News Clips

Energy Wire

At least one influential opponent — state Sen. Michael Barrett, a Democratic co-chair of the joint committee — counters that erasing the price requirement would be unnecessarily risky for Massachusetts ratepayers, however. “Massachusetts consumers are better off with constraints on project prices,” Barrett wrote in a Jan. 10 letter to the governor.

The state’s climate goals, which include a 50 percent greenhouse gas emissions cut by 2030 and net-zero emissions by 2050, envision a massive shift from gas cars and building heat appliances toward electric technologies, he wrote, making controls on the price of electricity especially important in coming years.

Other Northeastern states have often agreed to pay far more for offshore wind, ranging up to about double the per-kilowatt rate in Massachusetts, Barrett noted in the letter.

The price requirement had been successful in bringing new jobs and investment to the state, Barrett told the governor during the latter’s appearance before the joint committee yesterday. Baker supported the requirement five years ago, when the economics of offshore wind were far less well-established.

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South Coast Today

Senate co-chair Michael Barrett was skeptical of the idea of outright elimination of the price cap when Baker filed his bill and on Monday evening released a letter he sent to Baker and Theoharides asking that they stop their push to lift the price cap.

“The cap protects everyone in Massachusetts who pays a monthly electric bill,” Barrett wrote. He added, “To respond to global warming, we need to go all-electric with respect to both our cars and our heating systems. Which means we need to boost our overall consumption of electricity, in the teeth of the region’s high per-unit costs. It’s a sensitive time to be asking legislators to drop a legal safeguard for their constituents.”

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WWLP.com

Sen. Michael Barrett, a Lexington Democrat, has filed a bill that would add a new option for taxpayers to give to a United Nations fund supporting developing countries vulnerable to climate change. But he’s also calling for a more regular review of the existing options taxpayers have to make donations through their tax filings.

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CommonWealth Magazine

Sen. Michael Barrett of Lexington has outlined his position previously — that reaching the state’s emission goals hinges on electrification of transportation and heating and low electricity prices make that task possible — but the footnoted letter dived into the details.

Barrett said the state’s procurements have attracted respectable onshore economic development — including the promise of a transmission cable factory at Brayton Point in Somerset — while keeping the price of offshore wind electricity well below the price in every other state. He noted Massachusetts prices have been 43 percent, 68 percent, and 100 percent less than similar deals in New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey, respectively.

Removing the cap, Barrett said, would put Massachusetts at the mercy of a handful of offshore wind companies that he described as an oligopoly. “We can’t count on competition to substitute for a price cap,” he said.

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WBUR

State Sen. Michael Barrett, the co-chair of the Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy, argued the cap has kept the price per kilowatt-hour from Massachusetts projects lower than in neighboring states, like New York and Connecticut.

“My request to you is that you not walk away from the wisdom that has assured us getting a break today,” he told Baker.

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Boston Globe

House chair of the Legislature’s energy committee, Representative Jeff Roy, supports removing the price cap. But his cochair, Senator Mike Barrett, pleaded against it, arguing it could cause electricity prices to jump and thereby put ratepayers at risk.

He noted New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey, none of which have caps on the price of offshore wind projects, have each paid much more for offshore wind than Massachusetts has so far. For instance, while power from the Commonwealth’s Mayflower Wind project will come with a cost of $58 per megawatt hour, New Jersey is paying twice that much for energy from its Ocean Wind project.

“I want to ask the two of you whether you want to run the risk of these kinds of figures if we simply jettison the cap altogether,” Barrett said, addressing Baker and Theoharides.

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Concord Wicked Local

“Given the stakes, it’s fair to say the nation itself will be on the ballot. But while this is true, it is not the only thing that is true. The nation will be on the ballot again in 2024. And 2026. And 2028. The divisions that haunt the United States are not going to heal in any one election cycle,” Barrett said in his speech. “Now there are those who say that we face nothing less than the death of American democracy in 2022. I respectfully disagree. You could say we face the essence of American democracy in 2022. Because nothing is more essential to democracy — this year and every year — than our striving to move a country of 329 million closer to being the best possible version of itself.”

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Boston Globe

In 2022, the most important thing to watch is the ground game.  The heart of the matter is the shift from high-level goal-setting to ground-level execution.  Time to electrify our cars, trucks, and buses; electrify our homes and businesses; and green the grid. 

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Wicked Local

Barrett, Senate Chair of the Joint Committee on Energy, was a key sponsor of the Massachusetts Net Zero climate action legislation, signed into law earlier this year. 

Reigning in climate change and keeping the anticipated temperature increase at the targeted, agreed upon 1.5 degrees centigrade, depends on local advocacy.  Barrett said the greening of the electrical grid, weaning from fossil fuels in the production of electricity, greening of new construction, both residential and commercial and industrial and the transportation sector, is the state’s challenge. 

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Gloucester Daily Times

Lawmakers are considering a bill that would unseal all public records after 90 years that were kept on individuals with mental or physical disabilities and who lived in places like the Fernald School and other state institutions. Currently those records are sealed under health privacy laws, or heavily redacted if they are released.

Sen. Michael Barrett, who filed the Senate version of the bill, said there is a need to retain some privacy for individuals, “but there also needs to be research and truth telling,” he told the news service.

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