A pending youth climate lawsuit in Maine represents the latest iteration of legal strategies aimed at holding states accountable for emissions-cutting targets. 

The case is one of a growing number responding to lagging progress on state climate laws that, in many cases, have now been on the books for years. What makes the Maine case unique is its targeted approach – focused on electric vehicle policy as a way to push the state forward on climate action. 

The case, filed earlier this year by the nonprofits Conservation Law Foundation (CLF), Sierra Club and Maine Youth Action, argues that the Maine Department and Board of Environmental Protection have fallen short on their legal duty to pass rules that will help achieve Maine’s required emissions reductions.

“There are countless solutions for tackling these various sources of climate-warming pollution,” said CLF senior attorney Emily Green, who is based in Portland, Maine. “But you need something more to make sure that it’s all enough, that it all adds up, and that’s where enforceable standards come in.” 

The Maine Attorney General’s office declined to comment, but has moved to dismiss the case. A ruling on next steps is now pending. 

Advocates focus on EV rulemaking

The case focuses on a 2019 state law that requires Maine to lower its greenhouse gas emissions 45% from 1990 levels by 2030 and 80% by 2050. 

Statutes like this are “where the rubber meets the road,” said Columbia Law School professor Michael Gerrard, faculty director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. “The regulations are the teeth, the specifics on who needs to do what.” 

Such rules translate emissions goals into practical requirements for state executive agencies, processing legislative directive “into what polluters are required to do on a day-to-day basis,” said Jennifer Rushlow, an environmental law professor at Vermont Law and Graduate School.

Maine’s climate law said the state “shall adopt rules to ensure compliance” with the emissions targets, requiring those rules to prioritize reductions “by sectors that are the most significant sources.” 

Transportation contributes more than half of Maine’s emissions, and Maine’s climate plan prioritized electric vehicle adoption as a result. But the state is a long way off from its EV targets. It has about 12,300 EVs on the road now, with climate plan goals of 41,000 by next year and 219,000 by 2030. 

The CLF suit takes regulators to task for repeatedly failing to adopt California’s latest electric car and truck standards, which some states use as a more stringent alternative to federal rules. 

Maine has used California’s Advanced Clean Cars I rule for years, but voted earlier this year against adopting Advanced Clean Cars II, which would have required increasing EV sales in the state over the next several years. It’s also chosen twice not to consider adopting the Advanced Clean Trucks rule.

CLF notes that the state’s climate law requires the adoption of rules that are “consistent with the climate action plan,” first released in 2020. A roadmap for meeting the plan’s transportation goals strongly recommended adopting Clean Cars II, calling it “the most important regulatory driver in the electrification of Maine’s light-duty vehicles in the next two decades.”

State says harms are uncertain

In its motion to dismiss the CLF case, the state argues that Maine’s climate law does not require regulators to adopt all climate plan recommendations, or particular ones, as rules. 

The state has approved a handful of other rules under the climate law. Two focus on tracking emissions, and two others look at what Green called “narrow slices of the building sector,” the state’s second-largest emissions sector. These rules target hydrofluorocarbons and energy efficiency in appliances. 

In their motion, attorneys for the state quote a Maine Supreme Court decision from a separate environmental case earlier this year to argue that it is “simply ‘too uncertain’ … whether future harms will occur that will ‘directly and continuously impact’ any of Plaintiffs’ members.” 

CLF’s response lists a range of climate-linked harms that specific members of the plaintiff groups say they’ve already experienced, from increasing tick-borne illness and other health impacts to crop and flood damage.

“Climate change is here. Mainers are feeling the effects from a warming Gulf, from climate-driven storms,” Green said, adding that state lawmakers have repeatedly made similar statements in recent years. “Each day that passes with further inaction is a day wasted.” 

The state also argues that the “shifting sands” of state and federal climate policies that could affect Maine’s targets create too much uncertainty around harms from a current lack of transportation rules. 

