Action Alert! All hands on deck to stop Baker’s biomass rollbacks!
(1) STAND UP AND BE COUNTED ONCE MORE on Tuesday, March 29th, when the Baker administration resumes its campaign to weaken our clean energy programs and use ratepayer dollars to burn trees for electricity!
The Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources (DOER) has been required to hold another public comment period on the biomass rule changes that it proposed last year. The new changes are minimal, so all you need to do is dust off your comments from last time! According to DOER’s hearing announcement, any written comments submitted previously will be included in the record and you do not need to resubmit them.
Please register here to participate in the DOER Public Hearing on RPS Changes, on March 29th from 1-4pm via Zoom.
We want to show up in numbers at the hearing to demonstrate that people across the state are still paying attention to this issue!
Talking Points:
- Wood-burning power plants are not “clean energy” – they emit large quantities of harmful air pollution and are damaging to our health, our climate, and our forests
- The new regulations open the door even wider for dozens of existing, highly polluting biomass power plants across New England to sell renewable energy credits in Massachusetts
- Massachusetts ratepayers don’t want to subsidize polluting biomass power plants with their clean energy dollars, here or elsewhere!
For more information please visit PFPI’s website.
(2) As the Baker administration moves forward with these regulations, we need support from the Massachusetts State Legislature more than ever! Please continue to recruit more House members to cosponsor legislation to remove biomass from our clean energy programs.
While the Senate has agreed to move forward with S.2197, “An act to prevent biomass energy to protect the air we breathe,” we still need to amplify our outreach to the House to increase support for its companion bill, H.3333. As of today, we have 40 House cosponsors of H.3333, with the recent addition of Representatives David Linsky and Jon Santiago to the list. We are now two-thirds of the way toward 60 co-sponsors of H.3333 in the House by the May 2nd deadline for co-sponsorship.
Three simple steps you can take will make a big difference:
- Check the list of H.3333’s co-sponsors to see if your House Representative is on the list
- If your representative is not on the list, contact their office and urge them to co-sponsor H.3333 to remove woody biomass from the RPS and the APS (click here to find out who your state legislators are and how to contact them)
- E-mail katyeiseman@gmail.com if your representative commits to co-sponsoring or has questions about the bill so we can help ensure they follow through!
Governor Baker’s proposed changes to the RPS will allow Massachusetts’ ratepayers dollars to prop up polluting biomass power plants in Maine, New Hampshire, and elsewhere – this is why we need the Legislature to act quickly! Click here for more information about H.3333/S.2197.
We will continue to send out regular emails and updates as we count down to May 2nd.
Thank you for your advocacy! (Please excuse duplicate emails!)
Katy Eiseman,
on behalf of PFPI and the No Toxic Biomass campaign
(413) 320-0747