Massachusetts has awarded $53 million — and announced plans for additional funding — to allow affordable housing operators to execute energy efficiency retrofits that are expected to reduce carbon emissions, cut energy bills, and create healthier, more comfortable homes for residents. 

The state in late July announced the second round of awards in the Affordable Housing Decarbonization Grant Program, allocating $26.1 million to five organizations to improve insulation, tighten building envelopes, and switch to heat pump heating and cooling systems. These grants come seven months after an initial round of $27.4 million was awarded to seven affordable housing operators statewide. 

“This has been a really critical funding stream for moving forward critical energy projects at some of our family public housing sites,” said Joel Wool, deputy administrator for sustainability and capital transformation at the Boston Housing Authority, which received grants in both rounds.

Along with the most recent round of awards, the state also announced it would invest another $40 million into the program in anticipation of giving out another set of grants in the fall.

The program was designed to address two major policy goals: decarbonization and addressing the state’s affordable housing crisis. 

Massachusetts has set the ambitious goal of going carbon-neutral by 2050. Buildings — which contribute 35% of the state’s carbon emissions — are a particularly important sector to target for decarbonization. This means finding ways to retrofit the state’s existing housing stock, much of which is drafty, heated by fossil fuels, and decades — or even centuries — old. 

At the same time, Massachusetts is experiencing an acute housing crisis. State officials estimate at least 200,000 new homes are needed to accommodate demand by 2030. Finding an affordable home is even more challenging for lower-income residents faced with soaring rents and home prices — and often, high energy bills. 

“We have such a housing crisis in Massachusetts that we want to do anything we can to create more housing, but also to make the housing we have now a better place to live,” said state Energy Department Commissioner Elizabeth Mahony. “These are investments in our infrastructure.”

Nonprofit Worcester Common Ground received an $820,000 grant in the latest round that it will use to complete deep energy retrofits on four buildings that were last updated some 30 years ago. The money will allow the renovations to include air sealing, more energy-efficient windows, and extra insulation. The grant will also allow the buildings to go fully electric, including with air source heat pumps that will provide lower-cost, more comfortable heating and cooling.

“Even though it’s a higher upfront cost, the hope is that maybe it reduces expenses going forward,” said Timothy Gilbert, project manager for Worcester Common Ground. “It might sound a little cheesy but we really do care about the well-being of the folks who live in our houses.”

In most cases, the grant money is being combined with other funding to allow more complete — and even downright ambitious — upgrades. In Worcester, other funding sources will pay for rooftop solar panels that will make the newly energy-efficient buildings even more cost-effective and environmentally friendly. The Boston Housing Authority is using its latest $5.8 million award as part of a larger project that aims to completely decarbonize the Franklin Fields housing development in the Dorchester neighborhood by combining energy efficiency upgrades and Boston’s first networked geothermal system. 

In the Boston neighborhood of Roxbury, the Madison Park Development Corporation is receiving $13.5 million from the Affordable Housing Decarbonization Grant Program to do work at its 331-unit Orchard Gardens development. But it is also seeking out other sources to meet the $20 million expected cost of the planned sustainability upgrades.

“It’s a big property and the heart of one of Boston’s oldest, most diverse, most underserved neighborhoods,” said Oren Richkin, senior project manager for the organization. “This grant money is pivotal for this project.”

Supporters of the program are expecting it to strengthen the state’s ability to respond to climate change in the future as well. Switching affordable housing units from fossil fuel heating to heat pump heating and cooling will allow residents to stay comfortable and safe in their own homes during increasingly hot summers, Wool said. 

The funding could also help nudge the ideas of deep energy retrofits and electrification more into the mainstream, Mahony said. 

“We are essentially socializing these programs — the more we do it, the more people will get used to the ideas,” she said. 

As the recipients of the first round of grants begin their projects, the state is starting to learn how to operate the program more effectively. The state has already, for example, started providing some technical assistance to organizations interested in applying for future rounds of funding. Continued conversations with building owners and nonprofits will be essential to creating an even stronger program moving forward, Mahony said.