In general, Gerrard said, such factors don’t negate the need for rulemaking. “We are way behind in reducing emissions, and so the fact that other things are happening isn’t going to solve the problem.” 

Green said that while Maine has made strides on expanding EV charging infrastructure, for example, “the actual standards are necessary to give that transition the push it needs.” 

“Binding rules can basically act as a backstop,” she said. “They can ensure the accountability that the investment and the rebates and the education and outreach, on their own, can’t do.” 

Narrower lawsuits get results 

The suit’s transportation focus is notable, experts said. “I would say the energy sector is targeted more frequently, and especially the fossil fuel sector,” Gerrard said. Other climate-adjacent transportation cases have focused on vehicle emissions standards, biofuel mandates or highway projects, he said. 

Rushlow sees the Maine case as a blend of a 2016 suit, also from CLF, which found that Massachusetts wasn’t fulfilling its 2008 emissions-cutting law, and a suit against the Hawaii Department of Transportation, where a recent settlement will require the decarbonization of Hawaii’s transportation sector by 2045. 

Rushlow worked with CLF on the Massachusetts case, but is not involved in the Maine suit and reviewed it after being asked to comment for this story. She said the Maine case lays out why having regulations on transportation emissions is “not just a wish” of the state climate council, but a legal requirement.

“The lawsuits that get really broad can get kind of lost to politics,” said Rushlow. “These lawsuits that are more narrow and focused on the language of particular state laws, I think, can stand a good chance.” 

She said there are also more “hooks” to do this at the state level than federally. Gerrard agreed that it’s easier to bring cases under specific statutes than “a constitutional provision or a common law doctrine.” 

Both the Hawaii case and the landmark Held v. Montana, which is now on appeal before that state’s Supreme Court, successfully took a state constitutional approach, using their legally given rights to a clean and healthful environment to push for climate progress. 

Victories of public opinion

Practical legal results aren’t the only positive impact these cases can have, Rushlow said: “There’s also outcomes in the zeitgeist and public opinion.” Though Juliana v. United States failed in court, she said, it “really drew a lot of attention to the future harm we’re causing our youth — and the current harm.”  

But she sees increasing potential for success among a greater share of climate lawsuits just in the past few years, as plaintiffs learn more about how courts are likely to receive different approaches. 

“It feels to me like progress is being made,” she said. “But the courts are never the first place you want to go when you’re looking for rapid, systemic change. They’re slow, they’re backward-looking, they’re conservative. And so it’s a challenging forum for the kind of change we need, and yet necessary.” 

In Maine, climate groups initially tried a regulatory petition to push for the passage of Clean Cars II. 

“When it became entirely evident that that was not going to happen, our hand was sort of forced,” Green said.

Maine faces lawsuit for failing to adopt EV mandates, the latest state-level climate court case 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.

As Maine considers building a new toll highway to improve commutes in and out of Portland, a state climate working group is drafting strategies to reduce driving in the state.

State officials say the two efforts are not inherently at odds, but experts and advocates caution that continued highway expansion could reverse climate progress by encouraging more people to drive.

The parallel discussions in Maine raise a question that few states have yet grappled with: can governments keep expanding car infrastructure without putting climate goals out of reach?

Transportation is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in Maine and many other states. Electric vehicle adoption is growing, but not fast enough to solve the problem on its own, which is why an updated state climate plan is expected to include a new emphasis on public transit, walking, biking, and other alternatives to passenger vehicles.

Zak Accuardi, the director for mobility choices at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the best way for states to invest in their road systems in the era of climate change is to not build new roads, but maintain and upgrade existing ones to accommodate more climate-friendly uses. 

“The states who are taking transportation decarbonization really seriously are really focused on reducing driving, reducing traffic,” Accuardi said, pointing to Minnesota and Colorado as examples. “Strategies that help support more people in making the choice to walk, bike or take transit — those policies are a really important complement to … accelerating the adoption of zero-emissions vehicles.” 

