Legislation released by the House Tuesday aims to reform the siting and permitting process for renewable energy projects. (Alvaro Barrientos/Associated Press)
Beacon Hill lawmakers are set to advance two major priorities this week as the end of the two-year session swiftly approaches — clean energy reforms and changes to the hospital industry inspired by the Steward Health Care crisis.
House lawmakers teed up Tuesday a bill focused on energy, siting, and permitting while Senators released their rewrite of a massive health care bill Monday that top Democrats have argued put in place key policies to help the troubled industry.
If both bills clear their respective branches, they will likely head to closed-door negotiations because the House and Senate have each passed a separate version of what the other chamber put forward this week.
The reps and senators appear to disagree on key provisions in the energy and health care bills. That could complicate backroom discussions between lawmakers as they look to find compromises on competing proposals.
Representatives will take action first this week on legislation House Speaker Ron Mariano described as an effort to meet the state’s long-term emission reduction goals by establishing new oversight of and easier paths to energy permitting and siting.
“The House will vote this week on legislation aimed at increasing our supply of clean energy by setting new renewable energy generation and storage procurement targets and streamlining the state and local permitting process, building on the work that the Legislature has done in recent years to modernize the commonwealth’s energy grid and to combat the climate crisis,” the Quincy Democrat said in a statement.
The bill, which the House will debate Wednesday, sets a 15-month deadline to site and permit large clean energy projects and a one-year deadline to site and permit small infrastructure projects, a move that lines up with provisions included in the Senate’s version of the bill.
House Democrats also call for a new clean energy procurement of 9.45 million megawatt hours, a massive push that could see state officials pursue nuclear, wind, solar, and hydro options, said Rep. Jeff Roy, a Franklin Democrat and author of the House bill.
The proposal also authorizes the state to procure up to 5,000-megawatt hours of energy storage.
“As we move to renewables, they’re intermittent resources, and when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind is not blowing, we need the capability to take that energy which is stored up and move it to the grid,” Roy told the Herald.
The legislation leaves behind many measures the Senate proposed in its version of the bill, including language around limiting the use of natural gas and sunsetting an infrastructure replacement program.
Senators argued their proposals around natural gas were a “smart, managed retreat” from an over-reliance on the energy source. But Roy said ending the infrastructure replacement program could lead to unsafe conditions as residents continue to use the resource, especially on hot days.
“We have an obligation to see that [natural gas is] delivered safely to our homes. So this repair and replacement program known as GSEP is vital to keeping our communities and consumers safe. I’m not suggesting that the Senate is less concerned with safety, but I think the decommissioning that they’re calling for is a little too early in this process,” he said.
House lawmakers also did not include Senate-backed measures banning competitive electric suppliers from enrolling new residential customers and expanding the state’s bottle deposit law.
Roy said he does not agree with removing competitive retail electric suppliers from the market because they could “drive innovation and take advantage of advanced metering infrastructure.”
“We’re not amenable to shutting down the market and taking away consumer choice from energy purchases,” he said. “… I, like the Senate, want to get rid of the bad players in this space, but I don’t think shutting down the market is a wise direction to move.”
A day earlier, top Democrats in the Senate put forward health care legislation aimed at market oversight, transparency, and cost control months after the House took action on its own bill.
Portions of the bill are in response to Steward Health Care’s bankruptcy, a situation that has left communities across Massachusetts facing the potential loss of crucial medical facilities.
Sen. Cindy Creem, an Arlington Democrat and chief author of the bill, said the health care system is “struggling.”
“The recent events concerning Steward Health System have exacerbated a pre-existing crisis across all aspects of our health care delivery system — from primary care to emergency care. While there are many factors that are destabilizing the delivery system, the entry of profit-driven entities and models of care into the system has played a key role,” she said in a statement.
The proposal, which the Senate plans to debate Thursday, puts in place reporting and oversight requirements for private equity firms who take a stake in health care organizations operating in Massachusetts.
State officials would receive 60 days’ notice before providers or their owners change operations or governance structures or agree to “significant” new for-profit investments or acquisitions by for-profit entities.
Regulators would also get a heads up before officials sign off on the sale of their assets for a lease-back agreement similar to the one Steward Health Care engaged in with Medical Properties Trust that eventually sent the hospital organization into the red.
Senators stopped short of their House colleagues on reforming the lease agreements.
Representatives unanimously voted in May to bar the Department of Public Health from issuing licenses to acute care hospitals if they are leasing the land on which their main campus is located — or the area where a majority of inpatient beds are located — from a health care real estate investment trust fund.
Steven Senne/ Associated Press file
A health care bill, prompted by the bankruptcy of Steward Health Care, could see action on Beacon Hill this week as the legislative session draws to a close. (AP Photo/Steven Senne, File)
