by Eric Richard

The following are notes taken from the “What’s New Under the Golden Dome?” session at the MCAN conference.  This session was a panel talking about environmental and energy legislation in the Massachusetts State House.

Sen. Mark Pacheco

The grass roots support is definitely out there and you all are ahead of the politications.

How do we put Massachusetts back in the lead on environmental  issues, like we once were?  We are currently in a position where we are trying to catch up to states like New Jersey.  We should be able to do better.

This year is really fantastic what is starting to take place.

The Green Communities Act, which is the energy bill, has been reported out of the house.  It primarily deals with fuel efficiency.  It is quite a comprehensive bill.  There are some technical issues that we want to work out in the Senate, but we are in the process of putting a major focus on fuel effeciency and energy efficiency and renewables for the Massachusetts economy.  There are a number of provisions related to green buildings.
In addition, we crafted The Global Warming Solutions Act to reduce CO2 by 20% over 1990 by 2020 and 80% over 1990 by 2050.  We set some benchmarks on how you get there.  By 2009, the state agencies would be required to put forth plans to hit these goals.  We want to codify this into law so that it isn’t the discretion of the next governor to either comply or not.

We expand the role of the transportation secretary to say that, “It is your job to look at the role of emissions in transportation.”

We also create the mechanism for a revolving loan project to fund pilot projects around the state to show that this can actually work.  The costs for solar or wind or whatever, wind up  being inflated when we do not have financial institutions that won’t do the lending on a longer term basis (20-25 years).  Once you get financing on a longer term, then many of these projects are very competitve with what is out there in the tranditional sector.

It is great that we have gotten all of this into the mainstream dialog, but if we want to ensure that these bills turn into law, we need to ensure that global warming advocacy continues to happen.  It is great that we are making progress here, but we have to finish the job.  Call your state senator and rep. and make sure they know how important it is to you.

Frank Gorke, Dir. of Environment Massachusetts

This really is an exciting time under the Golden Dome.  I have been working on these sorts of issues since 2001.  And in past years, there just hasn’t been as much to talk about.

If you only remember one thing, it is to call your Senator and ask them to pass the Global Warming Solutions Act.

One of our arguments is that one of the best ways of getting to a national policy here is to get the most progressive states to pass the most progressive laws mandating the science based limits.

When the speaker initially introduced his energy bill, it was really half-baked.  The energy package that they just announced is much improved.  We think this will go a long way toward making a new energy future here in Massachusetts.

It puts energy efficiency at the heart of our energy policy.  We currently pay about $.09 to buy new energy.  You can save energy for about $.03.  We should take every step we can to put efficiency first.  We expect to see a significant expansion of the efficiency programs if this bill passes.

It tackles buildings in a significant way.  Massachusetts has long had energy codes, but we have failed to update them in any meaningful way.  Because of that, they are out of date. The bill now says that we will take the most recent standards for energy efficiency every three years.   This will ensure that we are always up to date with modern standards.

It also creates a new enforcement regime for energy code.  We think that energy code compliance is very low.  The bill directs the energy office to create a new regime and train energy code inspectors.  We expect this would result in buildings that are significantly more efficient.

There is a net metering provision in the bill that will make it more cost effective for home owners and small businesses to install their own reneweable energy sources.

There is a provision in the bill that directs regulators to get rid of any obstacles to combined heat and power.  Combined heat and power is when you use the waste heat used for generating energy to then actually heat or cool your building.  You can immediately increase your efficiencies through this.

It also creates an alternative renewable portfolio standard.

There are a number of companies in Massachusetts who are pushing for coal gasification.  We are very concerned about this.  Any coal process is inherently dirty.  Coal gasification is probably something that we should continue to do research on, but it isn’t something we should  be putting into prime time.  But one of the provisions in this bill would basically require some energy come from coal gasification.  If this provision is going to be in the bill, we need to get a requirement that 100% of the CO2 has to be sequestered.

Overall, we are very encouraged that this bill is on the move.  It passed out of the House on Thursday.  The Senate is likely to take this up in January.  We hope they will pass it with some of these specific changes.