Slow progress on EV goals

Electric vehicles have been Maine’s primary focus to date in planning to cut back on transportation emissions. Goals in the state’s original 2020 climate plan included getting 41,000 light-duty EVs on the road in Maine by next year and 219,000 by 2030. The state is far behind on these targets. The climate council’s latest status report said there were just over 12,300 EVs or plug-in hybrid vehicles in Maine as of 2023. 

A 2021 state clean transportation roadmap for these goals recommended, among other things, the adoption of California’s Advanced Clean Cars II and Advanced Clean Trucks rules, which would require an increasing proportion of EV sales in the coming years. 

Maine regulators decided not to adopt Clean Cars II earlier this year in a 4-2 vote. A subsequent lawsuit from youth climate activists argued the state is reneging on its responsibility to meet its statutory climate goals by choosing not to adopt such rules. 

The original climate plan also aimed to cut Maine’s vehicle miles traveled (VMT), which measures how much people are driving overall, by 20% by 2030. The plan said getting there would require more transit funding, denser development to improve transit access, and broadband growth to enable remote work, but included little detail on these issues. It did not include the words “active transportation” at all. 

That appears poised to change in the state’s next four-year climate plan, due out in December. Recommendations from the state climate council’s transportation working group have drawn praise from advocacy groups like the Bicycle Coalition of Maine. 

New detail on non-car strategies

The group’s ideas include creating new state programs to support electric bike adoption, including in disadvantaged communities; paving 15 to 20 miles of shoulders on rural roads per year to improve safe access for cyclists and pedestrians; and, depending on federal funds, building at least 10 miles of off-road trails in priority areas by 2030. 

The group also recommended the state “develop targets related to increased use of transit, active transportation, and shared commuting that are consistent with Maine’s statutory emissions reduction goals.” 

In unveiling the recommendations, working group co-chair and Maine Department of Transportation chief engineer Joyce Taylor noted community benefits from road safety upgrades to accommodate these goals. 

“I think this also gets at housing and land use,” she said. “If you can get people to want to live in that community, that village, I think we could all say that it’s more economically vibrant when people are able to walk and bike in their village and feel like they can get around and it’s safe.” 

The Gorham Connector project would offer a new, tolled bypass around local roads as an alternative to upgrading those existing routes, an option that’s also been studied. State officials say the new road would smooth the flow of local traffic, including public transit. 

Towns aim to marry transit, housing, climate

Towns like Kittery, in southern Maine, have tried to focus on a more inclusive array of transportation strategies in their local work to cut emissions from passenger vehicles. 

Kittery town manager Kendra Amaral is a member of the climate council’s transportation group. She couldn’t comment on the state’s approach to the Gorham Connector, which is outside her region. But she said her town’s climate action plan, adopted this past May, “threads together” public transit, housing growth and emissions reductions. 

Stakeholders who worked on the plan, she said, strongly recommended ensuring that housing is in walkable or transit-accessible places. 

Amaral said the town has invested in new bus routes, commuter shuttles and road improvements to promote traffic calming and create safer bike and pedestrian access, as well as in EV growth. And she said Kittery was a model for parts of a new state law that enables denser housing development. 

“We can’t expect people to reduce (emissions) resulting from transportation without giving them options,” she said. But, she added, “there is no ‘one size fits all’ solution” for every community. “I believe we have to avoid the ‘all or nothing’ trap and work towards (the priorities) that get the best results for each community,” she said. 

‘Devil is in the details’

The Maine Turnpike Authority acknowledges the proposed Gorham Connector project in the Portland area would increase driving. But paired with improvements to transit and land-use patterns, they say the proposed limited-access toll road would decrease emissions overall — though research and other cases cast doubt on this possibility. 

“It’s possible for a project like this to be designed in a way that does produce favorable environmental outcomes,” Accuardi said, but “the devil is really in the details.” 

For example, he said the new road’s tolls should be responsive to traffic patterns in order to effectively reduce demand. If they’re too low, he said, the road will become jammed with the kind of gridlock it aimed to avert. But set the tolls too high, and the road won’t get used enough. 

