By Tim Snyder and Natalie Treat

Tim Snyder is ACT's VP of Policy & Government Affairs and Natalie Treat is ACT's Director of Public Policy

Last week, Massachusetts Governer Maura Healey signed two major pieces of legislation that will accelerate the climate transition in Massachusetts: a clean energy omnibus bill and the Mass Leads Act. 

After the official end to formal legislative sessions in July, it looked like both bills might need to wait until future legislative sessions to advance. But ACT and our partners pulled together, made clear that solutions to the climate crisis cannot wait, and joined in collective advocacy that resulted in the legislature reconvening in special formal sessions to pass these bills in 2024.

This marks a major victory for the state and for climate transition advocates who have been working for years to advance these legislative changes and investments. The bill contains many crucial legislative changes pushed for by ACT throughout the legislative session, as described below. 

Clean Energy Omnibus

An Act promoting a clean energy grid, advancing equity and protecting ratepayers, also known as the clean energy omnibus, makes several crucial legislative changes to upgrade the state’s electric grid, streamline siting & permitting processes, and accelerate the transition away from our dependence on fossil fuels. The final legislation:

• Establishes changes to the rules to site and permit clean energy projects, reducing timelines, creating clear process expectations and ensuring that communities have a meaningful voice at the table;
• Expands the commonwealth’s clean energy procurement authority and obligations with a particular innovative focus on connecting more energy storage resources to the grid; 
• Establishes a planning process to proactively upgrade the grid to accommodate a network of fast charges for electric vehicles and fleets;
• Expands offshore wind tax incentives and improves the procurement process 
• Explicity authorizes the use of meter socket adapters to allow more people to install solar and other advanced energy technologies at home without expensive electric system upgrades;
• Authorizes the gas utilities to sell geothermal heat and includes provisions that support energy workers in the transition;
• And much more;

Economic Development

An Act relative to strengthening Massachusetts’ Economic Leadership, also known as the Mass Leads Act, includes hundreds of millions of dollars of investment in groundbreaking initiatives to advance the offshore wind industry and support the state’s burgeoning climatetech industry. 

These strategic investments will ensure that Massachusetts is able to retain and attract the world’s leading climatetech companies and solidify the Commonwealth’s role as a hub of the new climate economy. 

Climatetech investments. The bill provides $400 million in capital resources to the MassCEC (Massachusetts Clean Energy Center) to utilize over the next ten years, with $200 million authorized to support innovation and deployment of climatetech technologies and $200 million to support the offshore wind industry. 

It also establishes a new tax credit to invest in climatetech companies. A new program housed at MassCEC will develop and expand employment opportunities in climatetech and promote climatetech-related economic development by supporting and stimulating research, development, innovation, manufacturing, deployment, and commercialization in the climatetech sector. The credit will be subject to a $30 million annual cap.