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A climate bill the state Senate is scheduled to release in the coming days could target Massachusetts residents’ legal right to natural gas and a program to replace old pipes for the service, according to its chief author.
Sen. Michael Barrett, a Lexington Democrat who co-chairs the Telecommunications, Utilities, and Energy Committee, said the legislation will require that petitions to extend natural gas service into new areas must first consider the climate impacts of such a move and whether there are “less costly or less polluting alternatives.”
If there are no alternatives, a resident would be allowed to obtain new natural gas service, according to Barrett. But state law would “consider for the first time … whether people might have something like a heat pump that they can afford that would be better for the planet,” he said.
“Why is there even a right to gas as opposed to a right to be warm? Why is there a right specifically to gas in state law at all? That’s kind of inadvisable by current standards,” Barrett told the Herald as he walked out of the State House late Thursday afternoon.
A spokesperson for Senate President Karen Spilka confirmed the climate bill is scheduled for a Monday release but declined to outline the contents of the proposal until it is public.
Details of a late-session climate bill have been slowly emerging ever since Spilka pledged to tackle a “comprehensive” proposal during an address to the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce in April.
But the scope of what lawmakers will eventually be asked to debate and vote on appears to be shrinking as the Legislature is quickly running out of time for formal lawmaking this session.
House Speaker Ron Mariano said earlier this week that Democrats in his chamber are focused on “siting issues we have to take care of.”
“This being categorized as a big, sweeping energy bill may not be accurate,” he said. “I’m telling you what we’re working on now. We’re working on the siting situations and the issues around siting.”
Draft language of a Senate climate bill was not available Thursday but Barrett said he also proposed tweaks to a portion of state law that deals with replacing natural gas infrastructure through the Gas Safety Enhancement Program, which is also known as GSEP.
Barrett said he has proposed granting the Department of Public Utilities the ability to decommission, repair, or retire natural gas pipelines in addition to replacing them.
“You want to rewrite GSEP so that the DPU has a choice of replacing the pipe outright at significant expense, repairing it for less money, retiring the length of pipe and replacing it with network geothermal or with heat pumps, or in some other unspecified way, improving the pipe and its throughput capacity,” the Lexington Democrat said.
Barrett said he has proposed that lawmakers “keep replacement in place as terminology but add repair, retirement, or decommissioning as additional options.”
“There are a number of places where the 2014 law needs to be fine-tuned, but that would be an example,” he said.
At least one collection of unions, the New England Gas Workers Alliance, has expressed concerns that any “fundamental changes” to the GSEP program “are a risk to public safety and the reliability of the system.”
“We support the commonwealth’s efforts to combat climate change and seek energy alternatives. However, until those systems are in place and the natural gas system is no longer needed, GSEP should remain active to protect our members and the general public,” the organization wrote in a June 12 letter to lawmakers, according to a copy obtained by the Herald.
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