“We’re setting ourselves up for success in the future,” she said.

Massachusetts awards $53 million to help affordable housing operators cut emissions and make homes healthier is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

Massachusetts officials, advocates, and businesses are hoping proposed changes to the state’s solar incentive program will help reinvigorate a flagging market and give more disadvantaged residents access to the benefits of renewable energy. 

“The program has been pretty set in stone since it first launched,” said Katie Moffitt, project development manager for solar investment firm Sunwealth. “I am very excited about making the program more responsive to the needs of the solar industry and allowing us to adapt with the times.”

The state’s energy department earlier this month unveiled an extensive set of proposed adjustments to the Solar Massachusetts Renewable Target, or SMART, program, the first major overhaul since the program launched in 2018. The suggested changes include strategies to ensure subsidy rates keep up with the solar market, incentives to encourage more installation of solar on buildings and previously developed land, and plans to make solar power more accessible to low- and moderate-income residents. 

The state is accepting feedback on the proposal until August 2, and expects to file final draft regulations in the fall. 

The proposal comes at a moment when the state has seen significant declines in new solar power coming online. In 2021, Massachusetts saw more than 600 megawatts of new solar installed, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association; in 2022 and 2023, less than 400 megawatts were installed each year. Yet the state’s climate plan calls for at least 27 gigawatts of solar to meet its goal of going carbon-neutral by 2050.

“We know, based on historical deployment rates, that we’re falling behind those goals,” said Samantha Meserve, director of the state’s renewable and alternative energy division. “We need to spur more development.”

Adaptable rates

Much of the slowdown in solar development is due to a mismatch between market conditions and state incentive rates, said those in the industry. SMART works by providing a fixed rate for every kilowatt-hour of power generated by a solar installation, with increased rates (called “adders”) available to projects that advance certain policy goals, like serving low-income populations. The set rates were intended to help encourage development with financial support and also create stability and predictability for developers.

The base rates were set when the program launched in 2018, and were designed to decline as more installations were built. The idea was that the solar market would gain steam and prices would continue falling, making state support less necessary over time. 

However, the market did not cooperate with this vision: Supply chain problems made equipment more expensive, inflation increased costs for materials and labor, and rising electricity rates canceled out much — and sometimes all — of the financial benefit the SMART payments provided. 

“That model theoretically would have worked fine in a noninflationary environment, but worked very poorly in the inflationary period,” said Isaac Baker, co-CEO of solar developer Resonant Energy. 

The proposal tackles this problem by instituting an annual system for setting rates. Each year, the state will undertake an analysis of the current market conditions and progress toward state solar targets, and use this information to determine the program’s rates and capacity for the following year. Developers will provide real cost details to ensure the accuracy of the process. 

“We achieved a lot of certainty in the last program, but we now need certainty with flexibility,” Meserve said. “We know we’re losing momentum to get to some of our goals because of that certainty.”

The proposal’s approach to deciding how much capacity to support each year, however, has some in the industry a bit wary. For the first two years, the capacity for projects larger than 25 kilowatts would be set at 300 megawatts; in subsequent years, the annual analysis would determine the capacity. 

This limit does not help encourage more development, said Lindsay Bourgoine, vice president for policy for the Solar Energy Business Association of New England. And the starting point of 300 megawatts a year does not come close to supporting the state’s goal of hitting 10 gigawatts of solar power by 2030, she said. 

“We remain pretty concerned about the use of caps,” Bourgoine said. 

Getting siting right

Additional changes to the program aim to encourage more solar installations on buildings, parking lots, and other already-developed land.

“We’re making it more attractive to site projects in the built environment,” Meserve said.

A 2023 study found the state has highly suitable sites for 54 gigawatts of rooftop and canopy solar potential. At the same time, some environmental groups have been raising concerns about large solar installations disturbing important wildlife habitats and forests that can pull carbon from the air.

