The Massachusetts Dept of Energy Resources DOER will announce their new solar incentive program/proposal on Tuesday Jan. 31st. Their “straw proposal” was presented in the Fall as part of the regulatory strategy to establish new net metering rules. BPVS and many other stakeholders criticized the straw proposal for among many inequities, giving all control of management and incentive payments to the utilities. See http://solarisworking.org/for a good review of the legislation which prompted this about face in Massachusetts solar policy. DOER is simply carrying out the anti- solar strategy some utility executives have proclaimed for years and which the Baker administration supports. As part of this Net Metering in Ma has come under attack and the utilities have just completed the revision process on Net Metering Rules. That process was put on an accelerated schedule between Thanksgiving and the New Year at the Department of Public Utilities ( DPU). Alert staff attorneys at the office of Attorney General and one solar advocate parsed through the utility re write and caught some anti – solar mistakes – all in the utilities favor of course. This is just another example of why it is so important solar advocates pay close attention to DOER and DPU proceedings. We’ll be informing our old and new customers on changes in the states solar policy . Meanwhile the new legislative session has started and progressive leaders in the House and Senate have introduced legislation to help recover lost initiatives for energy efficiency , reducing emissions from gas leaks and of course encouraging renewable energy development. BPVS is a business member and one of the founders of the Mass Power Forward Coalition . Please visit this site to get detailed information on the new legislation and how to communicate your support for a clean energy future to your legislators. Go tohttps://actionnetwork.org/letters/urge-your-legislator-to-support-clean-energyClimate Action Now of Western Massachusetts https://climateactionnowma.org/has compiled a list of the pro clean energy and environmental healing bills for this session which you can down load here below. On the federal level this is not the first Republican administration to try and set the clock back on clean energy and environmental policy. This new group in the executive branch have some lessons to learn. As always they can’t fool all the people all the time.
To view the attached PDF file, Click Here .
Posted By: cdk . (2017-01-25)