The day negotiators from the state House and Senate began work to finalize a climate bill intended to speed the pace of clean energy adoption and address climate-warming emissions in the state — the planet experienced its hottest day on record. The record it broke had been set the day before.
By then, July 2024 was on track to be the hottest July on record — meaning it would be the 14th record-hot month in a row. Which is all to say: The planet has reached new, dangerous temperatures, and the stakes for action on climate change could not be higher.
Nineteen months after the start of the legislative session and after long days of negotiations, the bill failed on Thursday morning — the result, both chambers reported, of an intractable difference of opinion. The main thrust of bills from both the Senate and House were nearly identical, focusing on the state’s need to reform how it sites and permits energy infrastructure in order to build more clean energy faster. But the chambers got bogged down by other points of contention.
Claire Karl Miller, an activist with Unitarian Universalist Mass Action, was standing outside the Senate chamber as the session adjourned, holding back tears and raising a sign that read, “Failure of leadership.” Along with a few dozen activists, Miller searched for the climate bill’s negotiators, but it was too late. They were nowhere to be found.
So they chanted — raising their voices and shouting “This is not OK” so their message would echo through the building. It was later that Miller cried. “I don’t understand,” they said. “How did we get to this place?” What troubles many in the state’s climate community is that up until the bill failed, it had seemed so likely to pass.
Reforms had been hammered out the hard way — through months of meetings with a state-led commission that had ambassadors from just about every group imaginable, not to mention Senator Michael Barrett and Representative Jeff Roy, both Democrats, whose job was to reconcile the two climate bills into one final package.
Each chamber’s bill offered up additional aims — including a focus in the Senate to By then, July 2024 was on track to be the hottest July on record — meaning it would be the 14th record-hot month in a row. Which is all to say: The planet has reached new, dangerous temperatures, and the stakes for action on climate change could not be higher.
Nineteen months after the start of the legislative session and after long days of negotiations, the bill failed on Thursday morning — the result, both chambers reported, of an intractable difference of opinion. The main thrust of bills from both the Senate and House were nearly identical, focusing on the state’s need to reform how it sites and permits energy infrastructure in order to build more clean energy faster. But the chambers got bogged down by other points of contention.
rein in infrastructure used to deliver natural gas and a move to stop third-party electric suppliers from selling directly to consumers, a practice that’s been shown to be mostly a money loser for consumers. Over on the House side, the bill included measures to procure more clean energy and to boost the availability of long-term battery storage.
It was in negotiating those additional pieces — particularly efforts to rein in gas infrastructure — that things fell apart, according to sources familiar with the negotiations.
On the one side was Roy, who said he was unwilling to cut back on gas infrastructure until more clean energy is readily available. On the other was Barrett, who said building out electric infrastructure must be paired with slimming the gas system — a step that would not only move the state away from burning greenhouse gases, but also save ratepayers money by stopping costly investments into a system that must be largely decommissioned by midcentury.
With the two sides unable to land on common ground, the bill failed. Elizabeth Turnbull Henry, president of the Environmental League of Massachusetts, called it a waste. “It’s one thing if the stakes weren’t so high, or if there was huge disagreement among residents and voters in the Commonwealth on whether or not to act with ambition on the climate,” she said. “But there’s not. There are supermajorities of voters across the Commonwealth that want action that is commensurate with the urgency and scale of this issue.”
The bill was intended to build on climate progress made in past sessions — particularly the 2021 climate bill that enshrined a mandate that Massachusetts slash climate-warming emissions to 50 percent of 1990 levels by the end of the decade, and net zero by 2050.
That landmark bill established Massachusetts as a leader on climate change, but setting a target is very different from establishing laws that ensure the target is hit, said Larry Chretien, executive director of the Green Energy Consumers Alliance. Those targets are not “self-executing,” he said. “You need policies to make them happen.”
What’s more, the most recent data from the state indicate that from 2021 to 2022, emissions from buildings and transportation in Massachusetts rose. “We are moving in the wrong direction,” Chretien said.
Looking ahead, both Roy and Barrett said they do not intend to wait until the end of the next legislative session to bring this up again. Roy said he hopes to bring siting reform to a vote during the informal session — a period between now and the end of the year when bills can pass, but only if every single member approves. Barrett also said he’s hopeful the two chambers can get back into negotiations.
“I understand the frustration, and I share the frustration,” said Roy, adding that in addition to siting reform, there are other aspects of the failed legislation that he hopes to take back up next year.
Barrett, meanwhile, said he’s confident the two chambers will be able to find an agreement that pairs siting reform and changes to the gas industry. “I don’t feel too badly, because I know that in the end, we’re going to come to ‘yes,’” said Barrett.
But advocates are still reeling, left wondering how a system could be so broken that in a state that prides itself on being a climate leader, a legislative session could close without any significant action on the issue.
“Going forward, I think the burden is actually falling back on myself and others to play to our strengths and get out there and organize people,” said John Walkey, of the grass-roots environmental justice group GreenRoots. “We can’t have this go forward business as usual.”