Forthcoming Healey bill will aim to reduce emissions and energy usage
APRIL 1, 2025…..There will be a lot of energy and environmental policy cooking soon between the governor’s promised affordability bill and a forthcoming environmental bond bill. Senators suggested Tuesday both could be opportunities for Massachusetts to tailor strategies in order to make progress on its climate agenda despite federal headwinds.
President Donald Trump has moved quickly in his second term to reshape national energy and climate policy, largely rejecting the transition from fossil fuels towards clean energy sources that President Joe Biden favored and states like Massachusetts pledged themselves to. Here, state government has committed to reducing carbon emissions by at least 50% compared to 1990 baselines by 2030, by at least 75% by 2040 and by at least 85% by 2050, with tag-along policies to get the state to net-zero emissions by the middle of the century.
“We now find ourselves in a completely different world when it comes to federal climate policy,” Senate Majority Leader Cynthia Creem said. Opening a virtual meeting of the Senate Committee on Global Warming and Climate Change, she added, “The federal climate retrenchment will make it harder for us to achieve our ambitions. There’s no sugarcoating that. But we’re not powerless, far from it. We’re not going to sit back, and we’re still going to go forward in Massachusetts.”
The committee heard Tuesday from officials in the attorney general’s office, Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, Department of Transportation, and from experts from outside of government about the energy- and environment-related actions the Trump administration has taken since January and opportunities for the state to make progress towards its climate goals outside of the federal government’s reach.
“The good news is that the things that we can control, we are making significant progress,” Katherine Antos, EEA’s undersecretary for decarbonization and resilience, told senators.
Asked about areas of climate policy on which the state could act entirely on its own to have the greatest impact on emissions, she pointed specifically to energy efficiency efforts that routinely rank number one or two among states, and having “already met our goals in terms of installing heat pumps in households an entire year early.” She called out electric vehicle charging infrastructure expansion, EV rebate programs and fleet electrification programs as areas in which Massachusetts can make meaningful progress on its own.
Creem and Sen. Michael Barrett, the Senate’s energy point person as chair of the Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy Committee since 2017, questioned Antos and others about policy areas that state lawmakers and the Healey administration could influence. Barrett framed it as a change in course but not destination.
“I’m not saying it’s an absolute lost cause, but it could be that we will see significantly less clean energy generation, at least over the next two or three years, than we had hoped for because of President Trump’s animosity toward offshore wind in particular. But our realization of our goals, both our net-zero goal by 2050 and then our five-year interim goals, anticipate that we can compensate for our losing a little speed on clean energy generation by our moving forward vigorously in other parts of the overall dynamic,” he said, calling for a focus on decarbonization of buildings and transportation. “So if we lose a little speed on offshore wind, but can pick up the pace on buildings and transportation, we can still be making progress toward net-zero by 2050.”
He said that “flexibility is something that I know the administration is aware of, and that the Senate is keeping an eye on.”
Antos mentioned the state is “continuing to move forward with clean energy procurements” despite rough seas for the offshore wind power industry and said the governor’s upcoming energy affordability bill could request “additional tools in the toolbox that can help us to meet these goals.”
“We look forward to working with the Legislature when we introduce energy affordability and innovation legislation that is going to help to reduce emissions, reduce energy usage, and most importantly, reduce costs for residents and for consumers,” she said.
Creem responded that senators are eager to get the Healey administration’s proposal to borrow hundreds of millions of dollars for environmental projects. Antos said that bond bill will “absolutely” be helpful as Massachusetts tries to address the climate crisis without federal support.
“The environmental bond bill is about what we can do with our state resources to build resilient infrastructure, which is going to protect us from more extreme weather events and other climate change impacts that we already are experiencing and we know we are going to continue to experience. A lot of what’s in the bond bill is about how we make the best use of those resources and stretch those resources so that we can work with our communities to scale solutions,” she said.
The undersecretary added, “The environmental bond bill will make critical investments. That is going to help us to advance resilience and also move forward with reducing emissions reductions, focus on what we can do on the state side, as we also continue to fight for and maintain access to federal grants.”
Responding to a question from Barrett, Antos said the Healey administration has identified 10 full-time equivalent positions within EEA — a part of state government that has recently been expanding — as being “very high-risk” because they are funded either in whole or in part with specific federal sources.
“Our estimate is that [federal government formula grants] cover about 350 full-time equivalents. Of those, there are only approximately 10 that have been identified as being very high-risk because that was specifically funded through either the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act or the Inflation Reduction Act,” Antos said. “We are continuing to monitor that closely, and we are continuing to evaluate how we could use other state resources if needed.”
