The plan reverberating around Beacon Hill, as first reported by CommonWealth Beacon last week, is sure to put lawmakers in a politically difficult position and test their willingness to defend the climate commitments enacted just four years ago.
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, D.C., 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
‘We will fill the State House’: Advocates gird for a showdown over House plan to dial back climate commitments
The effort is bound to divide the Democratic supermajority on Beacon Hill and test officials’ willingness to defend the state’s climate policies just as winter hits and Healey mounts a reelection bid.
Posted inEnvironment
New state coastal resilience plan proposes voluntary buyout program
The state’s final ResilientCoasts plan, unveiled on Thursday, calls for such a program to be stood up within three to five years, once a study currently underway is completed.
Posted inEnergy
House energy chair signals effort to dial back 2030 climate commitments
Rep. Mark Cusack, co-chair of the Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities, and Energy, said he is pushing for his redraft of Gov. Maura Healey’s energy affordability bill to receive a floor vote before lawmakers break for the year on November 19.
Posted inEnvironment
Boston council urges city to join federal program offering flood insurance discounts
CommonWealth Beacon reported last week that Boston missed a 2021 self-imposed deadline to join FEMA’s Community Rating System program, which has cost residents and businesses at least $785,000 in total unnecessary flood insurance costs over the four years.
Posted inEnergy
Municipalities warn Beacon Hill they’ll need to slow down solar projects due to state limit
The issue threatens to undermine Gov. Maura Healey’s “all-of-the-above” energy strategy as she seeks to thread an increasingly tighter needle to drive down costs, grow power supply, and meet climate commitments as offshore wind stalls.
Posted inGovernment
Looming federal food aid cuts put state Democrats in the hot seat
Massachusetts Democrats are unwilling to tap into the state’s significant savings balance to replace food aid, previewing difficult decisions that loom on the horizon.
Posted inEnvironment
Boston missed its own deadline for applying to a FEMA program. Residents are footing the bill.
Across Massachusetts, more than 300 communities – including Boston – aren’t reaping the benefits of the FEMA program, known as Community Rating System. It’s led to residents in some municipalities collectively paying hundreds of thousands of dollars per year in flood insurance costs that could have been avoided.
Posted inEnergy
Boston looks to go on offense on energy affordability
Cuts at the state level mean the city’s initiative will be operating in a more financially constrained environment. The crux of the new effort will rely on the state’s Mass Save program, which funds energy efficiency upgrades around the state through ratepayer charges.
Posted inEnvironment
Tepper stands by Mass. climate goals, ramps up outreach on Canadian wind power
Tepper shared in an interview with CommonWealth Beacon that she took a previously-unreported trip up to Nova Scotia last month to meet with officials to discuss how Massachusetts can potentially tap into Canadian offshore wind, much in the way the state will soon have access to 1,200 megawatts of hydropower from Quebec.
Posted inHousing
In fight against Nantucket housing development, an unusual battle cry
Whether it’s just a calculated bid to pull any available lever in the NIMBY arsenal or the legitimate invocation of a serious environmental threat, or perhaps both, the review petition is now in the hands of the Healey administration.
Posted inEnergy
Massachusetts offered up $35M in offshore wind tax breaks. They’ve gone unclaimed for two straight years.
A state tax program meant to catalyze the offshore wind industry in Massachusetts hasn’t drawn any interest.
Posted inEnvironment
New FEMA flood maps prompt questions, concerns across Massachusetts
Massachusetts property owners are navigating the need for flood insurance as disasters become more widespread and the state looks to reverse an urgent housing shortage.
Posted inEnergy
Healey convenes solar leaders in search of energy answers
Gov. Maura Healey heard from solar industry officials at a Monday summit pleading to cut red tape and costs associated with installing more of the green energy source in Massachusetts.