State Senator Mike Barrett

Boston Globe

The state’s new climate legislation aimed to do just that, and required the state to come up with a new building code that would allow cities and towns to move ahead.

The Baker administration promised a draft by fall 2021 but failed to deliver. And now some climate-concerned legislators want the administration to answer for it.

“Each additional day of delay means one day less of public discussion,” said Senator Mike Barrett, who cochairs the Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy, which is scheduled to discuss the delays — and what to do about them — at a hearing Wednesday. “The clock is ticking down, and Baker’s people know it.”

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Cape Cod Times

Committee co-chair Sen. Michael Barrett was critical of removing the price cap. Barrett felt that with only two bidders in the last round in which both received contracts, and just a handful of developers on the East Coast, there was too little competition to ensure a lower price without a cap.

“We are stuck in a situation where we’re going to have to deal with a very small universe of potential players,” said Barrett, who noted that with no price limit on their bids, New York, Connecticut and New Jersey energy contracts were 43%, 68%, and 100% higher, respectively, than what Massachusetts obtained with an upper limit on pricing.

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CommonWealth Magazine

Sen. Michael Barrett of Lexington, the Senate chair of the Telecommunications, Utilities, and Energy Committee, has raised concerns about removing the cap at a time when the state is relying more and more on low electricity prices to bolster its climate change efforts. He has done price comparisons showing that Massachusetts procurements for offshore wind are priced well below those of other states where price caps do not exist.

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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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