John Rogers, Union of Concerned Scientists

Massachusetts passed the first renewable portfolio standard in 1997.  There are now 26 states that have them.  There is one seriously in play at the federal level (it has passed in the house, but not in the Senate).

What is clear, is that it is one of the most powerful tools for renewable energy in the U.S.

In Massachusetts, the supply of renewable energy has been growing.  This has been coming online because of the RPS.

The bad news is that there is still a gap between where we want to be and where we are at.

The original legislation sets a target of 4% renewable energies by 2009 and then says that it will grow 1% / year, but that is not codified in statue.   This lack a statutory requirement creates some uncertainty in the market and hurts development of new renewables.  In contrast, the new energy bill lays out a codified path to get to 14% by 2020.   This will help get new investments since people can count on the requirements being in placed.

There were certain technologies that were left out of the original bill.  It doesn’t have hydro-electric energy.  There was a category of biomass that was originally excluded.  The speakers bill covers these.

The bill also includes requirements for long term contracting (10-15 year contracts) with renewable energy providers.    Unfortunately, it limits this to MA-based providers which isn’t necessarily good.

It also limits some of the imports of renewable energy from outside of New England.  That isn’t necessarily a good thing.

There is a provision that would bring the MTC under the EOEA.  We still think it is probably a bad idea to bring the MTC that close to the general budget.  We think that a measure of independence and ensures that we are spending on renewables is important.

General Q&A

Q: Are we ever going to have mandatory recycling in the State?  And will we require stores to take things like packaging back to the stores?

A: There are a number of pieces of legislation before the committes that would do that.  The ability to get them through is more difficult.  It has been very difficult to get this done.  Every legislative cycle you try to pick out a few things that absolutely need to happen.

A: It is our hope that by putting in place a broad carbon cap that it will make it easier to use the existing tools to hit that target.  If you pass the Global Warming Act, then it makes these sorts of tactics much more viable.

Q: What language do we have in the Global Warming Solution Act and in the speaker’s enegry bill that would provide some support at the vocational school, commuty college and high school level to train people with new skillsets?

A: In the Global Warming Solutions Act, we have language in there that creates a set of initiatives for workforce development.  This is going to take off.  It is going to be similar to what happened in the .com sector in CA.  If we adopt this legislation it will really drive a lot of capital investment in the state that will create new jobs.

Q: Why does the speaker’s legislation provide tax benefits for “hybrids” rather than based on fuel efficiency standards?

A: Can we improve that langauge?  I believe that there will be a lot of ammendments on the Senate side that will take a lot of good ideas that came out of the House and, now that the world has seen it, and try to improve on issues like this.  Hopefully this results in an even better bill for us to take to conference.

A: A number of folks have already suggested to change this language to be performance based rather than technology based, but we have failed so far.

Q: In Ireland, when you pay the emissions taxes on your car, part of that is a carbon-based tax that charges more based on emissions.  Is that possible here?

A: That proposal is on the table right now and this is in the transportation bond bill as one of the ways that we believe we could pay for more commuter rail services.  People would pay more based on their level of pollution.

Q: Is there anything in the dialog for a lighting efficiency standard?

A: I have language that would phase out incandescents completely.  We have already thought all of this out.  We can move in that direction, but we didn’t want to attach this to the energy bill to ensure that we didn’t derail the energy bill.

Once we get the Global Warming bill done, the executive branch could then start promulgating these regulations.

We could  put forward legislation that sets forth minimums.

Q: Is there anything in the existing law that would prevent towns or municipalities from putting in place regulations that would require manadatory recycling of materials at stores?
A: Not sure.  This could wind up being impacted by federal commerce and trade laws.

Q: What is 1990 used as the base year for the Global Warming provisions?

A: 1990 is the year that was used in the international negotiations.  Most states have increased their emissions significantly since 1990.  But Massachusetts has kept its emissions flat since 1990.  So, 1990 actually is a fine year for MA standards.