“We can’t be doing that with state money,” said Michelle Manion, vice president of policy and advocacy for Mass Audubon. 

However, the economics of building large, ground-mounted arrays on previously undeveloped land have generally been more favorable. The new SMART proposal lays out several ideas to rebalance that equation. The proposal would lift the cap on subsidizing developments smaller than 25 kilowatts, a category that includes most residential projects and many installations for nonprofits, houses of worship, and small businesses. 

The proposal also increases adders connected to projects in the built environment. The adder for building-mounted projects would go from 2 cents to an estimated 3 cents, and the adder for building over a landfill would increase from 4 cents to 6 cents. 

Canopy-mounted systems would see both an increased adder — from 6 cents to 8 cents per kWh of energy produced — and a new definition. Whereas the current program awards a canopy adder only to projects over parking lots, pedestrian walkways, and canals, the revamped program would widen the criteria to include any array mounted on a structure high enough to maintain the function of the area beneath. This change opens the door for canopy projects shading everything from junkyards and gas stations to compost piles and picnic areas. 

“You’ll start to see a lot more interesting and creative applications like that,” said Ben Underwood, Baker’s co-CEO at Resonant Energy.

A new adder, likely starting out at 4 cents per kilowatt-hour, would also be created for raised racking on rooftops: mounting systems that raise solar panels up high enough that other equipment such as climate control systems can still operate and be accessed beneath them. This addition has the potential to unlock enormous amounts of roof space for development, Underwood said. On some of Resonant’s smaller projects, it could even triple the size of projects that could fit on a roof, he said. 

While the changes incentivize solar in the built environment, they also attempt to narrow the criteria for building in previously undeveloped greenfields to make sure only “cream of the crop” sites are developed, Meserve said. While the existing program decides whether land can be developed by looking at the entire parcel, the updated iteration would look more closely at the footprint of a proposed array to make sure it is not disturbing the most valuable green spaces and habitats.

The proposal also calls for an increased “subtractor” — a reduction in the base SMART rate — for greenfield developments. The rate would go down 6 cents plus an additional 0.4 cents per acre of land affected, a significant increase from the current subtractor which tops out at 0.1 cents. Developers can earn back the 6 cents through a community engagement adder by proving they’ve worked with the community to mitigate the impacts the project will have, an element Meserve said will help the state focus on only the best developments. 

Bourgoine, however, said many solar installers are worried that the hefty subtractor will slow down solar development too much at a time when the state needs to be accelerating its move to renewable energy. 

“There are situations where the subtractor could cause damage where it doesn’t need to,” she said. 

Sharing the benefits

New strategies could also make the benefits of solar energy more accessible to low-income households, which have so far made up only a very small fraction of the consumers using SMART-subsidized power. 

The proposal would expand the list of facilities that qualify for low-income adders to include deed-restricted affordable condominiums, homeless shelters, domestic violence shelters, and other affordable housing buildings not covered by the current definition. 

The new plan would also broaden the definition of a low-income customer. Under current guidelines, a low-income customer is someone who receives a discounted rate from the electric utility or who lives in a designated low-income area. The new definition would also include consumers enrolled in other needs-based programs to qualify as low-income, and those who self-attest that they fall under the set income caps. 

“This will make participating in low-income solar a much more accessible option,” Moffitt said. 

Furthermore, community solar developments will now be required to enroll a minimum of 40% low-income customers to receive the community solar adder of 7 cents. Though community solar is fairly widespread in Massachusetts, customers have generally been those with higher incomes and credit scores. The current program includes an adder for low-income community solar, but it is not often used because of the obstacles of locating customers — obstacles the new definitions would lower significantly.

“This new program will lead to there being a massive shift in value coming from stand-alone community solar,” Baker said. “A huge amount of that value is going to be directed to low-income tenants and ratepayers throughout the commonwealth, which is a really positive step.”

