So which one is it? Financial drain or money saver — and climate hero —for Massachusetts utility customers?
The concerns about extra charges are real — "energy efficiency” costs can range from 7 percent to 14 percent of gas and electric bills. That's no small chunk of change whenheating and coolingbills can easily reach several hundred dollars a month.
Supporters of Mass Save counter that these charges are unavoidable — it's just how much it costs for Massachusetts to make good on its climate commitments. Plus, they argue,the investment pays dividends. For every dollar invested in the program, customers who use its offerings see $2.76 in benefits, according to Mass Save administrators. They say those who don't use the program benefit, too, because when energy demand is curtailed, costs drop for everyone.
"People fundamentally don't understand what these programs do, how they show up in everybody's life, how they benefit everyone,” said Amy Boyd Rabin, vice president of policy at the Environmental League of Massachusetts, who served on a state committee overseeing Mass Save for more than a decade.
But what the program offers now is a far cry from where it started.
Mass Save was launched in 2008 as an energy efficiency program that would be administered by investor-owned utility companies. The administrators propose three-year plans to achieve certain goals — such as replacing a certain number of appliances or performing a particular target of home weatherizations — and the utilities receive incentives from the state for hitting their mark.
The goal was to slash energy use — good for the planet, good for people's bills — but the method had less to do with quitting fossil fuels, and more to do with efficiency.
Until recently, the program was mostly something people thought about when they needed new light bulbs. But the program took on new significancefive years ago, after the state passed some of the country'smost ambitious climate mandates — to slash carbon emissions to half of 1990 levels by 2030, and effectively zero them out by 2050. Suddenly, Mass Save was the best, and perhaps only, tool to get fossil fuels out of buildings, which are responsible for more than a third of emissions inthe state.
So advocates rallied, protesters protested, andlegislators legislated, and Mass Save was reformed from an energy efficiency-program to an emissions-fighting one.
The issue, say advocates who support the new goals of the program, is that all the easy stuff — like light bulbs — is already done.
"They essentially moved from things that were low-hanging fruit to go higher up the tree,” said Larry Chretien, executive director of the Green Energy Consumers Alliance.
Officials with Governor Charlie Baker's administration, which oversaw the shift, say they had generallybeen on board, but hadn't been sure about the speed and scope of the changes. In interviews on background, due to conflicts with their current positions, two former officials said the administration had worried that hitting a 50 percent cut in emissions was overly ambitious in Massachusetts — they wanted 45 percent — and that leaning too hard into heat pumps would quickly eat up the entire Mass Save budget.
The new focus of the program also meant no longer offering customers cash for efficient oil and gas systems. Mass Save was also required to do its work in a more equitable way, meaning paying for low- and moderate-income households to get off oil and gas and into electric heat pumps.
The conversion can cost upward of $50,000, so "you can't just offer a low- or moderate-income household $10,000,” said state Senator Michael Barrett, who was behind a series of climate bills that set the state on its path as a nationwide leader in addressing the climate crisis withheat pump conversions.
"So, yeah, program expenses started to climb,” he said.
For Mass Save,a $2.8 billion plan that had covered the years 2019 to 2021 spiked to $4 billion for 2022 to 2024.For the next three years, it climbed again, to $5 billion, before state regulators slashed $500 million.
Once reforms were underway, Boyd said, she and others shifted the Mass Save focus to reshaping the program, with less time explaining it to the public.Now, with the program's high costs frustrating legislators and consumers alike, Boyd believes that lack of communication was a misstep."I think we did ourselves a disservice by taking our eye off of the point of Mass Save,” Boydsaid.
It was never going to be easy. Halving emissions would require convertinga million homes and 750,000 cars to electricity by 2030.
Then President Trump came back into office and swiftly changed the game, eliminating climate-related funds to states, while delaying offshore wind projects under construction and canceling others that were planned.
So just as electricity demand in the Commonwealth was growing — in large part thanks to those new heat pumps — the pace of clean energy coming onto the grid was falling below expectations. Meanwhile, the utilities expanded gas and electric delivery systems, which are also paid for by ratepayers.
