In my newsletter last week, I shared that we stopped an energy bill that would have raised your rates and gutted our climate commitments. Currently we pay the 3rd highest utility bills in the country. This week is the first newsletter of that series: what was in the bill, who it served, how we stopped it, and what it will actually take to lower our energy bills and invest in a clean transition.

More than half of what you pay each month is not the electricity or gas you use, it is "delivery charges," a category most people never see explained. Inside those charges sits the Gas System Enhancement Program (or GSEP), a pipeline replacement financing program the Legislature approved in 2014 after being told by utilities it would cost the average household one to two dollars a month.

A decade later, GSEP has cost ratepayers $6.2 billion. Replacing pipe now runs over $4 million per mile, when repairing it costs roughly $20,000 per mile. The program's projected lifetime cost is $42 billion, and you are paying for it every month.

That is what happens when energy policy is written by giant for-profit utilities instead of for the public good: the costs are buried, the profits are guaranteed, and by the time anyone notices, the money is gone. Last year Eversource's profits more than doubled to $1.69 billion. The system is not broken for them: it is working exactly as designed, and it was designed in the dark.

Last November, the pattern tried to repeat itself. A 106-page energy bill, H.4744, emerged from committee. Committee members had a few hours to review the bill and vote on it. There was no public hearing or stakeholder input on the new language.

Once I read it, I understood the rush. The bill cut hundreds of millions from energy efficiency programs, including money that weatherizes homes and installs heat pumps. Mass Save is a program that returns more than three dollars in savings for every dollar invested. The proposed bill required electricity customers to help pay for new gas pipelines, expanding the very GSEP model that had already cost us billions. The bill gutted all of our climate commitments to cut carbon emissions in half by 2030, by making them "advisory, non-binding, and non-enforceable."

As Trump destroys climate policy in Washington, this bill volunteered Massachusetts to carry out Project 2025 from the inside, and it did so under a completely false banner of affordability while cutting the single most effective bill-lowering program we have.

Before we won making all votes publicly available, this bill would have been voted on behind closed doors and rushed through the process. Many legislators don't speak up, because they don't have time, capacity, or knowledge on the issue, and that is how bills drafted by corporations become law with very few people knowing, even though we will all be paying for the consequences in our monthly utility bills.

I refuse to idly stand by and witness this. I worked with climate justice advocates, subject matter experts, and a small caucus of my colleagues so we could speak out and build the political pressure to stop this awful bill. Advocates and constituents like you called their legislators about specific provisions, by section number. That pressure was only possible because the process was finally visible, and it worked. We stopped H.4744 in the middle of the rapid legislative process, something that has never happened before in my nearly 10 years working with and inside the legislature.

Stopping it was only the beginning. The rewritten bill the House passed in February restored our climate commitments as binding, a direct result of the pressure we built. But it still carried a Mass Save cut that had grown to $1 billion. So I led the fight on the House floor: I filed an amendment to strike the cut, and my Constituents' Right to Know amendment requiring utilities to open their books before raising your rates, and I pushed for a roll call so the votes on the floor were public.

Last week, the Senate passed its version of the bill, and both fights made immense progress. The billion dollar cut to Mass Save is gone. GSEP, the pipeline program that has quietly cost you $6.2 billion inside those delivery charges, will be wound down by 2030, saving ratepayers a projected $1.46 billion. And the principle behind Constituents' Right to Know is now taking root in the bill itself: the Senate version requires the Department of Public Utilities to maintain a public, real-time dashboard explaining every single component of your energy bill, with regular investigations comparing each charge to what neighboring states pay. The black box of delivery charges will be opened by law, and this is what becomes possible when the public can see the process.

All of these components are still in negotiation. The bill has entered a conference committee, the last step in the legislature before it goes to the Governor's desk, where a small group of legislators reconciles the House and Senate versions into one final bill. Everything, good and bad, stays on the table until it is signed.

Contact your legislators and the Governor's office and tell them the final bill must do three things:

1. Save Mass Save. Every dollar invested returns three, and a family that insulates their home, whether they own it or rent it, pays less every month for as long as they live there.

2. Wind down GSEP. Stop paying utilities guaranteed returns to overspend on pipes. That money belongs in your pocket, not on your delivery charge.

3. We must be able to see everything. Keep the bill dashboard, and require utilities to open their books before every rate increase.

I will cover exactly what is at stake in conference, and who is deciding it, in the next newsletter in this series.

For now, know this: the bill industry drafted is stalled, the bill we are writing instead is within reach, and the difference between the two is thanks to all of us fighting for a Massachusetts we can all afford.

This fight runs on people, not utility money. We are less than two months from election day, and every dollar keeps us knocking doors across Somerville, Cambridge, Medford, and Winchester. If you can, please chip in $10 or $25 today to keep the pressure on through conference and beyond.

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Paid for by Committee to Elect Erika Uyterhoeven · Somerville, MA
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