I commend David Golden for his responsiveness on the issue of affordability after a winter of unexpectedly high utility bills (“Measures are needed to prevent Mass Save fraud,” April 19). It is in another area where I believe his service as a Select Board member could be improved.
Mass Save has drawn fire from Mr. Golden and others, and not for nothing – it did indeed contribute to higher bills this winter. (Other factors included colder-than-expected temperatures and approved rate increases for Eversource and other utilities.) In response, the state promptly cut Mass Save’s budget by $500 million to provide relief.
What Mr. Golden and other community members may not appreciate is the crucial role Mass Save plays in keeping energy bills down. Without its rebates and incentives, we’d keep using more and more energy – and our bills would keep going up and up. (Put simply, it’s much cheaper to help people save energy than it is to supply more of it. But most folks don’t know that or can’t/won’t front the investment, so Mass Save steps in to close the gap.)
Mr. Golden is particularly concerned about two opportunities for fraud under Mass Save, the first of which, he says, is that out-of-staters could benefit from Massachusetts’ largesse. I would be curious to know how extensive he thinks the damage could be here and how this became a talking point for an official whose town isn’t particularly close to a bordering state. (Reader, are you helping your friends and loved ones scam the state? Shame on you.)
His second criticism, that savings aren’t being passed on to consumers, is less an indictment of Mass Save than it is of capitalism. As a renter myself, I understand the relationship between landlord costs (e.g., mortgages, property taxes, insurance, etc.) and savings (e.g., from Mass Save) is incidental to the market price I pay. (Emphasis there on “market price.”) Homebuyers accrue savings because energy bills are lower than they would’ve been if homes didn’t have the efficient technologies Mass Save makes possible.
Mr. Golden concludes by imploring Governor Healey to “reconsider [her] green energy agenda” because “artificially forcing the development and implementation of alternative energies” is unduly raising costs. That someone with a real estate background, which Mr. Golden has, might voice such a perspective is unsurprising. But this is fundamentally an issue of electricity planning, and in that field it has long been known that the lowest-cost, least-risk energy portfolio includes plenty of energy efficiency and renewable energy – in other words, the very same Mass Save programs and “alternative energies” Mr. Golden decries.
Mr. Golden plainly has the courage of his convictions. But publicly faulting Mass Save and calling out the governor, as he’s done here, was a misstep. If Mr. Golden could also demonstrate the courage to master the underlying issues and educate rather than inflame his constituents, we would all benefit.
– Dan Mullen
Mullen is a consultant specializing in power sector decarbonization and electricity policy. He serves in a volunteer, non-voting capacity on Plymouth’s Climate Action-Net Zero Committee.