Nolan’s comments that Healey will tone down her rhetoric after the election stand in stark contrast to Healey’s pitch to voters that Massachusetts will take on utility profits and go to bat for ratepayers.
Category: Energy
Planning for the next three-year cycle of the Massachusetts’s energy efficiency program is already well underway
The unfolding legal drama marks a major pivot point for a project intended to provide 20 percent of Massachusetts’s electricity — and exposes just how fragile and volatile the state’s energy mix continues to be.
Healey can cast the utility companies as a critical partner when it’s advantageous for her to do so — or turn them into a political punching bag and convenient foil when it benefits her.
Beacon Hill is poised to rein in shady energy companies that rip off customers by signing them up for electricity at lower costs and raising prices later.
The move, adopted with buy-in from the energy industry, advocates, and state officials, could save thousands of electric customers looking to install solar panels across the state from being saddled with last-minute, seemingly random charges that could stretch past $10,000 per project.
Healey’s decision to speak specifically on energy policy as the Legislature scrambled elsewhere in the State House to tackle other priorities is the latest sign of urgency from the governor to respond to Bay Staters’ angst around soaring utility bills — and of the political salience of the issue as the governor seeks reelection this fall.
The back-and-forth nature of data center policy in Massachusetts raises the question: Do Bay State policymakers want to draw in these facilities, which can provide some jobs and property tax benefits, or not?
The change under consideration by the Legislature would impose new income verification requirements on only the moderate-income customers in the state’s 21 designated equity communities.
As these municipalities are quickly finding out, moving off gas for new buildings doesn’t preclude the utilities from needing to spend tens of millions of dollars each year upgrading the existing gas system.