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Witnesses urge cutting or reworking Massachusetts' Alternative Portfolio Standard, warn of uneven benefits
Summary
Witnesses at a Joint Committee hearing urged the Legislature to scale back or eliminate the Alternative Portfolio Standard (APS), arguing it subsidizes fossil-fuel combined heat and power and woody biomass while delivering limited benefits to ratepayers and uneven benefits to residential customers.
Kerry Catayan, testifying for Green Energy Consumers Alliance, told the Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities, and Energy that the Commonwealth's Alternative Portfolio Standard (APS) should be scaled back or abolished, saying, “Every year, the ratepayers of the Commonwealth pay electric bills that are roughly $30,000,000 higher than they otherwise would be because of the APS.”
Catayan said the program currently sends most funding to fossil-fuel-powered combined heat and power systems that she said would have been built without the subsidies, and that APS subsidies also go to biodiesel-blending heating oil dealers and woody biomass systems. “Subsidizing fossil fuel burning equipment runs directly contrary to the state's…
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