Go Solar Massachusetts Updates

Ninety-two Massachusetts organizations, businesses, and officials joined more than two hundred and fifteen other stakeholders from across the region in calling on Governor Patrick and other Northeast and Mid-Atlantic governors to build on progress reducing pollution and promoting clean energy by improving the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI).  The coalition highlighted RGGI’s success to date and called for strengthening of the program’s pollution reduction targets and increasing investment in clean energy and energy efficiency measures that benefit the climate, the economy, public health, and energy consumers.

Massachusetts legislators sent a comprehensive energy bill to the governor's desk today that will dramatically expand access to solar energy for families, businesses and local governments. The bill, An Act relative to competitively priced electricity in the Commonwealth, expands the state's most successful solar program, the net-metering program, which allows local governments, homeowners, businesses and others to sell the excess solar power they generate back to the grid, significantly offsetting the cost of installing solar. The cap on net-metering was lifted from 1% of peak load for private generation and 2% for public generation to 3% for both private and public entities. This means that a total of 6% of Massachusetts' electricity can now be net-metered.

Cities and towns across the Commonwealth are leading the way when it comes to solar power according to a new report released today by Environment Massachusetts Research & Policy Center.

In a part of Massachusetts strong in solar power, the city of Holyoke is helping to lead the way, according to a new report released today by Environment Massachusetts Research & Policy Center. Holyoke has 4,527.00 kilowatts of installed photovoltaic capacity, ranking it second in the Commonwealth – behind only Boston, despite having less than 10% of the populations of the Bay State’s capital.