Every three years, Massachusetts takes a big stand for its climate future by adopting a new energy efficiency plan that directs Mass Save incentives to help households and communities reduce their reliance on costly and deadly fossil fuels by decarbonizing their homes.
In 2021, the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities approved a three-year plan that made significant and important strides toward advancing more equitable energy efficiency solutions, particularly for households facing the greatest energy burdens. But despite our progress, the state’s energy efficiency programs continue to price out and leave behind low and moderate-income residents—a failure that is not only bad for our communities but a fatal flaw in our state’s efforts to meet our climate goals.
The 2025-2027 Three-Year Energy Efficiency Plan being drafted this year is a critical opportunity to address these gaps, eliminate the remaining barriers preventing residents from accessing cost-saving upgrades offered through Mass Save, and double down on our commitments—in policy and funding—to invest in programs that will dramatically reduce pressure on our grid, lower emissions, decrease energy usage, and improve the overall quality of life.
Last month, the utility companies administering the state’s Mass Save incentive program released a draft of the next three-year plan for public comment. While it includes some important equity priorities, such as changes to determining income eligibility for moderate-income households and improved language access services, it falls short of taking the steps needed to bring energy efficiency solutions to scale with all of our communities. The next several months provide an important window to urge our public utilities to do more. Here’s what needs to happen.
Heat pumps, which use electricity to heat and cool homes, are one of our best tools for reducing household carbon emissions and energy use and improving air quality. Currently, the high up-front costs of installing these pumps often make it challenging for low and moderate-income households and renters—who disproportionately reside in homes fueled by oil or natural gas—to access heat pumps and their benefits.
While the current draft plan has increased its budget for income-eligible installations, it fails to set sufficiently ambitious goals for installation—particularly in low and moderate-income households—by proposing installing only 115,000 additional heat pump units across Massachusetts, with less than 20,000 going to low-income households.
In addition to increasing the overall number of heat pumps—a move critical to reducing our heat emission goals by 28 percent by 2025 and 47 percent by 2030—the percentage allocated for low and moderate-income households should be a third of total installations.
At the same time, the plan must incorporate methods to simplify and streamline the income eligibility process to encourage landlords and renters to apply for energy-saving offers and provide a sufficient budget that makes heat pump adoption more accessible and financially viable, specifically for renters, landlords, and small businesses.
Beyond increased investments in heat pumps, it is also critical that all communities, regardless of geographic location, language, or housing type, have a seat at the table when making decisions about our energy future. Moreover, information on energy-saving solutions should be accessible to everyone.
The current draft of the three-year plan is difficult for the average ratepayer to navigate, and complexity chills participation, creating an artificial barrier for people to participate in a decision-making process that directly affects them. In the case of the three-year plan, it could negatively impact upcoming listening sessions designed to solicit feedback from the public.
The Energy Efficiency Advisory Council (EEAC) should consider revising the draft plan to ensure its primary audience—ratepayers—can meaningfully engage in creating energy-efficient options for their homes and also understand how their feedback is being incorporated into the final version.
Lastly, when it comes to finalizing our 2025-2027 plan, it is essential we understand that language holds power. Being intentional about how we describe our goals is just as important as detailing the tactics we will use to meet them.
In the run-up to the draft plan’s release, the Energy Efficiency Advisory Council’s equity working group called for distributive justice—whereby our energy efficiency investments and focus target the communities and households that stand to benefit the most—to be an explicitly-stated component of the three-year roadmap. The specific phrase advocates emphasized throughout the process is not present in the current version of the plan.
Any final version of the three-year plan must explicitly state distributive justice as a guiding principle to effectively implement an equitable energy efficiency program. This is also how we hold ourselves accountable as a Commonwealth to ensure everyone, regardless of geographic location, housing situation, or zip code, can access and participate in our clean energy future.
All of our climate fates are connected. Massachusetts has set ambitious climate goals, but we cannot achieve them if we only allow some communities to reap the benefits of energy efficiency solutions and leave other communities behind. Come October, we hope that these missing components of the three-year plan will be incorporated into a finalized version submitted to the Department of Public Utilities.
We must ensure that the future of Mass Save includes increased, targeted investments for low and moderate-income households, that the plan guiding us is accessible for all to understand, and that distributive justice is called out by name and carried out in practice. This is how we build a just and equitable climate future for everyone.
Cindy Luppi is the national field director for Clean Water Action and Mary Wambui is an affordable housing asset manager at the planning office for urban affairs of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston, a Greg Torres senior fellow at MassINC, and a member of the Energy Efficiency Advisory Council representing residential customers.
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