Energy bills in Massachusetts went through the roof, and are now among the highest in the nation. But while energy efficiency is singled out on bills, other increasing costs — such as gas system expansion or corporate profits — are not.
Thevoices decrying Mass Save as a money suck started getting more and more attention,including on Beacon Hill.
In 2025, energy affordability became a key talking point for Governor Maura Healey, who introduced a bill to address the issue, including offering up new ways to pay for the program and make it more effective.
Earlier this year, anenergy bill that passed the House took direct aim at the Mass Save program, with a plan to slash $1 billion from its budget, beyond the$500 million already cut last year.
"There is a real sense now to get Mass Save back to an energy efficiency program, where the goal is to save money for the consumer, but also save energy,” said state Representative Mark Cusack, a Democrat from Braintree who sponsored the bill to cut Mass Save's budget and is House chair of the Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities, and Energy.
Environmental advocates who support Mass Save say Cusack's bill would effectively gut the program because the billion dollar cut would come almost entirely in the final year of the cycle, rather than being spread across three years.
They also say the implications would extend far beyond a year. The cuts would likely require layoffs and changes to the supply chain, and it would take longer to later ramp back up.
At Mass Save, program administrators say they're open to working with policymakers onadjustments. But you get what you pay for.
Kate Peters, director of energy efficiency at Eversource, speaking on behalf of Mass Save, said the program could shift its incentives to align with any kind of policy goal. "We have a lot of levers to pull and a lot of things to look at in terms of how to best utilize whatever amount of funding.”
Cusack and the critics of his bill do agree on a few things: Both want to identify better ways to fund Mass Save. And both sides question whether it makes sense for the utilities to continue administering it.
"We are at a crossroads, where it is no longer possible to keep financing this entirely through electric bills,” Boyd said. "We need to get serious about where sources of funding are going to come from.”
As lawmakers consider significant changes to the MassSave program, the Globe is hoping to speak with people who have used it. If you'd be willing to talk about your experiences with MassSave, please fill out the form below.
So which one is it? Financial drain or money saver — and climate hero —for Massachusetts utility customers?
The concerns about extra charges are real — "energy efficiency” costs can range from 7 percent to 14 percent of gas and electric bills. That's no small chunk of change whenheating and coolingbills can easily reach several hundred dollars a month.
Supporters of Mass Save counter that these charges are unavoidable — it's just how much it costs for Massachusetts to make good on its climate commitments. Plus, they argue,the investment pays dividends. For every dollar invested in the program, customers who use its offerings see $2.76 in benefits, according to Mass Save administrators. They say those who don't use the program benefit, too, because when energy demand is curtailed, costs drop for everyone.
"People fundamentally don't understand what these programs do, how they show up in everybody's life, how they benefit everyone,” said Amy Boyd Rabin, vice president of policy at the Environmental League of Massachusetts, who served on a state committee overseeing Mass Save for more than a decade.
But what the program offers now is a far cry from where it started.
Mass Save was launched in 2008 as an energy efficiency program that would be administered by investor-owned utility companies. The administrators propose three-year plans to achieve certain goals — such as replacing a certain number of appliances or performing a particular target of home weatherizations — and the utilities receive incentives from the state for hitting their mark.
The goal was to slash energy use — good for the planet, good for people's bills — but the method had less to do with quitting fossil fuels, and more to do with efficiency.
Until recently, the program was mostly something people thought about when they needed new light bulbs. But the program took on new significancefive years ago, after the state passed some of the country'smost ambitious climate mandates — to slash carbon emissions to half of 1990 levels by 2030, and effectively zero them out by 2050. Suddenly, Mass Save was the best, and perhaps only, tool to get fossil fuels out of buildings, which are responsible for more than a third of emissions inthe state.
So advocates rallied, protesters protested, andlegislators legislated, and Mass Save was reformed from an energy efficiency-program to an emissions-fighting one.
The issue, say advocates who support the new goals of the program, is that all the easy stuff — like light bulbs — is already done.
