As Massachusetts’ 2023 legislative session heats up, the state is looking to use its new Democratic trifecta to build on two omnibus climate bills signed in 2021 and 2022.

Top legislators and policy makers have highlighted expediting clean energy permitting and siting processes, boosting clean energy infrastructure, reducing electric rates, decarbonizing the gas distribution network and addressing issues related to the role of competitive residential electric suppliers as some of the top priorities for 2023.

Rep. Jeff Roy, co-chair of the joint House and Senate Telecommunications, Utilities, and Energy (TUE) Committee, told RTO Insider that reducing the time it takes to bring clean energy projects online is a major goal of this legislative session.

“Right now, for somebody to get a permit to build some infrastructure, they have to go to a state agency, then they have to go to a local agency, a conservation commission, a planning board, design review, any number of bodies that are out there, to jump-start the process,” Roy said.

The TUE Committee played a major role in passing wide-ranging climate bills in the past two years but has faced a recent divide between the House and Senate representation in the Committee over the balance of power between the two branches. The House and Senate members of the Committee have been holding separate legislative hearings.

Lawmakers say they remain focused on crafting policy. Asked whether the divide will hinder the Committee’s ability to legislate this session, Roy responded “absolutely not.”

Sen. Mike Barrett, the Senate TUE co-chair, echoed Roy’s interest in expediting the grid infrastructure permitting processes in the state but expressed his desire for more information on the specific obstacles holding up clean energy projects.

“I’m wary of bills that try blunt-force approaches, and there are many of them,” Barrett said. “These bills purport to reform the process simply by imposing time deadlines. They don’t otherwise display any particular understanding of the underlying nuances and they’re not deregulatory in the sense that they pinpoint a cause of delay and remove it.”

In April of this year, Gov. Maura Healey’s administration created a state Commission on Clean Energy Infrastructure Siting and Permitting, tasking it with drafting recommendations by the end of this year on administrative, regulatory and legislative changes needed to speed up permitting and siting processes.

Roy also has filed a bill to create an electric infrastructure permitting office, which would work to expedite the permitting process for electric utility projects necessary to enabling decarbonization. The office would issue consolidated permits to cover all state and local authorizations required to build and operate electric infrastructure and would be required to make a final decision on applications within seven months of application.

“What we’re trying to do,” Roy said, “is move the community input back to the beginning of the process, give folks an idea of what they’re trying to do and how it’s going to help them, and then streamline the permitting process, so it runs parallel. So, you’re doing your local permitting in parallel with your state permitting, and you can shorten the length of time the process takes.”

He noted the massive increase in infrastructure that will be necessary simply to enable electric vehicle owners to reliably charge their vehicles in the state, citing a 2022 study conducted by National Grid which found that a significant number of highway charging locations will require as much or more electricity than a typical sports stadium.

While state lawmakers look to streamline project approvals, representatives from several municipalities and environmental organizations — including the City of Boston, Gas Transition Allies and 350 Mass — are pushing to increase access to Department of Public Utilities (DPU) adjudicatory proceedings, supporting a bill that would require the DPU to allow municipalities, state legislators, relevant non-profits and groups of more than 10 ratepayers to participate as full parties in DPU proceedings.

Cathy Kristofferson of the Pipeline Awareness Network of the Northeast testified to the TUE committee that her organization has repeatedly been denied full-party status by the DPU, despite receiving such status in New Hampshire.

“We have stopped trying,” Kristofferson said, adding that the DPU has consistently denied full-party status to other non-industry organizations like the Conservation Law Foundation and the Sierra Club.

National Grid opposed this bill in written testimony submitted to the TUE Committee, saying that the result of the legislation would be that “the siting of energy facilities would become more difficult, more contentious, more political and possibly more frequently appealed.”

The Future of Competitive Electric Supply

Another major focus of the legislative session has been the role of competitive electricity suppliers in the state. A report released earlier this year by the Massachusetts Office of the Attorney General found that competitive suppliers cost residents of the state over $500 million between 2015 and 2021, compared to the cost of the default supply service.

