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Senate Committee Advances Bill Which Would Give Towns The Right To Ban Residential Electric Choice
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The Massachusetts Senate Committee on Ways and Means has moved to advance a bill which includes various reforms or other provisions governing retail energy supply, including granting individual cities and towns with the ability to ban residential electric choice
The Senate Committee took bill H.5175 as passed by the House and incorporated provisions from a group of other bills (S2228, S2232, S2239, S2249, S2255, S2262, S2281, S2282, S2612 and S2780) and drafted an amendment to H.5175, Amendment S.3143
A caption on the legislature's website indicated that H.5175 was reported out of committee as "Favorable with Amendment", and that H.5175 also had the following action: "Order relative to subject matter adopted".
Amendment S.3143 still retains a provision allowing individual municipalities to ban residential electric choice, via town meeting or vote by the applicable municipal legislative body.
Amendment S.3143 states, "Notwithstanding chapters 25 or 164 or any other general or special law to the
contrary, a city or town which accepts this section may by a vote of its town meeting or other
legislative body, prohibit by ordinance, by-law or vote any supplier, energy marketer or energy
broker, as such terms are defined in section 1 of said chapter 164, from executing a new contract
or renewing an existing contract for generation services with any individual residential retail
customer within such city or town. This section shall not apply to, or otherwise affect, any
government body that aggregates the load of residential retail customers as part of a municipal
aggregation plan pursuant to section 134, nor shall it apply to, or otherwise affect, any entity
organizing or administering a program pursuant to sections 135, 136 or 137 of said chapter 164."
As noted in the language above, this residential service prohibition would not apply to municipal aggregation
Amendment S.3143 also still includes a $5 million bond requirement for a "retail license," but with the $5 million bond requirement now only applicable to residential service.
However, the $5 million bond language could still be read as including brokers and not only load-serving suppliers
Amendment S.3143 provides that "[e]ach energy marketer of residential electrical generation services or other supplier of such services that applies for a retail license," shall maintain a $5 million bond, with the language mirroring an earlier version of the bill (other than now limiting the bond to residential service).
Such earlier (and maintained) language could be read as applying the $5 million bond requirement to brokers in addition to load-serving retail electric suppliers
See a full discussion of the potential for such language to encompass brokers in ECM's prior story here
Amendment S.3143 also provides that, "energy marketers and suppliers whose license to serve is
limited to commercial and industrial customers and does not include residential customers," shall be required to post a $1 million bond [emphasis added]
As shown above, the use of the term "and" suggests that the $1 million C&I bond, and $5 million residential bond, would apply to entities that are not "suppliers"
Amendment S.3143 defines "energy marketer" as, "any person, entity, firm, partnership, association, private
corporation, or other third-party that contracts with or is otherwise directly engaged and
compensated by a supplier to sell electric generation services, or that contracts with and is directly compensated by a third-party marketer of the supplier to sell electric generation services
on behalf of a supplier, or that otherwise acts as an agent of such a supplier, and that markets,
advertises, or otherwise offers to sell generation services to retail customers including, but not
limited to, individuals or entities engaged in door-to-door, telemarketing or tabletop interactions
with retail customers; provided however, that 'energy marketer' shall not include contractors,
agents or employees engaged in incidental activities where compensation is not tied to customer
enrollment."
Under the bill, any energy marketer shall be a "legal agent" of the supplier.
Furthermore, S.3143 provides, "No energy marketer may
sell electric generation services on behalf of a supplier unless such energy marketer has received
appropriate training directly from such supplier". [emphasis added]
These legal agent and training provisions shall not apply to third-party
brokers or consultants or agents acting on behalf of customers that are directly compensated by
the customer as part of the customer’s electric contract price, the amendment provides
Amendment S.3143 also establishes an annual fee from the DPU applied to suppliers and brokers, with the amount of the fee to be determined by the DPU. However, per the bill, the fee
shall be not more than $10,000 annually, and "may" be set at different amounts for energy brokers, energy
marketers, and suppliers, the bill says
S.3143 includes revised provisions governing residential auto-renewals
S.3143 provides that residential "automatic" renewal may occur only upon, "receiving the written consent of the customer
within 45 days before the expiration of the then current contract with the customer".
S.3143 provides that suppliers shall send 3 residential renewal notices to customers: 60 days out, 30 days out, and 15 days out. The 30-day notice must include the renewal rate
Residential automatic renewal may not be from a fixed rate to a variable rate
The bill also includes ambiguous language stating (for residential service), "that the supplier shall provide for independent third-party verification to
confirm, for all in-person sales and telephonic sales, the customer’s affirmative and informed
consent to the terms of renewal[.]" [emphasis added]
The House version of the bill would have required that suppliers obtain TPVs for all in-person sales and telephonic sales, specifically stating that suppliers, "shall, for all in-person sales and telephonic sales, conduct third-party verification
confirming the customer’s affirmative and informed consent to the terms of enrollment".
