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Any Democrat in Massachusetts eyeing ways to slow down the state’s ambitious commitments to move away from planet-warming fossil fuels knows they’re asking for trouble with environmental advocates.  

That’s exactly what’s already playing out as a key member of the House prepares to advance a plan to ease 2030 climate targets and cut the budget for the state’s energy efficiency program.   

Rep. Mark Cusack, co-chair of the Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities, and Energy, told CommonWealth Beacon that he is planning to use Gov. Maura Healey’s energy affordability bill filed earlier this year as a vehicle to achieve those policy points and others. He is aiming for his redraft of Healey’s legislation to receive a floor vote before lawmakers break for the year on November 19.   

Cue the outrage.  

“We will fill the State House,” said Larry Chretien, executive director at Green Energy Consumers Alliance. “This is going to be one of the bigger deals for the environmental community in a long time. We’re going to give it everything.”  

The effort is bound to divide the Democratic supermajority on Beacon Hill and test officials’ willingness to defend the state’s climate policies just as winter hits and Healey mounts a reelection bid.   

Cusack is arguing that because of a seismic crackdown on clean energy from the Trump administration, the state is likely to miss its goal to halve its emissions by 2030 compared to 1990 levels. Keeping those short-term commitments on the books, then, is political and legal malpractice, he said, opening the state up to legal challenges.  

Plus, fury over sky-high energy bills last winter proved to Beacon Hill that officials need to do everything in their power to lower gas and electric costs, Cusack said. Those factors triggered Healey’s energy package, which aims to save ratepayers $10 billion over a decade, and pushed the state into “all-of-the-above” energy mode as the White House works to choke off new offshore wind and solar power.   

“We’re looking at the real possibility here, in the objective analysis, that we are not going to make our greenhouse reduction mandates,” Cusack said. “I have not found anyone who says that we are going to make our mandates.”   

But Chretien, who successfully sued the state a decade ago along with other groups for Massachusetts’s failure to do more to combat climate change, said Cusack’s concern over litigation is a “boogeyman.”  

“At this point, we want Massachusetts to give its best effort,” he said. “We’ve got five years to go to move the needle on emissions. It’s way too early to think about that. I’m just looking for effort. We understand what the Trump administration is doing to climate policy and that makes it harder. So talk to me seven years from now.”