“The Governor’s energy legislation offers tremendous cost-saving benefits for consumers, and it can also help Boston’s anchor institutions and major employers greatly increase their use of lower-cost, renewable, and clean energy sources.
Three measures that are especially exciting:
- Authorizing utilities to own and operate geothermal energy systems for large users while ensuring only shareholders, not ratepayers, are exposed to any financial risks. This provision opens the door to Boston businesses and institutions harvesting affordable, renewable energy for cooling and heating from sources like Boston Harbor, the Charles River Basin, our wastewater system, and other local sources—an exciting long-term possibility we should start exploring now.
- Upgrading the interconnection process to reduce time and cost to connect new energy loads (solar, other renewables, and storage) to the grid. The months or even years of waiting to connect has been a long-standing complaint from leaders seeking to move to clean, renewable electricity for their buildings and away from fossil fuels like natural gas, because of the complexity and red tape associated with utility interconnections.
- Opening the door to full evaluation of cutting-edge technologies like carbon-free small modular reactors (SMRs) to generate electricity. We acknowledge both the need thoroughly to vet concerns about small nuclear as an energy source and also SMRs’ promise for energy diversification, decarbonization, and resilience and lowering the future cost of energy.”
-Amy Longsworth, Executive Director, Boston Green Ribbon Commission