Massachusetts aims to ‘adapt with the times’ with updates to solar incentive program is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

A recently signed New Hampshire law makes significant changes to the operations of the state’s Renewable Energy Fund, directing money to help towns and cities develop municipal solar projects and ending a residential solar rebate program that was generally viewed as deeply flawed. 

“The previously existing program had sort of run its course,” said Joshua Elliott, director of policy and programs in the state energy department.

The Renewable Energy Fund, created in 2007, is a pool of money the state uses to support renewable and thermal energy initiatives through grants and rebates. It is funded by annual compliance payments made by electric service providers that failed to buy the legally mandated proportion of their power from renewable sources in the previous year. 

The sum the fund collects can vary widely from year to year, ranging from as low as $1.3 million in 2009 to $19.1 million in 2011. More recently, revenue has hovered around $7 million. 

This money is then allocated across several programs including those supporting solar hot water heating, low-and-moderate income community solar, and wood pellet boilers and furnaces for residential, commercial, and industrial customers. 

Advancing municipal solar

The new funding for municipal solar projects represents the next step for an approach just getting underway in the state. 

Installing solar power can allow a municipality to both cut carbon emissions and realize significant savings on their energy bills. These savings can be used to cut property taxes or to provide additional support or services for residents. Until recently, however, there was little state or federal support for municipal solar. At the same time, getting a municipality to agree to the upfront costs has always been challenging. 

“There’s a variety of competing factors for property tax revenue,” Elliott said. “It can be hard to get a warrant article passed to invest the money to purchase a solar array for town buildings.”

The state began tackling the problem this year with the Municipal Solar Grant Program, which is using a $1.6 million federal grant, part of the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, to help cities and towns install solar arrays on municipal property. Lower-income communities that intend to retain complete ownership of their solar system will be eligible for grants up to $200,000; municipalities that don’t meet these criteria can request grants up to $120,000.

Though the program is just getting started — the application period is open until August 1 — the opportunity has already sparked wide interest from municipal governments. Community liaisons for the nonprofit Clean Energy New Hampshire have identified roughly 50 cities and towns likely to apply for a share of the limited funding. 

“There’s been a huge response,” said Sam Evans-Brown, executive director of Clean Energy New Hampshire. “That shows this is a good space to be spending the money in.”

The new legislation calls for funding to be allocated to a new municipal solar program this year, with the sum likely to be announced in late August or early September. Then, before the money can be offered to cities and towns, the state will have to design a new system. The new incentive will be inspired and informed by the program now launching, Elliott said. 

“We’re certainly going to take feedback, have stakeholder sessions,” he said. “And that will help refine what this program looks like.”

Replacing residential incentives

The bill also terminates the state’s rebate program for residential solar and wind installations, an incentive that was widely thought to be ineffective.

The program offered rebates of up to $1,000 to a limited number of households each year. In fiscal 2023, rebates totalling about $424,000 were issued. 

The program used a lottery system to determine what order rebate applications would be processed in each year; applicants closer to the end of the list might not end up receiving any rebate if the funds ran out before they made it to the top of the list. That uncertainty meant the program was doing little to spur additional solar development, Evans-Brown said. 

“It’s almost by definition not getting projects done: If you can’t know for sure if you’re getting rebate, it’s not factoring it into the purchasing decision,” he said. “When we asked residential solar installers if the rebate was helpful they said no.”

The program also accepted applications from any household with a solar array installed after 2012 that has not yet received a rebate, diminishing its impact on new solar development even further. 

“You’re not actually helping to develop the solar market at that point,” Elliott said. 

Though the recent law eliminates this rebate, lawmakers were clear during hearings on the bill that they want to see a replacement residential incentive developed. No plans are yet in the works for such a program, and it is unclear what the timeline would be for designing a new incentive from scratch, Elliott said. Furthermore, the law does not require a new program be enacted.

Elliott, however, has every intention of making sure a replacement program comes to be, he said.

