House Energy Chair Signals Effort to Dial Back 2030 Climate Commitments

by Jordan Wolman, CommonWealth Beacon
November 7, 2025

THE POINT PERSON on energy policy in the House is planning to use Gov. Maura Healey’s pending energy affordability legislation as a vehicle to pull back on the state’s ambitious climate goals.   

Rep. Mark Cusack, co-chair of the Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities, and Energy, intends to take aim at the emissions reduction commitments the state is racing to meet by 2030, he told CommonWealth Beacon in an exclusive interview. Cusack said he is still weighing options as to exactly what shape such a move could take.  

“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, emphasizing his goal is not to undermine the state’s clean energy commitments but rather ensure they are realistic. “I have not found anyone who says that we are going to make our mandates.” 

In 2021, Massachusetts passed legislation laying out interim targets, including a 2030 goal to cut pollution by 50 percent compared with 1990 levels, on top of a larger effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 85 percent by 2050.  

Cusack’s effort threatens to divide the Democratic supermajority on Beacon Hill, enrage climate advocates, and shake up the dynamics around volatile energy politics right at the start of winter — and Healey’s reelection bid.  

It would also shift the debate in the middle of both deep rollbacks to clean energy funding and climate regulations from the Trump administration and a heightened political sensitivity in Massachusetts to the state’s high energy costs that contribute to soaring costs of living. 

Healey filed her energy affordability bill with the Legislature in May. It calls for reforms to gas and electric charges and boosts in energy supply in an effort to save ratepayers $10 billion over the next decade.   

Cusack, a moderate Democrat from Braintree, said he is pushing for his redraft of the bill to receive a floor vote before lawmakers break for the year on November 19. Cusack has the support of House Speaker Ron Mariano, he added.

Cusack also said he plans to propose reducing the budget for Mass Save, the state’s signature energy efficiency program, to $4 billion in what would amount to a $500 million cut. State regulators approved a $4.5 billion budget for Mass Save earlier this year, though in so doing rejected a larger proposed increase. 

Mass Save is a ratepayer-funded collaboration among the state’s major utility companies to offer discounted energy efficiency upgrades like heat pumps and weatherization, but has become somewhat of a political punching bag since the program’s costs appear as a line item on utility bills. Cusack said he doesn’t want to hamstring the program’s substantive work, but takes issue with its advertising and administrative budget. 

And he rejected Healey’s proposal to reform Mass Save by allowing the utilities to borrow money through bonds as a “gimmick.” 

Cusack said in the interview that he’s concerned about the potential for legal challenges should the state fail to meet its 2030 commitments. Massachusetts did meet its milder 2025 emissions reduction goals, and state statute allows for some flexibility in missing the interim targets, since officials must report to the Legislature what are the “remedial steps that might be taken to offset the excess emissions and ensure compliance with the next upcoming limit.”   

“It’s definitely on my mind,” Cusack said about potential future litigation. 

It isn’t yet clear how Cusack plans to shift the climate commitments, including whether the 2030 goal would be lowered, delayed, or both. And Cusack pledged not to touch the larger 2050 goal to ensure that “we aren’t taking our foot off the gas.” 

But if Cusack, in his first year as chair of the committee, moved forward with some version of such a plan, it would put him at odds with some of the state’s other key power players. 

Energy and Environmental Affairs Secretary Rebecca Tepper told CommonWealth Beacon in an interview last month that adjusting or pushing back the state’s climate goals is “not our focus right now.” 

“Clean energy is the way that we’re going to be powering the future,” she said.  

It isn’t likely that Cusack’s counterpart on the Senate side, Michael Barrett of Lexington, who co-chairs the energy committee, would go along with such changes, either, given his influential role in crafting the 2021 climate legislation that Cusack is targeting.  

Cusack seemed to recognize that he’s teeing up a fight. 

“There will always be differences between the branches,” Cusack said. “But I think from the outcry we've heard from our constituents last winter, and just the reality of the attacks from the federal government, that this is a very responsible and responsive piece of legislation.” 

Cusack has previously said that “everything must remain on the table” as it relates to reassessing state climate targets.  

But his intention to use the energy affordability bill to specifically adjust the state’s 2030 commitments has not been previously reported and could test Beacon Hill’s resolve to defend the emission reduction goals enacted just four years ago that have formed the backbone of an economywide transition away from fossil fuels. 

Forcing lawmakers to go on the record with such a move would plunge the Legislature into an uncomfortable position. After President Trump won election a year ago, he moved swiftly to stop new offshore wind permits, yanked funding for clean energy technologies like electric vehicles, and ended tax credits for solar projects.  

That’s why, Cusack said, a move to ratchet back the state climate goals is a simple math question. To no fault of the state’s, the assault on clean energy from Washington likely means no new large-scale renewable generation will come on to the grid during Trump’s presidency, outside of the Vineyard Wind project that is already operating and a hydropower project slated to start delivering electricity soon from Quebec.  

That landscape, plus last winter’s outrage over high energy bills, is precisely what’s thrown the Healey administration into “all-of-the-above” energy mode, filing the energy affordability bill to attempt to remove ratepayer charges, speed up solar deployment, and even express openness to more natural gas.  

Still, an effort to touch 2030 commitments that are five years away is bound to galvanize environmental advocates who fought successfully for those goals under a Republican governor, Charlie Baker, and won in court to preserve them. In addition to the topline pollution reduction limits, there are targets for transportation, buildings, and other sectors. 

"They fought for them. I voted for them,” Cusack said. “I'm fully aware of the implications of doing anything with them, but we also need to live in reality.” 

When asked if the climate goals might be worth leaving in place for now to at least send the message that the state remains committed to a clean energy economy, Cusack responded that “the inverse of that is saying, ‘Don’t tell the truth.’ What’s the political benefit of that?”  

The House redraft also aims to boost solar generation in Massachusetts by speeding up interconnections for new projects, instituting a “safe harbor” provision to make it easier for solar projects to be placed in construction to qualify for expiring federal tax credits, and allowing municipalities to deploy more net-metered solar. 

Cusack said he supports Healey’s proposal to reduce the solar net-metering compensation rates, which are among the highest in the country, in an effort to lower electric bills.  

“These are sobering times, and you have to have an adult conversation about where we are,” Cusack said. “This is not an ideological thing. This is not, ‘I don't believe in clean energy.’ This is none of that. This is just a fact-based analysis of where we are and where we're going to be by 2030. None of us want to be in this position. None of us want to be having this conversation. We're just trying to be the adults in the room." 

This article first appeared on CommonWealth Beacon and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.