This exact language does not appear in S.3143
As noted above, the renewal language still makes reference to the requirement to obtain "independent third-party verification", but now such language appears to be (perhaps inadvertently) limited to renewals
S.3143 also bans residential variable rates, excluding seasonal and TOU rates
S.3143 would ban commissions for residential enrollments
Specifically, under the bill, a supplier shall not (limited to residential service), "pay a commission or other
incentive-based compensation for enrolling customers to any energy brokers, energy marketers,
other third-party marketing agents or any other employees or agents".
S.3143 would ban early termination fees
Amendment S.3143 would prohibit retail suppliers from serving low-income assistance customers unless the supplier provides, "a price that does not exceed the trailing 12-month
average of a distribution company’s default service rate in the distribution company’s service
territory as of the date of agreement with the customer."
This provision is a change from an earlier version of the bill which would have prohibited all retail supplier service to energy assistance customers, regardless of price
Amendment S.3143 would mandate that "each" retail supplier must post at least one offer to the Energy Switch MA website (S.3143 still does not explicitly exempt C&I-only suppliers from this requirement)
"Each supplier other than a supplier acting
in its capacity as a municipal aggregation supplier must list at least 1 product available to
residential customers on said website [Energy Switch MA]," S.3143 states
S.3143 would establish certain green energy disclosure requirements for plans that include clean energy that does not qualify for the state's RPS
S.3143 provides that, for residential service, for a
voluntary renewable or green energy product that contains clean or renewable energy attributes
other than those that qualify under any clean energy standard regulation established by the
state's department of environmental protection, the supplier must: (A) disclose to the customer in plain language, prior to enrollment, that the
customer will not receive electricity directly from renewable generating units and that the
supplier will acquire and retire renewable energy certificates or other eligible clean energy
attributes in an amount equal to the customer’s usage; (B) identify, in the disclosure, the resource
types and geographic origins of the renewable energy certificates to be retired; provided,
however, that if such information is not available at the time of enrollment, the supplier shall
disclose the resource types and geographic origins of renewable energy certificates retired for a
substantially similar product over the prior 12 months and provide the specific product’s billing cycle; (C) use renewable energy certificates that are tracked by a certificate tracking system
that assigns unique serial numbers; records issuance, transfers and retirements; and prevents
double counting.
The above-described provisions would not apply to opt-out municipal aggregation
The bill would require retail suppliers to provide rate information to the DPU, and the DPU would publish on its website the average rates charged by each supplier to customer
classes, and "the aggregate number of customers by each supplier served" [sic].
In a notable change, S.3143 would require retail suppliers to provide "notice", to the DPU, of any transfer or assignment of customers. Such notice must be not less than 30 days prior to the effective date of the proposed assignment or transfer
The DPU would be empowered to impose conditions on the assignment or to deny the assignment
The House version of the bill applied this notice requirement only to a "license" assignment or transfer, and not to the assignment or transfer of "customers".
Amendment S.3143 would authorize the DPU to set supplier-specific POR discount rates, "based on the supplier’s amount of uncollectible bills or percentage of customers in
arrears relative to the average of the uncollectible bills for the participating classes of the electric
distribution company or the average number of customers in arrears".
Amendment S.3143 provides greater flexibility regarding default service procurement, striking existing statutory language which provides that SOS shall only be procured via "competitive bidding"
Rather, the bill provides that default service procurements may occur through competitive bidding, "or through such other process
approved by the department [DPU]," including, "procurements of varying lengths and in combination with
other distribution companies".
S.3143 would provide that the "standard" basic service rates may not change more often than every 6 months, excluding TOU and monthly rate options
Amendment S.3143 would allow the DPU to establish separate charges to customers for certain ISO-NE or other federal charges. The bill does not list specific charges, only describing such as potentially including, at the DPU's discretion, "those in connection with the
wholesale electric markets as administered by ISO New England, Inc."
Amendment S.3143 directs the DPU to adopt rules governing, among other things, any returns to default service by shopping customers.
Additionally, a summary of the bill states that the amendment requires the Department of Public Utilities to commence a
proceeding to investigate procurements for default electric
supply
The summary also states that the DPU would be directed to review each reconciliation charge used by the utilities (this would include default service reconciliation mechanisms)
A summary of the bill (not bill language) states that the amendment, "Clarifies that entities seeking to provide group purchasing
services to non-profit institutions or governmental authorities
shall be aggregators and requires such entities to annually
report on their organizational and compensation structure".
In addition to the reporting of prices to the DPU as described above, the bill also still includes a separate provision requiring, as explained in the bill summary, "suppliers and aggregators,
and suppliers of natural gas to semi-annually report to the
Department of Energy Resources the average of all rates
charged for default, low-income and standard offer service to
each customer class and for each sub-class within the
residential class".
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Bill's $5 Million Bond Requirement For Retail License May Still Be Read As Including Brokers, But Bill Does Now Limit $5 Million Bond To Residential Service
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"Written Consent" Needed For An "Automatic" Renewal
June 24, 2026
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Copyright 2026 EnergyChoiceMatters.com
Reporting by Paul Ring • ring@energychoicematters.com
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