“I made a commitment in public saying, ‘Yes, we are going to do this,’” he said, “and I certainly feel beholden to that.”

New Hampshire law provides new solar incentives for cities, drops ineffective consumer rebate program is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

Massachusetts is in the process of tripling the size of its first-in-the-nation vehicle fleet electrification program following a recent influx of federal money.

“We are really looking at the barriers, the challenges, the things that we need to figure out to get decarbonization to happen at scale,” said Emily Reichert, CEO of the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center. 

A $5 million infusion from the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act will allow the Massachusetts Fleet Advisor program to serve as many as 200 small businesses, nonprofits, and cities and towns served by municipal electric utilities, up from the original target of 65. The money will also allow the program to run through 2026.

The fleet advisor concept pioneered in Massachusetts is getting traction elsewhere. California launched a similar program in June 2023, and New Jersey will soon be introducing its own version.

“A lot of other states are taking notice and building on this model,” said Jordan Stutt, Northeast region senior director for CALSTART, the clean transportation nonprofit running the program for the state.

Transportation is responsible for 37% of Massachusetts’ greenhouse emissions, making the move to electric vehicles a vital element of the state’s strategy for going carbon neutral by 2050. In pursuit of this goal, the state’s incentive program provides rebates of $3,500 for eligible electric car purchases (with additional money available for low-income buyers), $7,500 for medium-duty electric vehicles, and from $15,000 to $90,000 for larger electric trucks. 

Fleet vehicles, however, are a particularly important — and tricky — segment of the market. While personal vehicles generally spend most of the day parked, fleet cars and trucks tend to be driven for longer portions of the day, heightening their emissions impact. In Massachusetts, medium- and heavy-duty vehicles — which includes everything from a senior center’s mini-bus to a supermarket chain’s tractor-trailer — make up 3% of the vehicles on the road, yet produce 20% of the state’s transportation emissions. 

At the same time, switching to electric is a more complicated process for fleet managers than it is for individual consumers. Organizations must consider their long-term budgeting, which vehicles will need replacing when, what available vehicles would meet their needs, and whether their infrastructure is suitable for charging stations. In many cases, decisions must be discussed and approved by multiple stakeholders, like a nonprofit’s board of directors or all of the partners in a business. 

The numbers suggest fleets are making the conversion at a slower rate than personal owners. Since the state made electric fleet vehicles eligible for incentives in 2021 it has issued 227 rebates to light-duty fleet vehicles, 95 rebates for heavy-duty pickup trucks and similar vehicles, and seven rebates for larger trucks. During the same span, the incentive program issued nearly 28,000 rebates overall. 

“There is a lot of planning work that goes into getting a fleet owner to the point where they can really take advantage of electrifying the fleet,” Reichert said. 

Fixing the fleets

The Massachusetts Fleet Advisor program was conceived in 2021 as a way to overcome some of these challenges. With initial funding of $1 million, the program was designed to offer no-cost fleet electrification assessment reports and procurement assistance to organizations with interest in moving away from fossil fuels but without the resources to do all the legwork involved. 

“A small business owner that’s just worried about the day-to-day doesn’t have the time to look into all that,” said Jennifer Kritzler, CALSTART’s Northeast region deputy director. “Mass Fleet Advisor becomes a great resource to answer those questions.”

The process begins with a brief phone call in which an organization learns more about the program and whether it would be a good fit. To be eligible, an entity must have a fleet of at least three vehicles, at least one of which must be medium- or heavy-duty. Then, the organization answers questions about its current fleet, facilities, and goals. 

The program has earmarked half of its funds to work in environmental justice neighborhoods: those with high populations of color or lower average incomes, which have traditionally borne a disproportionate share of environmental burdens. Fleets that are based in or regularly drive through these areas will fall into this segment. 

“We’re really trying to include a focus not only on the emissions but on the benefits of reducing air pollution in communities that are highly affected by this,” Reichert said. 

