Sponsored by The Boston Foundation
House climate bill is a huge step backward
November 16, 2025
Massachusetts is known as a leader in clean energy and climate action. Our policies have lowered emissions, created jobs, and helped families save money on energy. But a bill currently under consideration in the House of Representatives on Beacon Hill threatens to undo that progress and would be a damaging mistake for our state.
This bill, proposed by Rep. Mark Cusack, the co-chair of the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities, and Energy, is essentially a fossil fuel industry wish list. It rolls back the Commonwealth’s enforceable 2030 climate targets, weakens the Mass Save energy efficiency program, eliminates efforts designed to make energy efficiency more affordable for working families, and even resurrects the disastrous “pipeline tax” that would allow utilities to charge residents for unnecessary gas infrastructure. In short, it hands fossil fuel companies a gift while leaving Massachusetts households to foot the bill.
At a moment when President Trump is dismantling federal climate policy, this bill would do the work for him. It would abandon our 2030 emissions targets, gut our most effective programs, and lock Massachusetts into the very fossil fuel dependence that has driven today’s affordability crisis. It would cede our hard-earned reputation as a clean energy innovator and put our economy, our health, and our climate at risk.
Our lawmakers must be clear on what’s really driving high energy costs: it’s not clean energy. It’s fossil fuels, gas infrastructure, and aging transmission systems.
In 2023 alone, Massachusetts consumers spent $20 billion on energy in their homes and businesses. Programs like Mass Save delivered over $34 billion in savings between 2012 and 2023 and generated more than $3 for every $1 invested. The program is the only tool we have that actively reduces energy burden for all of us, including low- and moderate-income households that are hardest hit by rising energy costs.
Mass Save has weatherized 350,000 homes (including 70,000 low-income homes), created nearly 76,000 jobs, and saved the equivalent output of five power plants. Even if you’ve never used it directly, you’ve benefited from lower wholesale energy prices because your neighbors did. These are real savings in people’s wallets.
Published by MassINC