MASSACHUSETTS CLIMATE POLICY

Jamie Eldridge

tSddhpoinsored

Great news, the climate change S.9 #nextgenroadmap is on the way to Governor Baker's desk! As someone who files multiple clean energy bills over the years, I believe this is the strongest climate bill since 2008. Below are 10 key highlights from the bill. Very proud!

Environmental Justice provisions. Writes environmental justice into Massachusetts law, defining environmental justice populations and providing new tools and protections for affected neighborhoods.

· Requires each roadmap plan to improve or mitigate economic, environmental, and public health impacts on environmental justice populations and low- and moderate-income individuals.

Codifies the statewide greenhouse gas limit for 2050 at "net zero" emissions, provided also that gross emissions must fall at least 85% below 1990 levels. Stipulates that the statewide emissions limit for 2030 shall be at least 50 per cent below the 1990 level, and that the limit for 2040 shall be at least 75 per cent below the 1990 level.

· Boosts demand for renewable energy by raising the Renewable Energy Portfolio Standard (RPS) by 3% each year for 2025-2029, ensuring that at least 40% of the state's electric power will be renewable by 2030.

· Drills down from the general to the specific, by mandating emissions sublimits for six high-priority sectors of the economy: electric power, transportation, commercial and industrial heating and cooling, residential heating and cooling, industrial processes, and natural gas distribution and service.

Recognizes Nature-Based Solutions as a mechanism to reduce carbon emissions (and incentivizing protecting open space)

· Directs the Department of Public Utilities (DPU), regulator of the state's electric and natural gas utilities, to balance priorities going forward: system safety, system security, reliability, affordability, equity, and, significantly, reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

· Instructs EEA to set explicit emissions reduction goals for each three-year plan formulated by MassSave, the state’s energy efficiency program. At the conclusion of each plan, requires the DPU to report on reductions actually achieved.

ü Low-income Solar and Alternative Solar Projects: Mandates the DOER to prioritize low-income communities in the SMART solar program and in the design and operation of any other "new solar incentive program” created under the same legislative authorization; ü Further increases opportunities for low-income individuals to participate in SMART and other future solar initiatives by allowing them to enroll without signing complicated contracts;

ü Exempts businesses and other large customers from the solar net metering cap to allow them to install solar systems larger than 25 kilowatts on their premises, to help them offset their electricity use and save money.

ü Natural Gas Safety. Extends whistleblower protection to utility employees who report violations of law by their employers; ü Increases the penalties for failure to restore service after emergencies; ü Raises the cap on civil penalties for gas pipeline safety violations, allowing for fines in excess of those set by federal law; ü Requires all written complaints regarding gas service to be investigated and responded to in a timely manner, and directs the DPU to establish a publicly-accessible database of such complaints;

and ü Strengthens gas company plans to address aging and leaking infrastructure, by setting interim targets for reducing gas leak rates and authorizing the DPU to levy fines for non-compliance.

· Bolsters the finances of the Mass. Clean Energy Center, by providing $12 million in new annual funding for clean energy workforce development for minority-owned and women-owned small businesses, environmental justice communities, and fossil fuel workers.

happy to announce that the

#NextGenRoadmap #NextGenCliMAte bill just passed the Massachusetts State Senate, very proud to have voted for it!

The House will take up the bill soon, and then off to the Governor’s desk. More detailed summary of the bill later today! Bravo to Senator

Mike Barrett

for steering this bill to passage!

This is a chilling memo about the consequences of CLIMATE CRISIS from SHELL included in an article by Bill McKibben:

For instance, in 1988—the year that the NASA scientist James Hansen made the greenhouse effect a public issue—Royal Dutch Shell produced a confidential internal memo after five years of internal reviews. The memo, which was uncovered in 2018 by the Dutch journalist Jelmer Mommers, notes that climate impacts could include “significant changes in sea level, ocean currents, precipitation patterns, regional temperature and weather.” It observes that changes would impact “the human environment, future living standards and food supplies, and could have major social, economic and political consequences.” These environmental and socioeconomic changes might be the “greatest in recorded history.” The memo includes this jarring observation: “By the time the global warming becomes detectable it could be too late to take effective countermeasures to reduce the effects or even to stabilize the situation.” The document also calculated how much Shell was on the hook for in all this; it concluded that the company could be tied to four per cent of all the carbon dioxide that humans, as of 1984, had spewed into the atmosphere. And Shell’s executives took the warning seriously—among other things, they quickly redesigned a natural-gas platform to raise its height and protect against sea-level rise and intensifying storms. As Wasserman says, “There is almost no chance that a person as senior as Mr. Coney, who worked principally in the ‘offshore OCS [Outer Continental Shelf] exploration and production area,’ would have been unaware of the issue.” (Late Tuesday afternoon, a coalition of environmental groups, including 350.org

, where I am the senior adviser emeritus, called on Justice Barrett to recuse herself.)

https://readersupportednews.org/.../67279-focus-amy-coney...