The initial communication is followed by a site visit. A recent site visit in the town of Ipswich involved touring town hall, the department of public works, and the Ipswich Electric Light Department. Consultants from program partner the Better Together Brain Trust talked to employees about how the town’s handful of electric vehicles are charged and deployed, what the current infrastructure is like, and what they are hoping or expecting to see as the town evolves toward greater use of electric vehicles.

The site visit helps reveal dynamics not captured by the questionnaire: In Ipswich, the assessors discovered that their initial thoughts about where chargers might work was complicated by the parking needs of the town’s council on aging. 

“We’re getting absolutely the best information from the local experts,” said Nicole Voudren, president of the Better Together Brain Trust.

When the assessment is complete, it will provide truly useful information to the town, said Rick Mitchell, Ipswich climate resiliency manager.

“The results, when we see those, will provide a platform for intelligent decision-making,” he said. “We’ll have objective, independent, third-party information on the options. This helps summarize what would be a very labor-intensive undertaking in one place.”

Mass Fleet Advisor does not provide any money toward buying electric vehicles, nor does it require participants to make any purchases. However, up to 75 participants that decide to implement some or all of their plans will also be able to receive assistance with the procurement process: The fleet advisor program will help these participants locate appropriate vehicles, connect with dealers, apply for incentives, train their workforces, and develop standard operating procedures for the new vehicles.

“We’re really excited for this not to be a one-time thing, then we walk away,” Kritzler said. “We want to be a resource for folks as they go through their journey.”

So far, 50 organizations — from dry cleaners and lumberyards to universities and municipalities — have signed on to participate, and 20 completed reports have been delivered. 

To make sure they are able to make full use of the new funds, the program partners are ramping up their marketing and recruitment efforts, reaching out to community organizations and chambers of commerce, and planning events that allow organizations to see and even drive electric trucks. 

“I’ve found when you get someone behind the wheel of a truck, it’s the best tool for converting people to believing that electric vehicles can work for them,” Kritzler said.

Massachusetts is expanding its pathbreaking vehicle fleet electrification program   is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

Massachusetts environmental justice advocates say the $5 billion statewide energy efficiency plan that could take effect next year needs to do even more to reach low-income residents, renters, and other populations who have traditionally received fewer benefits.  

The plan, which will guide efficiency programming from 2025 through 2027, outlines wide-ranging initiatives that would support weatherization and heat pumps for homes and small businesses, improve the customer experience with more timely rebate processing and increased multilingual support, and expand the energy efficiency workforce. The proposed plan calls out equity as a major priority. 

“There have certainly been some changes in this latest draft we’re pleased to see, but there is definitely a lot more that needs to be done, especially in the realms of equity and affordability and justice,” said Priya Gandbhir, senior attorney at the Conservation Law Foundation. “The good news is we’re still working on this, so there’s some time for improvement.”

Massachusetts has long been considered a leader in energy efficiency, ranking at or near the top of the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy’s annual State Energy Efficiency Scorecard for more than 10 years. The core of the state’s efficiency efforts is Mass Save, a partnership between gas and electric utilities, created in 2008, that provides education, energy audits, rebates on efficient appliances, low and no-cost weatherization services, and financing for efficiency projects.

Mass Save programming is guided by the three-year energy efficiency plans put forth by the major utilities in collaboration with the state Energy Efficiency Advisory Council, and approved by state public utilities regulators. Over the past several years, legislation has required that Mass Save prioritize reducing greenhouse gas emissions, rather than focusing only on using less energy. 

“Mass Save needs to be a tool not just for energy efficiency but also for decarbonization,” said Hessann Farooqi, executive director of the Boston Climate Action Network. 

Strides toward equity

In recent years, there has also been an effort to ensure the benefits of Mass Save programs are distributed equitably. A 2020 study by the utilities found that communities with lower incomes, higher proportions of residents of color, and more renters were far less likely to have used Mass Save services. 

