In the throes of what would become Massachusetts’s coldest winter in a decade and looking for a tangible win at the beginning of a reelection year, Gov. Maura Healey announced a plan in her State of the Commonwealth address this past January to provide relief to residents struggling to pay their high energy bills.

Healey’s pitch was to offer modest but concrete savings during February and March, using $180 million in state dollars to cover 15 percent of residents’ electricity costs. The utilities during those months would defer an additional 10 percent of electric bills and 10 percent of gas bills to be collected throughout the rest of the year.

The plan required buy-in from the state’s utilities, which submitted filings with state regulators to carry it out.

Yet what was supposed to be a good-hearted attempt to help customers burdened by high energy costs quickly devolved into a back-and-forth when the utilities made clear that they planned to collect interest on the deferred charges.

Six days following her annual speech, after she “reached out to” the companies to rectify the issue, Healey declared victory when her office fired off a press release hailing the decision from the companies to drop their effort in acquiescence to the governor’s “demand.”

The whole episode – ultimately over not all that much money – was a crash course in today’s energy politics in Massachusetts. And the dust-up offered a preview of the larger tensions now playing out between a governor presiding over a state with electric rates at double the national average and the utility companies charged with maintaining safe and reliable systems that need to handle more power to meet rising demand and climate targets while, of course, making money.

“I want to be clear: When it comes to utility companies, we’ve got to end business as usual,” Healey said at a rare quickly assembled press conference on July 31, just as the legislative session was ending, where she used her bully pulpit to lambaste the state’s energy providers. “Utility companies are seeking rate hikes and excessive profits, while people and businesses are struggling to pay their bills.”

For all the genuine frustration with the state’s electric and gas companies, which reward their executives with generous pay packages, challenge efforts from regulators to squeeze their profits, and don’t do enough in advocates’ eyes to wind down the gas system to decarbonize, the Healey administration also needs them to advance its priorities.

The utilities administer the Mass Save energy efficiency program, handle interconnection of solar projects, and agreed to Healey’s winter relief initiative.

It means that Healey can cast the 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.

“If you’re running for office, this is not bumper sticker stuff,” said Ann Berwick, a former chair of the Department of Public Utilities, which regulates the utilities. “You can’t condense the cost of energy and who’s to blame very well.”

More Context

• Healey sounds alarm on energy costs — but a legislative solution remains elusive for now (July 2026)
• Cold weather threatens to take bite out of Healey’s energy savings bid (January 2026)