Mass. governor taps the energy playbook to cushion voters before Election Day

With heating oil continuing to sit above $6 a gallon, Governor Maura Healey declared a state of energy emergency last week to unlock $150 million in relief.

She says the aim is to help middle-class families.

Alison, what are the timelines and measures that residents should know about with this energy emergency?

There are a bunch of moving parts.

There will be extra heating assistance benefits to low-income households, so households that heat with oil will get a 20% bump in home heating assistance, and households that heat with utilities will get a 15% increase, and that assistance is going to start on November 1st.

There is also a new middle-class home heating assistance for households that are earning between 60% and 100% of the state median income.

Those middle-income households are families of four that bring in up to $171,000 a household?

Yes, and that's going to benefit around 50,000 households.

They're set to receive about $680 per household, and that will kick in in December.

The governor's plan also calls for temporarily waiving clean energy charges from January through March.

Uh, executive orders, l- like this energy emergency and temporary fee waivers, they buy time, but what are lawmakers actually doing about the underlying policy drivers that keep pushing winter energy costs to emergency levels year after year?

Sure.

So the governor's action here really comes in the absence of energy affordability legislation.

There's been energy affordability legislation closely watched by the governor, of course, residents who are about to start turning on their heat if they haven't already.

So this legislation has been hung up in conference committee.

Under new legislative rules, lawmakers don't need to agree to a compromise, don't need to pass a bill until really the end of the session, which is in January.

The House version of the energy affordability bill claims that it would save ratepayers $9 billion over the next decade, and the Senate version claims it would save ratepayers $14 billion over that same time period.