The CommonWealth Beacon

by Lindsey Griffin, Amanda Sachs and Tim Snyder

‍Turning away from fossil fuels can help us control climate change – and energy costs  

WINTER IS HERE, and if it is anything like the past few, families across Massachusetts will open painfully high energy bills. Cold weather rate hikes arrive on top of electricity costs that are already among the highest in the nation. In the past five years, the Commonwealth’s residential power prices have risen by more than 30 percent, and they are only expected to increase.

As Beacon Hill looks to tackle this problem, state leaders should pass an energy affordability package that delivers long-term relief by limiting our dependence on costly fossil gas. To protect ratepayers, we need to double down on transitioning to stable, affordable, and locally generated clean energy, like solar.

Why are our state’s electricity bills so high? Massachusetts over-relies on imported gas to generate power. The price of gas is not just expensive (and getting more so), but volatile, making our rates vulnerable to spikes from extreme weather, international conflict, and market dynamics. If ratepayers continue to foot the bill for new gas infrastructure, we will be locking ourselves into a worsening affordability crisis and lose control of our energy future for decades.

Breaking this cycle requires unleashing local solar and storage so we can generate affordable electricity right here in Massachusetts. Solar and batteries keep getting cheaper, while the cost to supply and deliver gas is only rising. Distributed energy resources can come online rapidly, provide direct bill savings to families and businesses, and benefit all ratepayers by reducing the need for expensive peak power purchases and costly new grid infrastructure.

Repeatedly, we’ve seen how local solar saves everyone money on their electric bills. During the heatwave this past June, distributed solar saved consumers at least $8.2 million in a single day and prevented what would have been record-breaking stress on our grid. From 2014 to 2019, small-scale solar generated over $1 billion in savings for New England customers. These savings were enjoyed not only by people with systems on their rooftops, but by all ratepayers.

Massachusetts has historically been a leader on solar, but the pace of deployment has lagged in recent years. Although we have tens of gigawatts of untapped potential, our state ranks 26th nationally for new installations, and growth in key segments like community solar has slowed sharply since 2021. Federal rollbacks of tax credits for clean energy will further hamper our progress unless state policymakers act.

First, our representatives should fix the overly burdensome local government and utility approval processes that add months of delay and thousands of dollars to even the simplest solar and battery projects.

Ask any contractor what drives up the cost of home solar installations and they’ll tell you the same thing: time and complexity. In communities across the Commonwealth, cookie-cutter residential projects that should be installed quickly and easily are hindered by antiquated and bespoke bureaucratic requirements like paper forms and in-person appointments, long wait times, and multiple inspections. This maze of barriers and delays drives up the sticker price of home solar by at least $1/watt, and leads many families to give up on going solar during the approval process.

Convoluted and outdated permitting, inspection, and interconnection do not enhance safety or quality, and streamlining them would deliver real benefits for consumers. For example, by adopting “smart permitting,” where the code compliance checks for home solar and batteries are done instantly and online, Massachusetts could reduce the cost of the standard system by $2,400 by 2030 and deliver nearly 120,000 additional installs by 2040.

Smart permitting technology was developed by the Department of Energy and National Renewable Energy Laboratory in partnership with leading building safety organizations and has an impeccable track record. More than 300 communities around the country have adopted it, representing roughly a third of the national solar market.

Second, policymakers should scale virtual power plants–networks that deliver power back to the grid by aggregating it from rooftop solar panels, home batteries, and other distributed energy devices.

States across the country are embracing VPPs to manage demand and reduce costs without building pricey new infrastructure. Massachusetts’s own ConnectedSolutions, which has delivered over $8 million in annual net benefits for households, is a good start and should be expanded upon to help more families save.

Third, state leaders should change how our utilities get paid to better align with consumer interests. Current regulatory structures provide financial incentives for utilities to prioritize expensive capital investments –like constructing new power lines and substations–to meet our energy needs. These costs are directly passed down to ratepayers.

While we will certainly need to continue to make smart infrastructure improvements, we also need to redesign this incentive structure and instead pay utilities for their performance on cutting costs, increasing system efficiency, and delivering cheap, clean power. We know that this works. For instance, in Illinois, a performance based regulatory scheme has translated into a more than 70 percent improvement in reliability, nearly 21.7 million avoided customer outages, and over $3.8 billion in avoided outage costs.

Massachusetts families deserve a power system that relies less on ever-more expensive gas, prioritizes efficiency, and clears the pathway to bring more cost-effective renewable energy online. By fixing the approval process for solar and batteries, scaling virtual power plants, and better aligning utility incentives with the public interest, lawmakers can deliver real, durable affordability.

Lindsey Griffin is Northeast regulatory director at Vote Solar. Amanda Sachs is state policy manager at Rewiring America. Tim Snyder is vice president of public policy at Alliance for Climate Transition.