Legislative Roundup: State-Level Battles for Clean Energy Progress

Acadia Center prides itself on advocating for the clean energy future, including within state legislature across the region. While our work spans further across the Northeast, we wanted to highlight a few states to which we dedicated a significant amount of our advocacy efforts in this past year of legislative sessions – including Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. Not only is it worth examining the progress made in these states, but we also identify the areas we will push our advocacy toward for the following legislative sessions to come. Overall, despite some modest victories and points of progress, it was a difficult and disappointing year for legislative action on climate and clean energy across the board. Acadia Center will be offering more reactions on and responses to this lack of progress in the weeks ahead.

Connecticut

In the 2024 Connecticut Legislative Session, Acadia Center was a strong proponent and advocate for climate and clean energy policies that supported emissions reductions targets and advanced energy equity goals. One victory aligned with our mission was an update to the Home Environmental Improvement Revolving Loan Fund program, passed in 2023, that now allocates funding for grants to support retrofit projects in multifamily residences in environmental justice communities. Throughout the session, momentum for increased heat pumps deployment resulted in the passage of a deployment study and an outlined heat pump rebate program. Looking ahead, following the failure of the prominent “green monster” climate package, much is left to be desired on key Acadia Center priorities such as increased energy efficiency funding, reforms and proceedings at the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority, and grid modernization measures to support our clean energy transition. Acadia Center is ready to lead efforts and ensure the 2025 Legislative Session moves Connecticut closer to being a climate and clean energy leader once again.

Maine

Acadia Center advocated for Maine bills that promoted several important climate and clean energy goals and defended against other measures that would have threatened progress. Acadia Center has coordinated with other nonprofits in Maine where appropriate, with some notable successes. Earlier in the two-year session, Acadia Center helped advocate successfully for a bill entitled “An Act Regarding the Procurement of Energy from Offshore Wind resources.” This bill established a robust system for offshore wind (OSW) development and required that the State procure 3,000 megawatts of OSW energy by 2040, a major leap forward. More recently, in the second year of the two-year session, Acadia Center was instrumental in authoring and supporting eventual passage of a bill that requires the Maine Department of Environmental Protection to study and report on opportunities and barriers to electric vehicle adoption in Maine, helping salvage some progress in the wake of the unfortunate demise of advanced clean cars regulations.

Acadia Center also successfully lobbied against bills that would have ended net energy billing, a Maine program that has successfully established a burgeoning solar and other clean energy resources in Maine, and also lobbied strongly against bills that would have unreasonably impeded the necessary development of electric transmission lines in Maine, while supporting improvements to developer-community engagement efforts.

Unfortunately, the Maine Legislature failed to pass a bill that would require the Public Utilities Commission to open a proceeding on Performance-Based Regulation (PBR). Acadia Center will continue to build support for PBR as a powerful tool for delivering better utility performance for Maine’s ratepayers.

Massachusetts

This legislative session, the Massachusetts House and Senate both passed legislation to reform the siting and permitting of clean energy projects in the Commonwealth in line with recommendations from the Commission on Energy Infrastructure Siting and Permitting. Both branches also included additional important climate measures in their packages.

For example, the Massachusetts Senate focused on reforms to the natural gas system which Acadia Center has championed and included measures that would reform the Gas System Enhancement Program (GSEP), a $40 billion gas replacement program, end the uniform right to gas service in the Commonwealth and require the Department of Public Utilities (DPU) to consider whether the expansion of gas service territory is reasonable and in the public interest. The Senate also banned competitive electric supply contracts for residential customers.

The House took a different approach and included provisions to specifically procure additional offshore wind resources and long-duration energy storage, ensure more widespread proliferation of EV chargers, and support fusion power.

Regrettably, negotiations between the two branches fell apart as the end of the formal legislative calendar approached, and they were unable to come to consensus – with disagreements reportedly centered on Competitive Electric Suppliers and the gas system reforms.

Rhode Island

Rhode Island’s 2024 legislative session yielded little action to tackle emissions in the building sector. Acadia Center’s top legislative priority, the Building Decarbonization Act (H7617/S2952), saw partial passage in the Senate and negotiations in the House resulted in the passage of a resolution to study benchmarking and building performance standards (BPS).

We were glad to celebrate the passage of S2952A in the Senate, an important statement on the value of benchmarking energy usage in our buildings. This amended version of the bill includes benchmarking and BPS for large public and private buildings but removes any requirements for all-electric new construction. What was retained was the requirement for electric ready construction of public buildings; this section also includes provisions for registered apprenticeship programs and project labor agreements.

Unfortunately, negotiations in the House and with other state leaders not only rejected all-electric new construction, but also pushed back on the concept of benchmarking and BPS. Acadia Center contributed to the development of H7617A, a joint resolution directing the Executive Climate Change Coordinating Council (EC4) to study the implementation of benchmarking and BPS. The resolution successfully passed both the House and the Senate on the last night of session, thereby becoming law. Ensuring that the EC4 produces a timely and valuable report by the deadline of February 15, 2025, will require accountability over the coming months.

One victory worth celebrating was the passage of S2499, the Energy Storage Systems Act, which sets a deployment target of 600 MW of energy storage capacity by 2033 – which will help Rhode Island save costs and emissions during peak periods.