Following this report, the three-year plan covering 2022 to 2024 included several provisions intended to address these disparities, including a 50% higher budget for income-eligible services, financial incentives for utilities to serve lower-income households, and grants to community organizations that can help connect residents to information about Mass Save benefits. 

The plan’s focus on equity was hailed by advocates. 

“We’ve seen a dramatic increase in production and service and savings because of the increased budget,” said Brian Beote, an Energy Efficiency Advisory Council member and director of energy efficiency operations for housing security nonprofit Action Inc. “We’ve been able to bring on more contractors and serve more households.”

This latest plan continues the focus on equity for underserved populations in several ways. The draft plan increases the budget for services to income-eligible households, defined as those with incomes below 80% of the area median, from roughly $600 million to nearly $1 billion, the highest number ever proposed. 

The draft plan also attempts to simplify the process of obtaining benefits for residents in areas that have been marginalized in the past. The plan identifies 21 “equity communities” – municipalities in which more than 35% of residents are renters and more than half of households qualify as low or moderate income. Residents in these communities would be eligible for no-cost weatherization and electrification, often without income verification, and rental properties would be able to receive low-cost weatherization and electrification services.

This approach might mean higher-income customers receive no-cost services they might otherwise have had to pay for, but supporters say the likely benefits outweigh this possibility. 

“On balance, we’re going to get more of those low- to moderate-income customers and that is really a key goal,” Farooqi said.

In addition, the proposed plan would expand the Community First Partnership program, which provides funding to nonprofits and municipalities to target outreach and education about Mass Save’s offerings, using their knowledge of their communities and populations. 

Missed opportunities

Still, the plan misses several opportunities to make even greater strides toward equity, advocates said. At the heart of their argument are funding levels: The budget for low- and moderate-income services is about 19% of the total budget, even as nearly half of the state’s households fall into that category. 

“We just need to be making sure that we are distributing the benefits of this program proportionally to where people are actually at in the population,” Farooqi said. 

The plan’s targets for heat pump installations are another point of contention. The plan calls for installing 115,000 heat pumps during the plan period, with 16,000 of these going to low- and moderate-income households. This target is not nearly high enough, advocates said.

“That’s a major failure,” said Mary Wambui-Ekop, an energy justice activist and co-chair of the Energy Efficiency Advisory Committee’s equity working group. “They definitely need to increase that target to 30,000, and even that is really low.”

Switching from gas heating to heat pumps at current high electricity rates could increase costs for customers, so it is also important that the push to electrify heating for lower-income residents focus on households currently using higher-emissions, higher-cost fuels like heating oil or propane, Wambui-Ekop said. 

In Massachusetts, some 800,000 households use heating oil and propane; more than 151,000 of these households fall within the plan’s designated equity communities. 

“If they switch to heat pumps, they will see their energy bills go down, their energy burdens will go down, they will have good indoor air quality, and the commonwealth will benefit because of the greenhouse gas reductions,” Wambui-Ekop said. 

Advocates are also waiting to see the details for the plans to expand the Community First Partnership program. At current levels, the funding can pay a part-time energy staffer at a modest rate, which can make it difficult to find and keep qualified employees, said Susan Olshuff, a town liaison with Ener-G-Save, a Community First Partner organization in western Massachusetts. She’s gone through six different staffers since the program began and is anxiously waiting to see the final funding that comes out of the new plan.

“I like to think it will be enough,” she said, “but I am nervous to see what numbers they come down on.”

The final plan will be submitted to the state in October. Public utilities regulators will then be able to approve the plan as a whole, or to suggest modifications. Advocates are hoping to see an even more equitable plan filed and approved. 

“The people who can afford to do it will do it on their own,” Gandbhir said. “We need to make sure that people who are renting or who aren’t able to afford the upfront costs are provided with the assistance that’s needed.”

Massachusetts advocates say proposed statewide energy efficiency plan falls short on equity is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.