House Bill 3196 and Senate Bill 2106 would move to ultimately ban competitive residential electricity suppliers in the state, and are supported by the Healey Administration, the attorney general’s office and the City of Boston.

“It is egregious that we allow this industry to continue to harm and prey upon people that are really struggling,” said Attorney General Andrea Campbell. The attorney general’s office’s recent report on competitive suppliers found low-income customers and residents of color to be disproportionately affected by these added costs.

Campbell said enforcing existing regulations and targeting individual predatory suppliers is extremely time- and resource-intensive and is a distraction for the office’s other priorities.

“We don’t take it lightly to ban an entire industry,” Campbell said. “They have chosen not to follow regulations, and when we try to go after them it is very difficult … some go out of business, enter bankruptcy, so we can’t even get those resources back to offer the restitution to these consumers that they deserve and are entitled to.”

Barrett indicated he’s open to eliminating competitive electric suppliers in the state, while highlighting the need to reform the default utility service.

In contrast, Roy said he would prefer to pursue reforms instead of an outright ban.

“Truthfully, I’m not a fan of putting the competitive suppliers out of business because of a few bad apples that are out there,” Roy said, calling for more oversight and policing from the attorney general’s office and DPU.

“I think the good players in this space have a lot to offer,” Roy said.

Gas System Emissions and the Role of Public Power

“In general, I’d like to move some costs off of consumers’ monthly electric bills that more properly belong on their monthly gas bills,” Sen. Mike Barrett told RTO Insider.

Barrett said the state needs to move away from its reliance on natural gas to meet its emissions goals, adding that by shifting some costs from electric rates to gas rates, the state could provide an economic incentive for the adoption of electrified heating systems.

“I’ve felt for a long time that natural gas prices are unduly low, because of course we don’t have a price on carbon,” Barrett said. “Getting the price of natural gas right would mean accounting for all the pollution impacts for which it’s responsible.”

Roy agreed with the need to transition away from natural gas but said reducing the state’s dependence on the fuel will be an extended process, and that the safety of the gas system needs to be a priority.

“We’re going to have to transition, obviously, away from fossil fuels, but that’s going to take some time,” Roy said. “How we do that? I want to look at the possibility of using some blended fuels that will lower the emissions in the meantime. And I do believe we need to replace any piping that is dangerous and is hazardous to human life and property.”

Concerning who is allowed to build and operate gas system alternatives like networked geothermal, Barrett said he wants to ensure that utilities are not given another monopoly in the state.

“There’s no reason why networked geothermal should not be public power, much as a municipal light department represents public power,” Barrett said. “Public power always needs to be part of the conversation.”

Featuring an even more expansive view on the role of public power, House Bill 3679, introduced by Rep. Mike Connolly, would create a task force to study the potential for a public takeover of the state’s investor-owned utilities, echoing the ongoing push for consumer-owned electric utilities in Maine (See Maine Voters to Decide on Upending Utility Landscape in 2023.)

“With the man-made climate disaster looming over the future of our planet, we must reorient each and every sector of our economy toward sustainability and equity,” Connolly wrote in his testimony supporting the bill. “We can’t do that effectively or quickly enough with corporate entities such as National Grid and Eversource extracting profits from our electric and gas utility customers and exerting their influence over policy decisions. With this legislation, we wish to start a process for considering how we can pursue new models of public ownership, where consumers, utility workers, and our environment are all given the ultimate priority.”

Concerning such an expansive public takeover of the state’s gas and electric utilities, Barrett expressed concern about the amount of money that likely would be spent by the utility industry in opposition to any serious effort to bring utilities under public ownership.

In Maine, a 2023 ballot measure to initiate a consumer takeover of the state’s electric utilities has been meet with millions of dollars in opposition funding. Avangrid — the parent company of Central Maine Power — has spent over $13 million as the main funder of a group called Maine Affordable Energy, founded in opposition to the ballot measure.

The Massachusetts legislative session extends until Nov. 4, and the TUE Committee has hearings scheduled through late September. As recent climate bills in the state have come together late in the session, discussions over new climate, utility and energy legislation could extend well through the fall.