News Clips

Boston Globe

Senator Mike Barrett, a Democrat who co-chairs the Legislature’s energy committee, said the Senate adopted this language because the Baker administration’s interpretation of the net-zero legislation from last year didn’t match the Legislature’s intent. The reason he cited: These rules, as drafted by the administration, would bar communities from going all electric for new construction. Barrett’s hometown of Lexington is among the communities that have sought legislative approval to limit gas hookups. So are Concord and Lincoln — also in his district.

“We’re going to what the original legislative intent was, which was to permit communities to go all-electric,” Barrett said.

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Boston Globe

“The state is not trying hard enough,” said Senator Mike Barrett, lead author of the state’s landmark climate law. “Nobody has chosen to own this.”

Converting large numbers of the state’s 4.3 million gas cars to electric is one of Massachusetts’ most urgent climate tasks as it stares at the 2030 deadline for slashing emissions by half from 1990 levels, which was set by the Next-Generation Roadmap for Massachusetts Climate Policy law. Cars account for about a fifth of all carbon emissions in the state, and advocates, legislators, and other experts say that if Massachusetts doesn’t quickly address its problems, including by improving mass transit and discouraging driving altogether, it may not reach the targets set for the end of the decade.

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Boston Globe

On buildings, the bill includes two major challenges to Baker administration policies, said Senator Michael Barrett. One deals with a new net-zero energy code that was required by last year’s climate law. The intent of the law was to allow towns, such as Brookline, to ban fossil fuels in new construction if they so choose. But when the Baker administration released the code earlier this year, it still allowed for natural gas hookups.

“There’s been a battle with the administration about whether the so-called stretch net-zero energy code will give cities and town the option of going all electric in new construction, or whether natural gas hook-ups will be at the discretion of the builder,” said Barrett, who was the primary architect of the Senate bill, and who wrote the 2021 climate law.

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CommonWealth Magazine

Sen. Michael Barrett of Lexington, the Senate chair of the Legislature’s Telecommunications, Utilities, and Energy Committee, said if the Senate rebate levels are approved and federal rebates rise to expected levels a car buyer trading in his gas-fueled car could end up paying $27,500 for an electric vehicle with a sticker price of $40,000

The Senate bill would require the state Department of Public Utilities to set electrification and emission-reduction requirements for rideshare companies like Uber and Lyft. It would also bar the sale of vehicles running on fossil fuels by 2035 and require the MBTA to buy only electric buses by 2028 and make its entire bus fleet emission free by 2040.

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WGBH

“We wanted to make sure in the bill that we are not stimulating the purchase of electric vehicles by single car owners at the expense of people who live in cities and who may not be able to afford a car or may rely primarily on mass transit,” Barrett, a Lexington Democrat, said. “If you add what we do with what the feds are supposed to do, you could be bringing down the cost of a $40,000 EV to $27,500.”

Starting in the year 2035, all new vehicles sold in Massachusetts would need to produce zero emissions, a change that Barrett said would align the Bay State with New York and California. The Baker administration has proposed a similar cutoff of the sale of fossil fuel vehicles, which would be codified into state law under the Senate bill, as part of its 2050 decarbonization plan

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Framingham Source

“We know climate change is relentless, so we think Massachusetts needs to be relentless, too,” stated
Senator Mike Barrett (D-Lexington), Senate Chair of the Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy
Committee. “No one’s around to give out ‘A’s’ for effort. What matters are results. An Act Driving Climate Policy Forward pushes back against global warming on multiple fronts, and with an emphasis on innovation and smart experimentation. It’s about thinking long-range but executing now, in the short term. It’s about problem-solving, confidence, and even optimism.”

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WBUR

Several Massachusetts Democrats in the Senate unveiled a sweeping $250 million climate bill this week. The so-called Act Driving Climate Policy Forward builds off last year’s landmark Climate Act with new policies about green transportation and buildings, clean energy, the future of natural gas in the state and much more.

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The Eagle Tribune

“We’re intent on making sure that working class and poor people have the same opportunities to breathe clean air and transportation as people in the suburbs do,” said state Sen. Mike Barrett, D-Lexington, a co-chair of the Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy. “We’re being pretty tough about that.”

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Wicked Local

Where the 2021 law “was and is about laying benchmarks,” the new bill “is about doing what needs to be done to hit those benchmarks,” said Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy Committee Co-chair Sen. Michael Barrett.

The bill would use $100 million to create a Clean Energy Investment Fund, allocate $100 million to incentivize adoption of electric vehicles, and deploy $50 million to build out electric vehicle charging infrastructure.

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MassLive

“We know climate change is relentless, so Massachusetts needs to be relentless, too,” Barrett said. “No one’s going to give us an ‘A’ for effort — what matters are results. An Act Driving Climate Policy Forward pushes back against global warming on multiple fronts, with an emphasis on innovation and smart experimentation.”

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