Nearly two months after the Senate followed the House in passing sprawling energy affordability legislation that lays the foundation for a crackdown on competitive electric suppliers, the industry’s opposition to the measure is starting to come into clearer view.
The Retail Energy Supply Association and Retail Energy Advancement League, which share member companies like Constellation, NRG, and Shell that generate or purchase electricity to sell directly to customers, have spent a combined $80,000 in lobbying through the first half of this year — about as much as the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce and Associated Industries of Massachusetts have each spent.
That would put the groups on pace for $160,000 this year, the most since REAL launched in 2022 and since RESA started lobbying in Massachusetts in 2018, state records show. The two groups have combined to spend roughly $1 million lobbying state government since 2018.
Plus, the energy companies and their trade groups are drawing lawmakers’ attention to a new poll that ostensibly shows the industry’s popularity among Bay Staters, said Frank Caliva, RESA’s national spokesperson. That poll of 500 Massachusetts ratepayers, commissioned by RESA, was released just days before the Senate voted on its energy bill and found that about 9 in 10 respondents support “maintaining the ability to choose their electric supplier.”
The pushback comes as Democrats on Beacon Hill are on the cusp of a long-sought breakthrough to rein in what critics contend are shady energy companies that rip off unwitting customers by signing them up for electricity at a reduced cost only to then raise prices later.
The industry is supporting a slew of reforms — including stricter oversight for direct sales to customers and removing certain customer fees — put forward by Gov. Maura Healey and advanced by both the House and Senate. But a new effort this year to grant individual municipalities the ability to ban the companies from directly selling to customers is a bridge too far, Caliva said.
Even as the industry has beaten back past attempts to ban it from selling to consumers, this new proposal gaining traction means this moment is different, he added.
“We are certainly very concerned about this bill, and I think the risk here is pretty significant,” Caliva said in an interview. “We are trying to sound the alarm that even this version of the approach, which is different than an outright state ban, will have significant negative repercussions for the market. There’s really no equivocating about it: It’s a concerningly fraught moment.”
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Published by MassINC