The Department of Public Utilities has indicated that gas utilities may no longer be able to charge existing gas customers for the cost of adding new ones – one step among many that the agency is taking to wean the state off of natural gas to meet climate goals. 

The agency is currently reviewing the climate compliance plans submitted by gas companies in April, to ensure their operations and future projects align with the state’s legally mandated climate goals. As part of this process, the DPU issued an order last week that new gas customers will be responsible for the entire upfront cost of connecting to the existing system unless the new customer has no alternative to natural gas.  

The order addresses the “line extension allowance”– a much-debated policy that lets gas companies subsidize new customer connections by spreading infrastructure costs to existing ratepayers. Utility companies say this policy ensures equitable access, treats customers fairly, and lowers rates by sharing costs more widely. Environmentalists counter that it incentivizes natural gas infrastructure expansion, raises costs for current customers, and undermines climate goals. 

“The DPU’s order establishes an intention to move away from line extension allowances for new gas hookups … to promote more affordable options for ratepayers,” a DPU spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “Line extension policies, along with other elements of the plans submitted by the gas companies, will be reviewed by the DPU over the next several months.” 

The new policy, if enacted, would start after the DPU issues final decisions on the gas companies’ climate compliance plans, the timeline of which is not clear as the agency doesn’t have a statutory deadline. DPU proposed an earlier version of this change in February that included more circumstances in which a utility could claim an “exception” to continue offering line extension allowances. The updated proposal narrows those circumstances, permitting allowances only when no “technically feasible” alternative exists. 

Across the US, states are reassessing gas utility line extension policies amid climate and energy affordability concerns. California and Colorado have started to eliminate the practice. New York passed a bill this summer aiming to phase out line extension allowances. Overall, 12 states plus Washington, DC, have either removed these policies or are actively reviewing them for reform, according to the Building Decarbonization Coalition, a national group that works on promoting fossil-fuel free buildings. 

The DPU made this decision after stakeholders like the Department of Energy Resources, the attorney general, the Sierra Club Environmental Law Program, and Conservation Law Foundation shared public comment letters and testimony to the agency that eliminating line extension allowances would change the equation for developers when considering whether to add gas or electrification and decarbonized energy in new buildings.   

Can Mass. turn the health care crisis around?

This week on the monthly Health or Consequences episode of The Codcast, Eric Dickson, president and CEO of UMass Memorial Health, lays out a grim picture of health care in Massachusetts if the state and federal trajectory does not change. He discusses the primary care crisis and the troubling federal landscape with John McDonough of the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health and Paul Hattis of the Lown Institute.

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Published by MassINC

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