Even before Gov. Maura Healey entered the heart of campaign season — one that has been defined by skyrocketing energy costs and affordability issues — her administration has seemed sensitive to the price tag attached to the tens or hundreds of billions of dollars likely needed to support a sweeping green transition.
Jordan Wolman
Jordan Wolman is a senior reporter at CommonWealth Beacon covering climate and energy issues in Massachusetts.
Before joining CommonWealth Beacon, Jordan spent four years at POLITICO in Washington, DC, where he covered the intersection of climate policy and business. His reporting took him from international U.N. plastic pollution negotiations in Ottawa, Canada, to beneath the spinning turbines of an offshore wind farm 27 miles off the coast of Virginia. Jordan focused on taking POLITICO subscribers inside the biggest climate policy debates, including breaking the news that President Joe Biden was planning to take executive action to significantly boost data center construction and that California air regulators were not planning to enforce a landmark state climate law in its first year in effect.
A New Jersey native, Jordan graduated from Lehigh University and launched the first investigative team at the school's paper, The Brown and White.
Posted inEnergy
Eversource CEO tells industry conference he expects Healey to turn down the ‘volume’ on utility criticism post-election
Nolan’s comments that Healey will tone down her rhetoric after the election stand in stark contrast to Healey’s pitch to voters that Massachusetts will take on utility profits and go to bat for ratepayers.
Posted inEnergy
Future of Mass Save in limbo as Legislature stalls on energy bill
A political backlash to Mass Save, amid a rising tide of angst over soaring utility bills, has taken root in the Bay State.
Posted inEnergy
Healey asks Trump administration to speed up review of planned gas expansion in latest sign of shifting energy politics
As Healey hunts for ways to bring down soaring costs and campaigns for reelection in a race defined by the affordability crisis gripping the state, the governor sees an opportunity to appeal to the Trump administration to bring more gas into the state.
Posted inPolitics
Mass. voters hold Trump, utilities most responsible for high energy costs, new poll finds
Healey’s ability to evade the bulk of the blame with voters for high energy costs is notable as she seeks reelection this fall, given how energy issues have proven stubborn, dogging much of her first term.
Posted inEnvironment
The next Quabbin fight is already here
The part of the plan that’s arguably generating the most blowback is the process the MWRA is deploying to win approval from state officials.
Posted inGovernment
Mass. unemployment agency ‘mismanaged’ call center performance, ‘failed’ to quickly pay claimants, auditor concludes
The auditor’s report unveils how even before the agency was thrust into turmoil with record-breaking poor performance during a time of a relatively stable job market, out-of-work Massachusetts residents weren’t receiving the help they needed in a timely fashion.
Posted inEnvironment
A pilot program in Plymouth hopes to crack the code on insurance in coastal communities
The insurance challenge for coastal states like Massachusetts has been a vexing one. Inflation and tariffs are scrambling rebuilding costs, and the rise in climate-driven natural disasters has contributed to a recent increase in private insurers not renewing policies and the state’s insurer-of-last-resort seeing a growth in the number of enrollees.
Posted inEnergy
Massachusetts utilities, Canadian hydro company file dueling lawsuits over new transmission line
The unfolding legal drama marks a major pivot point for a project intended to provide 20 percent of Massachusetts’s electricity — and exposes just how fragile and volatile the state’s energy mix continues to be.
Posted inEnergy
For Healey, a delicate dance with the utilities emerges during election season
Healey can cast the utility companies as a critical partner when it’s advantageous for her to do so — or turn them into a political punching bag and convenient foil when it benefits her.
Posted inPolitics
Markey rolls to victory
Markey’s sound win on Tuesday further signals that voters found him to be the unalloyed progressive.
Posted inPolitics
Minogue wins GOP primary for governor, setting stage for matchup with Healey
Minogue will need to overcome heavy odds to unseat Healey, who starts the race widely favored to win reelection.
Posted inState Government
Melissa Hoffer, nation’s first state-level climate chief, to step down
Hoffer was chosen for the new position after holding several high-powered roles in climate policy, serving under then-AG Healey before working at the Biden administration’s Environmental Protection Agency and then moving back to the Bay State to link up with Healey again under this newly crafted role.
Posted inEnvironment
A climate shake-up is jolting one of the most progressive cities in Mass.
The question is whether, in the end, it’s more of a mundane municipal reorganization or a sign of retreat in Newton, one of the state’s most climate-forward communities.
Posted inEnergy
Lawmakers appear poised to take some big swings against competitive electric suppliers. How big is the question.
The pushback comes as Democrats on Beacon Hill are on the cusp of a long-sought breakthrough to rein in what critics contend are shady energy companies that rip off unwitting customers.
Posted inEnergy
Mass. regulators approve new plan to shield solar customers from unexpected price spikes
The move, adopted with buy-in from the energy industry, advocates, and state officials, could save thousands of electric customers looking to install solar panels across the state from being saddled with last-minute, seemingly random charges that could stretch past $10,000 per project.
Posted inPolitics
Political Notebook: Layoffs the latest sign of trouble for clean energy
The state agency tasked with turbocharging the state’s green economy laid off 11 employees, citing a “challenging funding landscape” amid federal headwinds.
Posted inState Government
Healey, in new letter, urges MWRA to meet the ‘pressing needs’ of Quabbin Reservoir communities
Healey, through her letter to the head of the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority, is wading into an escalating battle between small towns along the Quabbin and the quasi-public agency that uses that water to serve 2.7 million residents in 61 communities mostly in and around Boston.
Posted inEnvironment
‘It’s like the Hunger Games’: Quabbin Reservoir towns take funding fight to Beacon Hill amid extended drought
A perfect storm of long-held resentments, the well-known story of the financial crunch squeezing small towns across the state, and an act of blameless chance — weather — is raising the stakes and stoking new tensions between these sparse towns and the powers that be in state government.
Posted inEnergy
Healey sounds alarm on energy costs — but a legislative solution remains elusive for now
Healey’s decision to speak specifically on energy policy as the Legislature scrambled elsewhere in the State House to tackle other priorities is the latest sign of urgency from the governor to respond to Bay Staters’ angst around soaring utility bills — and of the political salience of the issue as the governor seeks reelection this fall.
Posted inBallot Questions
An effort to boost nature, backed by big-money donors, lands in the middle of Mass. ballot question mania
As the campaign shifts from ballot-qualifying to general election mode, what the end result will be of all the money raised and spent, all the signatures collected and ads likely to come, and all the potential friction introduced with Beacon Hill — even if the question passes this fall — is for now unclear.
Posted inEnergy
A proposed moratorium on data centers hits resistance in Mass. Senate
The back-and-forth nature of data center policy in Massachusetts raises the question: Do Bay State policymakers want to draw in these facilities, which can provide some jobs and property tax benefits, or not?
Posted inEnvironment
Wu, feds unveil plan to tackle sea level rise in Boston
The draft plan is set to act as a roadmap for how New England’s largest city can navigate the more than four feet of sea level rise the Army Corps projects will hit Boston by 2090.
Posted inEnergy
A Mass Save reform generating consensus among lawmakers is drawing blowback from advocates
The change under consideration by the Legislature would impose new income verification requirements on only the moderate-income customers in the state’s 21 designated equity communities.
