics with a particular focus on politics, taxation, energy, and gambling. Bruce is a graduate of Ohio Wesleyan University and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He lives in Dorchester.
over Bruce Mohl
Bruce Mohl is the editor of CommonWealth magazine. Bruce joined CommonWealth from the Boston Globe, where he held various positions in business and politics for nearly 30 years. He covered the Massachusetts State House and was head of the Globe's State House in the late 1980s. He also reported for the Globe's Spotlight team and won a 1992 Loeb Award for reporting on conflicts of interest in the state pension system. He was the political editor of Globus in 1994, reporting on consumer issues for the newspaper. At CommonWealth, Bruce helped launch the magazine's website and has written on a variety of topics with a particular focus on politics, taxation, energy, and gambling. Bruce is a graduate of Ohio Wesleyan University and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He lives in Dorchester.
Other provisions would:
- Call on state utilities to provide an additional $ 12 million in funding for the financially troubled Massachusetts Clean Energy Center.
- Call for the MassSave program, which uses installment assessments to promote energy efficiency, to set specific emission reduction targets for each three-year plan.
- Relaxation of restrictions on the development of solar energy, particularly grid metering and other programs. The bill also includes a number of changes to encourage access to solar energy in low-income communities, and favors utility companies in building solar projects on utility-owned land in communities with greener populations.
- According to one legislative summary, “a moratorium will be imposed on wood-based power plants of the type provided in Springfield, preventing them from being classified as” non-carbon “resources for five years.”
- Align Massachusetts and California with device efficiency standards, which proponents say includes 17 residential and business products, including computers, water coolers, and commercial cooking appliances.
- Call on the Department of Public Utilities to regulate the training and certification of utilities more closely and to monitor the gas transmission works more closely.
A number of Senate provisions failed to make it into the final bill, including an independent climate policy commission to monitor the state's progress towards its climate goals, calling for the MBTA to introduce a clean bus fleet by 2030, and carbon pricing.
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