"They essentially moved from things that were low-hanging fruit to go higher up the tree,” said Larry Chretien, executive director of the Green Energy Consumers Alliance.
Officials with Governor Charlie Baker's administration, which oversaw the shift, say they had generallybeen on board, but hadn't been sure about the speed and scope of the changes. In interviews on background, due to conflicts with their current positions, two former officials said the administration had worried that hitting a 50 percent cut in emissions was overly ambitious in Massachusetts — they wanted 45 percent — and that leaning too hard into heat pumps would quickly eat up the entire Mass Save budget.
The new focus of the program also meant no longer offering customers cash for efficient oil and gas systems. Mass Save was also required to do its work in a more equitable way, meaning paying for low- and moderate-income households to get off oil and gas and into electric heat pumps.
The conversion can cost upward of $50,000, so "you can't just offer a low- or moderate-income household $10,000,” said state Senator Michael Barrett, who was behind a series of climate bills that set the state on its path as a nationwide leader in addressing the climate crisis withheat pump conversions.
"So, yeah, program expenses started to climb,” he said.
For Mass Save,a $2.8 billion plan that had covered the years 2019 to 2021 spiked to $4 billion for 2022 to 2024.For the next three years, it climbed again, to $5 billion, before state regulators slashed $500 million.
Once reforms were underway, Boyd said, she and others shifted the Mass Save focus to reshaping the program, with less time explaining it to the public.Now, with the program's high costs frustrating legislators and consumers alike, Boyd believes that lack of communication was a misstep."I think we did ourselves a disservice by taking our eye off of the point of Mass Save,” Boydsaid.
It was never going to be easy. Halving emissions would require convertinga million homes and 750,000 cars to electricity by 2030.
Then President Trump came back into office and swiftly changed the game, eliminating climate-related funds to states, while delaying offshore wind projects under construction and canceling others that were planned.
So just as electricity demand in the Commonwealth was growing — in large part thanks to those new heat pumps — the pace of clean energy coming onto the grid was falling below expectations. Meanwhile, the utilities expanded gas and electric delivery systems, which are also paid for by ratepayers.
Energy bills in Massachusetts went through the roof, and are now among the highest in the nation. But while energy efficiency is singled out on bills, other increasing costs — such as gas system expansion or corporate profits — are not.
Thevoices decrying Mass Save as a money suck started getting more and more attention,including on Beacon Hill.
In 2025, energy affordability became a key talking point for Governor Maura Healey, who introduced a bill to address the issue, including offering up new ways to pay for the program and make it more effective.
Earlier this year, anenergy bill that passed the House took direct aim at the Mass Save program, with a plan to slash $1 billion from its budget, beyond the$500 million already cut last year.
"There is a real sense now to get Mass Save back to an energy efficiency program, where the goal is to save money for the consumer, but also save energy,” said state Representative Mark Cusack, a Democrat from Braintree who sponsored the bill to cut Mass Save's budget and is House chair of the Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities, and Energy.
Environmental advocates who support Mass Save say Cusack's bill would effectively gut the program because the billion dollar cut would come almost entirely in the final year of the cycle, rather than being spread across three years.
They also say the implications would extend far beyond a year. The cuts would likely require layoffs and changes to the supply chain, and it would take longer to later ramp back up.
At Mass Save, program administrators say they're open to working with policymakers onadjustments. But you get what you pay for.
Kate Peters, director of energy efficiency at Eversource, speaking on behalf of Mass Save, said the program could shift its incentives to align with any kind of policy goal. "We have a lot of levers to pull and a lot of things to look at in terms of how to best utilize whatever amount of funding.”
Cusack and the critics of his bill do agree on a few things: Both want to identify better ways to fund Mass Save. And both sides question whether it makes sense for the utilities to continue administering it.
"We are at a crossroads, where it is no longer possible to keep financing this entirely through electric bills,” Boyd said. "We need to get serious about where sources of funding are going to come from.”
As lawmakers consider significant changes to the MassSave program, the Globe is hoping to speak with people who have used it. If you'd be willing to talk about your experiences with MassSave, please fill out the form below.