He said it’s true that this kind of new access road can lead to denser housing development in the surrounding area — but the road will need to be tolled carefully to account for that increased demand. 

And the proceeds from those tolls, he said, should ideally go toward new clean transportation alternatives — such as funding additional transit service or safe walking and biking infrastructure around the new toll road, helping to finance subsidized affordable housing in transit-served areas, or allocating revenues to surrounding towns that make “supportive land-use changes” to lean into transit and decrease driving. 

Maine has indicated that it expects to use tolls from the Gorham Connector primarily, or at least in part, to pay for the road itself and avoid passing costs to other taxpayers.

But Accuardi said alternative strategies should see more investment than road expansions in the coming years if states like Maine want to aggressively cut emissions. 

He said on average, across the country, states spend a quarter of their federal transportation funding on “expanding roads or adding new highway capacity.” 

“That’s more money than states tend to spend on public transit infrastructure, and that really needs to be flipped,” he said. “We need to see states really …  ramping down their investments in new highway capacity. Because, again, we know it doesn’t work.”

Can Maine meet its climate targets and keep expanding highways? 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 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.

Climate and clean transportation advocates are calling into question a claim by Maine officials that a new toll road proposed outside Portland will reduce carbon emissions by alleviating gridlock. 

It’s a common argument made in favor of highway expansions nationwide, said Benito Pérez, the policy director of the nonprofit Transportation for America. But it relies on a narrow view of data that, in context, tends to show these projects are more likely to increase planet-warming emissions, he said. 

“They’re looking at it from one dimension,” said Pérez, a former transportation planner and engineer. “This is a multi-dimensional issue when it comes to emissions reduction, and it’s not going to work.”  

Maine’s proposed Gorham Connector project has met stiff public opposition in its rollout over recent months. The toll road aims to offer a more direct route from Portland’s growing suburbs into the city, bypassing local roads that officials say weren’t designed to accommodate increasing commuter traffic.

The project has been contemplated since the late 1980s. Its latest iteration builds on a 2012 study that recommended three main ways to improve connectivity between Portland and points west: new approaches to land use and development, expanded bus and passenger rail access, and various road upgrades and expansions, including the new four-lane, roughly five-mile bypass the state is now proposing.  

The Maine Turnpike Authority took more than three hours of comments at its first public input session on the project in March. On July 18, the MTA said it would delay further public meetings on the project and extend its permitting timeline due to a “high level of public interest and concern.” 

In response to questions for this story, MTA spokesperson Erin Courtney emphasized the importance of a multi-pronged approach in achieving the Gorham Connector’s projected climate benefits. 

“Coupled with targeted land use and transit initiatives, we aim to create a more efficient and sustainable transportation system that addresses both congestion and environmental impacts,” she said.

Benefits are ‘negligible at best’

The emissions impact of smoother traffic on the proposed toll road has been one of the MTA’s core arguments in favor of the project. The agency says on the the website for the Connector that it “will ease traffic flow, decreasing the number of idling vehicles, conserving fuel, and reducing exhaust pollutants in alignment with Maine’s Climate Action Plan.” 

But even in isolation, this emissions benefit is typically “negligible at best,” said Pérez. Despite ongoing improvements in vehicles’ fuel efficiencies and even electrification, he said, studies show that more use of expanded roads tends to outweigh this benefit. 

Pérez pointed to examples in the Washington, D.C. area, Salt Lake City and elsewhere where highway expansions that aimed to reduce gridlock instead led to more traffic and further need for expansions years later — a paradox known as “induced demand.” 

A 2015 paper from the University of California-Davis explains this phenomenon: “Adding capacity decreases travel time, in effect lowering the ‘price’ of driving; and when prices go down, the quantity of driving goes up,” author Susan Handy wrote. New roads, for instance, can encourage more low-density development, which in turn fills those roads with additional drivers. This counteracts the value of highway expansions in alleviating congestion, Handy said, and at least partly offsets the emissions reductions that come along with it. 

