Our Advocacy Approach
Effective Government programs that have a positive cost-benefit and assist our members to achieve sustainability goals. These laws should encourage innovation in clean energy and clean production without excessive mandates and allow Massachusetts to be a leader in technological advances that go beyond federal and state requirements whenever possible.
Hydrogen (H2) is the highest energy content fuel by weight and is a building block for a wide variety of other materials
(e.g., conventional and synthetic fuels, polymers, plastics, petroleum refining, fertilizer, etc.) used in manufacturing
and industrial processing. The recent interest in hydrogen utilization has been motivated by several factors. These factors and more were discussed in the Viability of Implementing Hydrogen in Massachusetts report. Learn more.
Policy Watch
Wind Energy
Primarily makes changes to the solicitation method for offshore wind resources to encourage more economic development as part of the bids. Any changes would apply to future solicitations only – therefore, the practical impact is 7-8 years away.
Omnibus Energy
Generally, there is a “catch all” omnibus energy bill every two years. This can be necessary to make updates to previous law or to implement some new energy policies.
Local Infrastructure Option Bill
Municipalities are looking for the ability to prohibit new natural gas accounts and other “home rule” measures to implement local climate change policies.
Building Code Updates
Primarily regulatory (but resulting from legislation passed last session), the state Department of Energy Resources (DOER) has proposed three energy code updates
- Base energy code (every town that has not adopted the stretch code must adopt)
- Update effective 1/2023 – 53 communities
- Opt-in Stretch energy code
- Update effective 1/2023 – automatic adoption for 299 communities that have adopted stretch code.
- Specialized opt-in energy code (new)
- Finalized 12/2023. Implementation for those communities who want to adopt beginning 7/2023
Combined Heat and Power
Combined heat and Power (CHP) systems produce electricity and recover the exhaust heat to produce heating, cooling, and process steam for manufacturing and other uses.Because they operate on natural gas, the state is required to phase out their use. Incentives for new installations have mostly been ended, but there is currently a proposal to phase out incentives for existing units over the next several years.