Massachusetts State Senator
Roughly 30% of emissions in Massachusetts comes from heating our buildings. Reliance on natural gas for this purpose remains one of the toughest hurdles to overcome. One of many proposals before the Legislature is a bill to put a hold on new gas lines entirely. I recently chaired a hearing on that idea, among others.
Lexington, a town I represent, is asking a tough question: How do we move toward a zero-waste future? One of the steps we can take is updating the 40-year-old bottle bill — raising the deposit from five cents and expanding the number of containers eligible for deposit — to achieve higher rates of returns. Legislation to accomplish this is pending before the Energy Committee, of which I’m Senate Chair. I’m pushing hard for passage.
Mass Save — the state’s biggest program to reduce carbon emissions in buildings — has no visible leadership. Current law calls for no CEO, no board of directors — no one accountable to the Legislature and the public. I have a bill to reorganize Mass Save in order to achieve better outcomes for ratepayers. Energy utilities will still have a seat at the table, but not at the head of the table. Here, I’m chairing a hearing where the bill was debated.
To my mind, this excellent report underscores a big-picture truth: Massachusetts needs a plan to attract move-ins, from other states and even from abroad. When you place the workforce needs documented so effectively here alongside the findings of other studies concerning labor shortages in healthcare, home care, and early childhood education, it’s hard to draw any other conclusion. We need to attract a slew of workers to fill jobs, and I don’t see how we meet our greenhouse gas reduction limits otherwise.
Reducing carbon emissions in buildings is a tough nut to crack. At a marathon hearing, Sen. Pacheco and I heard about topics ranging from embodied carbon — the carbon footprint of a material through its whole lifecycle — to networked geothermal — connected systems of ground-source heat pumps.
Congrats to the girls’ lacrosse team from Lincoln-Sudbury High, this year’s Division I state champs!
The boys track and field team at Lexington High School just won the Division I state title. Here they are with the gov, who bonded with them over her own athletic accomplishments. I wish I could take some credit for their win, but I just wanted to bask in their glory. Congrats guys!
To me, progressive climate policy in the MA Legislature turns on the Senate and the House remaining equal in power. For my take on today’s tensions, watch this.
“I want to thank you for bearing with us during these rather extraordinary times, this choice to have two proceedings rather than one. Presumably it won’t be forever, presumably collective decision-making will return to [the Telecommunications, Utilities, and Energy Committee] and with that, joint hearings. We can’t have one without the other,” Barrett said. “But my hope is that we’ll start to abide by our traditional rules and we will once again give equal weight to Senate decision-making — not excessive weight, but equal weight — and in so doing, be able to bring the two halves of the hearing process back together as well. But probably that resolution will not be coming this year. And so we have to resign ourselves to the dual hearing process instead and to make it as bearable for all of us as possible.”
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What does the SouthCoast Wind project’s recent move to pull out of its contract mean for Massachusetts’ climate goals? State Sen. Michael Barrett told WBUR’s Dave Faneuf the offshore wind farm developer’s effort to renegotiate for more money will slow down the state’s massive shift to cleaner electricity — but not significantly so. “The delay in generating offshore wind is going to put the 2025 and 2030 emissions limits for electric power in some jeopardy, but only for a year or two,” Barrett said, adding that he hopes to see the state “hit those limits and more” soon after.
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