Massachusetts Senate preserves energy-efficiency funding in new bill

The Massachusetts Senate on Wednesday unveiled its long-awaited energy legislation, a wide-ranging bill that touches on dozens of topics from plug-in solar to renewable energy procurement. Sponsors say the measures could save consumers some $14 billion over the next 10 years.

Perhaps most notable, however, is what isn’t in the 150-page bill: The Senate left out an extremely controversial $1 billion cut to the state’s nation-leading energy-efficiency programming found in the House version.

“It’s huge,” said Larry Chretien, executive director of Green Energy Consumers Alliance, an advocacy group in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. ​“We were very upset when the House did it, and we are equally as happy now that it’s not in the Senate bill.”

The House’s proposed $1 billion cut represents about 22% of the three-year, $4.5 billion budget for Mass Save, the state’s energy-efficiency program, which provides rebates and incentives for insulation, weatherization, and efficient appliances. But the impact would be more severe than those numbers suggest: By the time the bill was implemented, the current energy efficiency plan would be nearly two-thirds complete. The cuts would come almost entirely from the final year’s programming, essentially bringing it to a standstill, advocates said.

Proponents of the cuts argue they are necessary because they offer a direct way to reduce utility bills in Massachusetts, which has some of the highest energy costs in the nation. But climate, consumer, and housing advocates said the cuts would offer only minimal relief to consumers in the short term.

Money spent on Mass Save now yields significant benefits down the road. From 2016 to 2024, Mass Save’s investment of about $8 billion in energy efficiency prevented some $16 billion in increased energy costs, according to an analysis from climate nonprofit Acadia Center. That’s even before public health and environmental benefits are considered.

“This is a program that is cost-effective, and it saves ratepayers money, even if they’ve never used the program,” said Kyle Murray, Acadia Center’s director of state program implementation.

There’s still no guarantee that funding will be preserved. The full Senate is set to debate the bill on July 1. The House and Senate will then have to hammer out the differences between their versions, leaving room for cuts to make it into the final proposal.

However, Democratic Sen. Michael Barrett, chair of the Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy, and a major voice on climate and energy issues in the legislature, said there is little appetite for any Mass Save cuts among his colleagues.

“The Senate doesn’t want any of it gone,” he told Canary Media. ​“We think our constituents can tell the difference between a cost and an investment.”

The bill also proposes a range of measures intended to chip away at the thorny problems driving up energy costs in the state.

“This is a process where $100 million here and a $100 million there adds up after a while,” Barrett said. ​“You have to go after all the sources of overspending and overcharging in these big complex systems.”

One provision would allow individual cities and towns to ban competitive electric suppliers, companies that have often used questionable means to sign up customers for expensive contracts they don’t fully understand. Other measures would authorize the use of plug-in solar systems, allow money from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative’s cap-and-trade auctions to be used for EV incentives, and stop utilities from passing on certain promotional and lobbying costs to customers.

The bill would also phase out the Gas System Enhancement Program, an initiative that allows natural gas companies to recover their costs more quickly for repairing aging and leak-prone gas pipes. These expenses are passed on to consumers over fewer years, which means higher fees on each bill, an approach that doesn’t make sense anymore, Barrett said.

“We don’t think we should have to pay bonuses forever to a system that is supposed to keep us safe for the regular prices,” he said.

This latest bill has its origins in legislation that Democratic Gov. Maura Healey proposed in May 2025. Her package, which she contended would save residents some $10 billion over 10 years, had a hearing in June that year, but went no further.

Many of the ideas it included were revived in the fall, in a bill sponsored by Democratic Rep. Mark Cusack. His bill echoed many of Healey’s proposals but also included provisions he said were needed to rein in soaring energy costs. He proposed reinstating rebates for natural gas heating systems, making the state’s 2030 emissions-reduction target nonbinding, and slashing energy-efficiency spending by $330 million through the end of 2027.

Climate and consumer advocates immediately and adamantly opposed the measure, saying a cut of that size would eviscerate Mass Save without offering consumers any meaningful savings, now or in the future. Still, the bill advanced to the House Ways and Means Committee, where the proposed cut to efficiency programming was tripled in a proposal released in February, much to the dismay of opponents.

The new Senate version, supporters said, takes a deeper dive into some of the less obvious cost drivers, rather than looking for a big, simple answer. 

“Everyone wishes there was a switch they could flip to make energy prices get cheap,” Acadia Center’s Murray said. ​“That’s not how it works.”