For Healey, a delicate dance with the utilities emerges during election season

In the throes of what would become Massachusetts’s coldest winter in a decade and looking for a tangible win at the beginning of a reelection year, Gov. Maura Healey announced a plan in her State of the Commonwealth address this past January to provide relief to residents struggling to pay their high energy bills.

Healey’s pitch was to offer modest but concrete savings during February and March, using $180 million in state dollars to cover 15 percent of residents’ electricity costs. The utilities during those months would defer an additional 10 percent of electric bills and 10 percent of gas bills to be collected throughout the rest of the year.

“What we are seeing emerge is a pattern of blaming everything but the real cause of rising costs, which are significant increases on transmission and distribution,” said Kyle Murray, Massachusetts program director at environmental nonprofit Acadia Center. “However, the utilities aren’t speaking about reining in spending there, and I don’t think it’s a leap to say that’s where they make the majority of their profits. So, of course, they are going to want to rein in costs on things that don’t make them as much money.”

To read the full article from Commonwealth Beacon, click here.