State Senator Mike Barrett

Boston Globe

State lawmakers and environmental advocates welcomed the proposal, which was required by the state’s landmark climate law that took effect last year and mandates that the state cut its emissions by 50 percent below 1990 levels by the end of the decade and effectively eliminate them by 2050. But they hoped regulators would make changes to the proposal before the law requires it to be enacted by the end of the year.

“There’s real progress here, and yet I’m disappointed,” said state Senator Michael Barrett, a Lexington Democrat and one of the climate bill’s lead negotiators. “What is missing is significant. This proposal gives permission to put new natural gas infrastructure into the ground, when we know those assets will have to be abandoned to meet our climate goals.”

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S&P Global

The administration’s delay, and reports that developers are seeking to weaken the code, prompted the Massachusetts legislature’s Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy to hold the Jan. 19 hearing to consider a suite of building electrification bills that could backstop the state’s executive branch.

“To reach our climate goals, we need to begin constructing buildings that do not rely on fossil fuels for heating,” committee co-chairs Sen. Mike Barrett and Rep. Jeff Roy said in a Jan. 18 statement. “On the off chance that the stretch energy code either does not emerge soon or emerges but departs from legislative intent, we’re looking at contingency steps the Legislature may want to take.”

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The Salem News

The chairmen of the Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy, Sen. Michael Barrett and Rep. Jeffrey Roy, said before the hearing that they were concerned that the Baker administration has not yet produced a draft of the municipal opt-in net-zero stretch energy code that last year’s climate law requires to be in place by the end of this year.

The Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs “told the public to expect a draft of the code by last fall. But something’s happened. It’s not seen the light of day, and we hear some developers want it weakened,” Barrett and Roy said in a joint statement.

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WBUR

The law requires the Baker administration produce a draft of this “stretch” energy code by the end of 2022, but legislators said they were expecting one sooner.

“[The Baker administration] told the public to expect a draft of the code by last fall. But something’s happened. It’s not seen the light of day, and we hear some developers want it weakened,” said Sen. Michael Barrett and Rep. Jeffrey Roy, chairmen of the Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy, in a statement. “On the off chance the stretch energy code either does not emerge soon, or emerges but departs from legislative intent, we’re looking at contingency steps the Legislature may want to take.”

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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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