Top Massachusetts House members are pushing an expansive energy bill that would scale back several major climate initiatives and programs and give the state immunity from legal challenges that result from missing its 2030 climate targets.

While the bill appears to have almost no chance of passing in the Senate, the legislation marks a significant change in the House’s approach to climate and energy policy. The bill has drawn immediate outcry from climate and consumer advocates. And it sets the stage for a high-profile clash between environmental advocates and industry groups that historically have opposed climate policy.

“This bill is a major attack on the climate policy that we’ve had since 2008,” Larry Chretien, executive director of the Green Energy Consumers Alliance, told RTO Insider.

The legislation, sponsored by Rep. Mark Cusack (D), responds to a wide-sweeping energy bill introduced by Gov. Maura Healey (D) in May. (See Mass. Gov. Healey Introduces Energy Affordability Bill and Stakeholders Mixed on Massachusetts Energy Affordability Bill.) Cusack is the top House member on the legislature’s powerful Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy.

While Cusack’s and Healey’s bills both claim to take aim at energy affordability challenges in the state, their approaches vary significantly. While Healey’s bill takes a more technocratic approach to cutting energy costs and largely avoids cuts to climate and clean energy initiatives, the House bill would seek to cut costs by taking aim at a myriad of decarbonization programs and requirements.

“This is a bill that saves significant money, real hard dollars, that people will see the impact of,” Cusack said in a recent interview with the CommonWealth Beacon. He added that the Trump administration has significantly set back the state’s ability to meet its near-term climate targets and that changes to the climate targets are necessary to protect the state from lawsuits.

The bill includes several proposals favored by industry groups, including the changes to the state’s decarbonization targets and regulatory changes that could make it easier to finance new pipeline projects. (See Gas Industry Sees Political Opportunity in New England.)

“It’s a pro-utility bill, it’s a pro-natural gas bill,” Chretien said, adding that he was surprised by the extent of the proposed policy rollbacks. “I don’t think it’s a foregone conclusion that this passes the House.”

Key Components

The bill’s proposals include significant changes to the Mass Save energy efficiency program, which has become an important vehicle for incentivizing heating electrification in recent years.

It would reduce the budget for the 2025-27 Mass Save plan from $4.5 billion to $4.17 billion, after the Department of Public Utilities already reduced the proposed plan from $5 billion to $4.5 billion in February. For future three-year plans, the bill would cap Mass Save budgets at $4 billion.

The bill would allow customers to receive Mass Save rebates for gas furnaces and would undercut a demonstration project in the state that authorizes 10 municipalities to ban fossil fuels in new buildings and major renovations. Under the proposal, customers in municipalities participating in the demonstration project would be prohibited from receiving heating electrification incentives from Mass Save.

It also would remove the social cost of carbon from DPU and Mass Save calculations of cost effectiveness and would prohibit state entities from promulgating any regulations or programs that have “unreasonable adverse impacts” on energy costs or the “the operating costs or economic competitiveness of Massachusetts businesses.”

The House proposes authorizing the state’s electric utilities to enter long-term gas contracts, which could lift a major barrier to the development of new pipeline infrastructure into the region. (See Pipeline Expansion Highlights Key Questions About Gas in New England.)

Cusack’s bill would scale back the state’s Renewable Portfolio Standard, decreasing the required annual increase in the RPS from 3 to 1%. It would require the state to return to ratepayers 70% of alternative compliance payments made under the RPS.

Some aspects of the bill are aligned with clean energy priorities, including several provisions promoting surplus interconnection service and flexible interconnection. The bill would give the Department of Energy Resources increased procurement authority and set targets to procure 10,000 MW of solar and 10,000 MW of offshore wind by 2040.

Emissions Limits

Regarding the state’s five-year decarbonization targets, the bill includes language intended to prohibit any legal action against the state if the state fails to meet its 2030 emissions limit.

A 2021 law set the 2030 emissions limit at 50% below 1990 emissions levels. If emissions exceed the limit, the law requires the state to “describe remedial steps that might be taken to offset the excess emissions and ensure compliance with the next upcoming limit.”

While environmental advocates have strongly opposed efforts to undermine the state’s climate targets, interpretations vary regarding the extent to which the state is vulnerable to lawsuits for failing to meet its emissions limits, and limited legal precedent exists on the issue.

Sen. Mike Barrett, the top senator on the joint TUE committee, has stressed that the 2030 limit is “not a rigid five-year requirement, and no one has ever pointed to legal language that suggests otherwise.”

“The only hard and fast goal in Massachusetts law is net zero by 2050,” Barrett said in a conversation with RTO Insider in October. “The language is carefully written; if we fail to meet a limit or sublimit by 2030, we’re supposed to try extra hard to get us back on track by 2035 or 2040. I wrote that language, so I know what I’m talking about.”

Reactions

Environmental and consumer groups panned the bill, arguing it would gut the state’s climate laws while providing minimal cost benefits for ratepayers.

“This bill represents an attempt to undo decades of good climate policy in our commonwealth — policies and programs that many House members who serve with Chair Cusack spent blood, sweat and tears on,” said Vick Mohanka, director of Sierra Club Massachusetts.

Caitlin Peale Sloan, the Conservation Law Foundation’s vice president for Massachusetts, called the bill “nothing short of betrayal,” adding that “rolling back the state’s commitments to affordable, clean energy is a gift to polluters and a slap in the face to every resident who deserves better.”

Kyle Murray, the Acadia Center’s Massachusetts program director, said the bill fails to “meaningfully address many of the largest real underlying energy cost drivers,” including gas volatility, spending on gas distribution pipe replacements, electric transmission costs and utility profits.

Meanwhile, the Associated Industries of Massachusetts (AIM), the largest business association in the state, praised the bill.

“We applaud Chair Cusack and the House for boldly protecting Massachusetts consumers by offering meaningful reforms that will generate real energy cost savings at a time when everything is expensive,” said AIM CEO Brooke Thomson in a statement. “This legislation confronts the harsh realities of our climate policy decisions and ensures the commonwealth is set up for long-term success in meeting these climate goals.”

Cusack did not respond to multiple requests for comment.