President and Chief Executive Officer of The Trustees of Reservations, Former Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts
I'm urging the Massachusetts house and senate to support S.2106 to prevent third party suppliers from taking on new customers. In my former role I saw firsthand how these third-party suppliers price-gauge and employ predatory practices that hit low-income customers the hardest, which is why Governor Baker and I supported legislation to stop this industry from doing more damage to residential customers, just as now Governor Healey does. Choice is great, and customers can access choice through municipal aggregation programs in many communities across the Commonwealth with no scams involved. Green attributes are great, but this is not a sector driving renewables deployment to support progress on climate goals in MA, but largely packaging cheap energy credits from other states. The well-documented harms of third-party suppliers far outweigh the benefits and put customers across the Commonwealth at risk. It is high time to stop these scam-artists once and for all. cc: Mike Barrett, Jeffrey Roy With thanks to Sabrina Shankman and Miriam Wasser for covering this critical issue and especially to the AG for this striking report.
“The size of the harm to consumers, the significant losses in seven out of eight years of this study, and the continuing loss from one year to the next for low-income consumers all strongly suggest that consumer harm will continue,” the report reads. “Thus, we again strongly recommend that the Massachusetts Legislature eliminate the electric supply market for individual residential consumers.”https://lnkd.in/gK9kj-yJ
Tim Roughan
2mo
Instead of simply throwing out choice for residential customers, a new requirement that bans a supplier from putting a customer on a variable rate at the end of the initial term and instead requires them to go back to the utility default rate would make the suppliers have to work to keep their customers with attractive options. Ending the auto-enrollment at the end of the term to whatever the supplier wants to charge would solve the majority of the problem.
Paul M. Lopes
3mo
I was involved in electric restructuring back in 1997-1998 that initially offered choice for large customers then transitioned to the residential sector. My personal opinion is to eliminate choice for senior and low-income customers.
Beverly Craig
3mo
I can’t believe how often All In Energy is trying to help a customer access masssave insulation benefits and end up having to help people extract themselves from horrible third party suppliers. Even someone very sophisticated and formerly at Wegowise I know recently realized he was on bad 3rd party plan. Get them out of MA!
Todd Ford
2mo
…..Or actually do the work and regulate them better. This proposed legislation is a copt out and a free pass for DPU who was tasked with preventing these abuses in the first place! As a resident, the last thing I want is to be beholden to the monopoly utility, but perhaps thats exactly what the Utilities want….
M.I.T. Lecturer/Research Director of Energy Management Practice and Innovation
2moWe pay twice the national average for electricity in Massachusetts. We desperately need an electricity marketplace that is innovative, robust, and consumer-protected - a conclusion from our studies of how we can respond effectively to the climate problem using the already-here revolution of AI. After making the necessary regulatory adjustments, we see the likely potential of an innovative, nimble retail electric market that can help us dramatically reduce electric rates for everyone. And for the climate, it is not reasonable to expect a ubiquitous transition to heat pumps and EVs will happen with our business-as usual regulation and CCA's. We need smart rates to become available for our newly-smart devices to do the job they can do well - which is to avoid power grid growth requirements. Without innovation, our peak grid is anticipated to double by 2050 - with all of that growth due to new electric transportation and heat. With innovation, most of that grid growth requirement can be prevented. And as a wonderful side benefit - everyone's electric price drops if EVs and heat pump electric loads fill the "empty seats" we have on our grid 95% of the time - the valleys of electric demand rather than the peaks.