Massachusetts State Senator
In seriously entertaining a proposal to build multiple new hangars for super-polluting private jets at Hanscom Airfield, MassPort is on the verge of a terrible two-fer: aiding and abetting the warming of the planet, and pandering to the concentration of private wealth. You can’t do much worse than that.
The timing of these grants could not be better, arriving as they do during a time when city and town finances are under stress. We know the most effective response to climate change is local action. It’s about weatherizing the individual home, business, and municipal building. Efforts funded by this money will boost efficiency, reduce the amount of energy we consume, and hasten the day when the sources of that energy are all green.
MassPort’s Board of Directors is the Big Decider here. So we direct a plea to them: It’s not too late to do the right thing.
Otherwise, you put MassPort at risk of becoming a pariah, a poster child for reckless disregard of the public interest by a governmental body. If 27 — or 18 — or just a dozen — of these hangars get built, the agency will never come back from the reputational damage. Going ahead would be an unforced error, one of the biggest ones in modern Massachusetts public policy.
It will do so much reputational damage on an issue that is not going away in any of our lifetimes — climate change. Why would Massport squander public credibility it is going to need on dozens of other issues down the line?
It’s hard not to be positive on a warm, sunny day in Lincoln. So at The Nature Conservancy’s recent event at Codman Farm, I shared some good news: The future is looking bright for clean energy. More and more people are making the switch to EVs and heat pumps — crucial technologies for reducing our emissions. More work to do, but a lot of progress in Massachusetts and at the federal level in the past three years.
The American Revolution has its own special day coming up — its 250th birthday, in 2025 — and startup money for a proper celebration is now on the way. My district has a lot riding on getting the 250th right, but so do a host of other communities across the state. With this first major round of funding, we can get serious about telling our story to the nation and the world in the course of marking a high-profile milestone.
In Framingham, Eversource is building a networked geothermal pilot — a connected system of ground-source heat pumps that use underground heat to warm buildings. The $5 million in funds I secured to collect data on these systems helped get the project off — or should I say under — the ground. Here, I’m speaking to an out-of-state delegation that wanted to learn how Massachusetts is making the switch from gas to geo.
One takeaway from the boat ride to see construction of Vineyard Wind 1, the first major offshore wind farm in the country, is that determination and follow-through are the name of the game. We’re gaining ground and making genuine progress.
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.