At the end of February, the House passed a massive energy affordability bill that, in part because of activist voices like yours, has a lot of significant wins. Unfortunately, it still contains an amendment that cripples Mass Save, the state’s energy efficiency program. People do need relief from high energy bills, but cutting $1 billion from Mass Save won’t get us there. Now it’s the Senate’s turn to discuss the bill and we need YOU to tell your Senator to:
- Keep funding Mass Save, which saves ratepayers over $3 for every $1 spent and creates the tens of thousands of clean energy jobs.
- And INSTEAD stop allowing utilities to extract increasingly higher profits from their customers.
Mass Save doesn’t just provide savings for those who directly utilize their service. By reducing the energy usage across the grid at times of high demand, when the most expensive and most polluting energy is being used, all ratepayers end up paying less. In the past couple of years, Mass Save has made huge progress towards equity goals, doing targeted outreach to working class, immigrant and renter communities. We have to keep that progress moving forward and target the real culprit, for-profit utility corporations.
Right now, gas and electric utilities can use the money they collect from us to fund political activities like lobbying, advertising, and trade association dues. There are also no robust protections against utilities expanding expensive and polluting infrastructure, just to recoup the cost from us AND charge a guaranteed profit on top of it. Senators have the power to add these crucial pieces into the bill and restore funding to Mass Save, and YOU have the power to ask them to do this.