Courtney, with the MTA, said “the Gorham Connector’s design and goals suggest a different outcome,” arguing that the project is unique as a limited-access highway without many intersections or entrances. 

“By enhancing traffic efficiency and reducing congestion on local roads, it can offer a balanced approach that considers both transportation needs and environmental impacts,” she said. 

Portland resident Myles Smith, a steering committee member with Mainers for Smart Transportation, a volunteer group opposing the Gorham Connector, isn’t convinced. 

“It’s part of a pattern of showing only the rosiest possible scenarios of how, theoretically, on paper, with a lot of other assumptions going perfectly, it might reduce climate emissions,” he said. “It assumes a lot of other things that they have no control over at the Turnpike Authority, like land-use planning and public transportation.”

New measures of climate impacts 

The 2012 study backing the bypass proposal found that implementing a bevy of suggested road improvements and expansions, including the Connector, would decrease local vehicle hours traveled, or VHT — an analog for congestion, measuring how much time people spend in their cars, Pérez said — by about 10% versus 2035 projections. 

It also said the area’s vehicle miles traveled, or VMT — which measures how much people are driving overall — would increase relative to 2035 projections if the bypass was built, but would decrease in scenarios where only existing roads were improved, or where public transit was the focus. 

“This is why we propose a ‘three-legged stool’ approach,” Courtney said — one that also emphasizes dense development and increased public transit access, so that VMT increases might be offset by other benefits. 

VMT is an increasingly common way to measure the climate benefits of transportation projects, Pérez said. Minnesota and Colorado have adopted new requirements toward goals for reducing their overall VMT, mandating that proposed road expansions either contribute to this decrease, or fund climate mitigation projects otherwise. 

But advocates said VMT and VHT alone are not enough to measure the overall climate impacts of a project like the Gorham Connector. A more comprehensive analysis, they said, would include the environmental impacts of construction and would account in more detail for the role of the non-road improvements that the MTA is also calling for. 

A need for coordinated solutions

The 2012 study, in its final recommendations, said all three strategies — changes to roads, transit and development patterns — would need to “work together to provide the desired results” for improving connectivity and reducing traffic impacts in the Portland area. For example, more dense development and less congestion will make new transit approaches more viable, Courtney said. 

The Turnpike Authority has little direct control over those kinds of reforms, but says on its website that it expects “other regional studies” in those areas to be part of the Gorham Connector planning process. 

“The Gorham Connector project, combined with additional initiatives being considered by the MTA and Maine (Department of Transportation) — such as additional park-and-ride facilities, electric vehicle charging stations, and enhanced transit opportunities — will collectively contribute to reduced greenhouse gas emissions compared to a ‘do nothing’ scenario,” Courtney said. 

Smith said these other efforts are moving more slowly and with less state support than the Connector has received, putting these parallel solutions out of step with each other. 

Maine is facing a lawsuit from youth climate activists over regulators’ decision earlier this year not to adopt California’s Advanced Clean Cars II rule, which would have ramped up requirements for electric and plug-in hybrid vehicle sales through model year 2032. 

The state is still a long way off from the EV goals set in its 2020 climate action plan, which also aims to reduce light-duty vehicle miles traveled 10% by next year and 20% by 2030. 

Advocates applauded a new emphasis on transit, biking, walking and other alternative strategies to achieve those VMT goals in the recommendations from a state climate council working group for a forthcoming update of the climate plan, due out in December. 

It’s an example of slow progress toward more holistic approaches to transportation and climate planning, which, Pérez said, must extend to technical details like the traffic models that underlie projects like the Gorham Connector in order to succeed. 

“Those models need to think about what they’re measuring — what matters most,” he said. “The mindset is, ‘we’re designing for vehicles,’ and that’s what they’re measuring for, not measuring for the movement of people.”

Critics, studies cast doubt on Maine’s claims of climate benefits from highway expansion 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.