With thousands of residents still in the dark after a massive blizzard, the Massachusetts House voted Thursday to advance a bill to address the high utility bills that are taking deeper cuts of budgets across the state.
The House bill (H 5151) seeks to cut roughly $1 billion from the Mass Save program’s marketing and administrative budgets, return 70% of alternative compliance payments (ACPs) to ratepayers through mid-2029, expand clean energy procurement authority, ease political barriers to nuclear development by repealing a voter law that placed restrictions on it, and delay an offshore wind contracting deadline by two years to 2029.
The bill is a redraft of the legislation that the Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy Committee supported in the fall, but does not include the committee’s proposal to change the state’s binding mandate to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50% below 1990 levels by 2030. The latest draft is the product of meetings House leaders held with all members, which House Ways and Means Chairman Aaron Michlewitz has said featured “a lot of varying of opinions in relation to how to proceed.”…