By Vick Mohanka
By a unanimous vote of its Executive Committee, the Massachusetts Chapter of the Sierra Club calls on House Speaker Mariano to remove Representative Mark Cusack from his Chairmanship on the Telecommunications, Utilities, and Energy Committee. In introducing and rushing forth H.4744, a fossil fuel industry-written bill to walk back the state’s landmark clean energy laws, Rep. Cusack has demonstrated a complete disregard for the health, well-being, and economic interests of the residents of the Commonwealth. Our state’s climate and clean energy laws were passed to protect the residents of Massachusetts from the increasingly severe effects of climate change while simultaneously promoting electric bill affordability by stabilizing the grid. By buckling to the demands of fossil fuel interests negotiated behind closed doors and trying to rush this dangerous legislation through during a holiday week, Rep. Cusack demonstrates he is ill-fit to serve the people of this Commonwealth, let alone serve as Chair on one of its most critical committees.
In a time of unprecedented electric bill hikes, increasingly severe climate impacts, and an assault on all forms of basic protection from the Federal government, states need to step up, or at the very least, not back down on their commitments to constituents. Chair Cusack signaled the opposite with his proposed legislation, justifying fossil fuel pollution at the expense of our public health, clawing back climate goals, reneging on clean energy industry funding, increasing electric bills to subsidize fossil fuel infrastructure, and establishing untested pro-fossil fuel anti-environment legal standards that no other state has enacted in this way.
Clean energy and energy efficiency solutions are the only viable technology pathways forward to more affordable utility bills. The landmark Mass Save program, that Representative Cusack is proposing to gut, saves Massachusetts’ residents millions in utility bill savings each year through efficiency and electrification upgrades as well as bill assistance for families struggling to get by. At its core, the program helps ordinary people save money by reducing the amount of energy that they consume through the installation of energy-saving technologies like efficient heat pumps and weatherization of homes. Naturally, fossil fuel interests, like those backing Rep. Cusack’s ill-conceived bill, do not want programs like this to succeed because it means they will see a reduction in their enormous profits. Let’s be clear: Massachusetts should not be a state where the profits of polluting fossil fuel companies get priority over families struggling to pay their electric bills and put food on the table.
In addition to proposing cuts to Mass Save, Rep. Cusack’s polluters-first bill proposes scaling back our state’s commitments to clean energy generation. This idea is terrible on multiple fronts. First, just this summer, when our region was hit with record heat waves (driven in part by the dirty sources of energy being discussed), solar and batteries prevented New England’s grid from resorting to blackouts. Furthermore, solar is now the cheapest and fastest form of energy to build, and batteries have seen 90% cost reductions since 2010. Scaling back our commitments to clean energy is preposterous, especially at a time when residents are facing an energy affordability crisis, the cost for gas, oil and propane have increased significantly and will continue to increase, and utilities are committing ratepayers to decades of high utility bills that will be needed to pay off massive fossil fuel infrastructure projects. Do we transition to the cheaper energy of the future, or double down on the expensive choices that got us into this mess? We can’t afford to do both.
There is significant legislation proposed to improve energy affordability both short term and long term. This requires limiting further expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure and embracing and promoting clean energy (such as solar). Clean energy has no fuel cost, no limit on supply or international markets, and is based on proven technologies whose prices have fallen dramatically over the years. Chair Cusack’s bill ignores most of this legislation. For example, Cusack ignores H.4144, Governor Healey’s extensive bill, “An Act relative to energy affordability, independence and innovation.”
The numerous bills that should be reviewed and recommended by the Telecommunications, Utilities, and Energy Committee include topics such as:
- Limiting for-profit utility’s rate of return on equity
- Reducing gas companies spending on replacing existing pipelines
- Protecting ratepayers from data centers
- Allowing for utilities to offer better basic service rates
- Banning third party suppliers for residences
- Giving DOER more ability to buy clean energy
- Increasing distributed solar and batteries to reduce transmission and distribution costs
- Supporting the just transition for fossil fuel workers
Respectfully, we call on House Speaker Mariano to remove Representative Mark Cusack from his position as Chair of the Telecommunications, Utilities, and Energy Committee. At a time of increasingly severe heat waves, ballooning energy demands, and electric bill spikes, our state needs someone to lead this committee who understands the role of clean energy and efficiency in saving ratepayers money each month - NOT someone who answers to the fossil fuel interests that want us to keep relying on dirty energy as much as possible. We are disappointed to see what appears to be pay-to-play legislating on Beacon Hill. While we remain hopeful that Massachusetts will not yield to the demands of fossil fuel companies to give up on our clean energy progress, we know that keeping Rep. Cusack in his Chairmanship remains a threat to the health and wellbeing of our great Commonwealth.