The House this week will not take up a contentious energy policy bill that would weaken the state’s 2030 climate mandate, punting a major debate until after the Legislature’s extended holiday break that begins Thursday.  

Ten days after CommonWealth Beacon first reported on the proposal, House budget chief Aaron Michlewitz on Monday said more conversations need to take place about whether or how to defang the state’s next major emissions-reduction target.  

He described the bill as “still something that we’re working on,” and added he does not “foresee us necessarily getting to it before the end of the week.”  

It’s a significant balking from House leadership after state Rep. Mark Cusack, a Democrat from Braintree who is the chamber’s point person on energy policy, fast-tracked the reform bill through committee last week.   

“Some of the rollback pieces on the 2030 numbers have gotten a lot of interest, a lot of energy behind it, no pun intended there,” Michlewitz said of the blowback to the early House plan. “We are certainly wanting to focus on affordability and not necessarily on things of that nature,” he said, referring to the emissions deadlines.  

Under Cusack’s measure, the state’s legal goal to halve its greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 compared with 1990 levels could become merely “advisory.” The bill would also trim the energy efficiency program known as Mass Save by $500 million and cut the amount of clean energy utilities here must purchase from a 3 percent annual increase to 1 percent.  

But those dramatic changes are on ice, at least for the next few months, and Cusack’s proposal now looks more like a trial balloon whose journey quickly hit a tempest than a plan with the full backing of House Democrats. 

“We are probably going to have to have to have a conversation at some point related to whether we can meet our goals for 2030,” Michlewitz told reporters. “I think that’s a real challenge that we’re facing, particularly when you have a federal government that is trying to thwart us at every possible turn in relation to trying to get to those goals. Having that conversation is certainly coming to a head at some point, but I do not think it will be in this vehicle as we move forward.”  

“We still have a lot of work to do on that particular piece,” he added.  

The delay will give House Democrats time to forge a position more palatable to climate groups. It also pushes any action on Gov. Maura Healey’s energy-affordability legislation, which she filed in May, until into or after the winter with high utility bills again looming.