BOSTON IS ENTERING the energy affordability buzzsaw.
With winter rate hike requests pending before state regulators, federal cuts to energy efficiency incentives and belt-tightening at the state level, Boston is launching a new program to install thousands of heat pumps and provide free individual consultations to help lower gas and electric bills.
Boston’s push to deliver 5,000 heat pumps and 10,000 building upgrades to weatherize against fluctuating temperatures by 2027, in addition to the consultations offered in six languages, comes amid a larger effort by Gov. Maura Healey to reduce utility bills through a legislative package currently sitting on Beacon Hill.
“This program is very much designed to meet the moment that we’re in,” said Oliver Sellers-Garcia, Boston’s Green New Deal director and environment commissioner, “which is concern about energy costs… [and] a real recognition that we have housing affordability issues to deal with.”
Boston’s new “energy saver program” is targeting buildings heated by expensive and inefficient sources like oil. Officials are hoping the program produces $300 million in benefits for city residents, including rebates of up to $10,000 for a heat pump installation and an average savings of $380 per year for residents heating with oil who weatherize their building.
But affordability concerns 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.
The Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities reduced Mass Save’s budget earlier this year to $4.5 billion, $500 million less than was proposed, amid uproar over spiking utility bills last winter. The most tangible outcome of that move: a smaller budget for heat pump installations and weatherizations.
Boston officials insist that this new effort is rolling out with that context in mind. The goals, which include a $150 million investment in the city through Mass Save over the three-year period, stem from a memorandum of understanding signed between the city, Eversource, and National Grid right around the time the Mass Save cuts were made.
“The Boston Energy Saver Program is about making energy solutions more accessible and affordable for customers, leveraging existing funding in the state’s three-year plan to break down barriers and deliver real impact to our communities,” a spokesperson for Mass Save said in a statement.
DPU didn’t respond to a request for comment about Boston’s push to target a certain pool of money from Mass Save.
The financial commitment is about making sure that Bostonians earn a return on their investments into Mass Save, according to a program official who was not authorized to speak publicly about the issue – a larger structural issue with the program that has come under scrutiny.
The city has negotiated with the two utilities to offer “enhanced incentives” for residents across many of Boston’s neighborhoods, including Allston, Brighton, Dorchester, Roxbury, East Boston, and others, which include free weatherizations and potentially free heat pump conversions, too. Those are “the most energy-burdened neighborhoods in Boston, and they will appreciate, thus, the biggest benefit from improving their building stock,” said Brian Swett, Boston’s chief climate officer.
State Auditor Diana DiZoglio released a report on Mass Save last month that found that as a community’s population density and the proportion of renters increase, benefits from the Mass Save program typically decrease.
Denser urban municipalities with more renters, like Boston, “were consistently found to contribute more to the program even when they ultimately do not get much back, if anything, from the program,” the report found.
“This is proportional to what should be going back into Boston, given our population and the need that’s here,” said Sellers-Garcia. “I do want to send the message to all communities that are served by Mass Save in Massachusetts: Boston is not stealing your incentive dollars. We’re just making a commitment for the first time with the administrators of the program, the utilities, that we’re going to know how much should go to Boston, and we’re going to really shoot for that target.”