Jeff Cohen's Direct Action Network

Seth Moulton owes Massachusetts voters an explanation for missing today’s vote on Senator Warren’s housing bill. He says he wants to build affordable housing, but he can’t even be bothered to show up and do his job when Congress passes the biggest housing bill in 30 years.

As a Councillor, I submitted an order for Council to have a hearing to discuss possibilities to purchase power companies (electric, gas) from NGRID.

When I first starting working in the solar biz, my first task was to interact with all 41 communities that have their own plants to know each's rules re: solar, heat pumps, etc. as municipally owned plants can set their own rules, incentives, etc. Almost 1/2 of the communities are on the north shore.

It's extremely costly as most purchased the plants from the companies in the 1940's and National Grid, Eversource & Unitil won't sell their infrastructure cheaply as make lots of profit.

However, the benefits to the communities is huge. Ratepayers pay about 40% less per kwh as that portion goes to shareholders for the for profits. The communities that have their own plants are more responsive to their customers, are more responsible with projects (re paving for example) and many times more creative with incentives. A drawback currently is that unless the customer has gas, they can't take advantage of Mass Save (let's see if the legislature keeps and redesigns that imperfect program that benefits so many).

Prior to submitting the order, I was able to interact with many managers of municipally owned plants and some were willing to come chat with Council. Although was just to have a hearing/discussion, I was discouraged by the City and so the order was discharged without action.
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New projects add more than 23 MW to growing statewide portfolio, expected to deliver more than $90 million in lifetime savings
BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Lightshift Energy today announced six new battery energy storage projects at municipal light departments in Massachusetts. The projects serve Georgetown, Ipswich, Groton, Princeton, Ashburnham and Marblehead and will add over 23 MW of storage capacity to a portfolio that already includes six operational projects, marking the latest phase of Lightshift’s statewide program.

The six new projects include:

Georgetown Municipal Light Department: 3 MW
Ipswich Electric Department: 5 MW
Groton Electric Light Department (Groton 3): 4 MW
Princeton Municipal Light Department: 3.5 MW
Ashburnham Municipal Light Plant: 3 MW
Marblehead Municipal Light Department: 5MW
Together, the new projects are expected to deliver more than $90 million in lifetime savings for participating utilities and their ratepayers.

Each battery system charges during off-peak hours when electricity is cheap and discharges during high-demand periods when costs spike, a practice known as peak shaving. Transmission and capacity charges during peak demand events are among the largest drivers of rising electricity rates in Massachusetts. By strategically reducing load during these peaks, the batteries directly lower costs for municipal utilities and the communities they serve. By shifting energy from periods of lower demand to periods of peak demand, the system also helps reduce the need for fossil fuel generation when it is most heavily relied upon.

Lightshift has developed a portfolio-based model where projects are mobilized together and, in the aggregate, provide a lower cost and larger scale capacity resource to the grid. This approach enables municipal utilities to capture the economies of scale typically available only through much larger individual projects, while delivering faster deployment and greater locational value at the distribution level.

Key to this effort has been Lightshift’s partnership with the Massachusetts Municipal Wholesale Electric Company (MMWEC), the largest provider of asset-owned generation for municipal light departments in New England and a leading public power joint action agency in the US. By working in close coordination with joint action agencies like MMWEC, Lightshift can maximize deployment across large membership groups to achieve speed, value and cost advantages that aren’t otherwise available in the market.

"Massachusetts' municipal utilities have often paved the way on the frontier of grid modernization, and these projects continue that tradition," said Rory Jones, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Lightshift Energy. "What makes this program particularly unique is the portfolio strategy. By developing these projects as a fleet across the state, we’re able to dramatically reduce cost and increase speed to interconnect, maximizing savings, reliability, and market value for participating communities. For municipal utilities looking to rapidly manage rising energy costs and strengthen their systems, this model provides a powerful blueprint."

A seventh project is in construction and will be announced soon, while Ipswich is in the final stages of construction. An additional eight Lightshift projects are in advanced stages of development in the Commonwealth.

About Lightshift Energy

Lightshift Energy is a utility-scale energy storage developer, owner, and operator headquartered in Arlington, Virginia. Founded in 2019, the company develops impactful standalone energy storage projects that deliver value through advanced analytics and multi-use applications. Through its portfolio approach, Lightshift blends the benefits of transmission scale capacity with local grid resources through aggregation, maximizing value for utility partners and their customers while investing downstream in communities for their direct benefit. For more information, please visit www.lightshift.com.

About the Massachusetts Municipal Wholesale Electric Company (MMWEC)

MMWEC is the Commonwealth’s designated joint action agency for municipal utilities in Massachusetts. Through its enabling state legislation, Chapter 775 of the Acts of 1975, MMWEC became a not-for-profit, public corporation and political subdivision of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. MMWEC’s enabling legislation gave it the unique power to issue tax-exempt revenue bonds to finance electric generating facilities and other projects. Using this statutory authority, MMWEC has issued more than $7 billion in bonds since 1976. It is the largest provider of asset-owned generation for municipal light departments in New England.
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260622969127/en/Lightshift-Energy-Deploys-Six-New-Battery-Storage-Projects-in-Massachusetts

Lightshift Energy Deploys Six New Battery Storage Projects in Massachusetts Lightshift Energy today announced six new battery energy storage projects at municipal light departments in Massachusetts. The projects serve Georgetown, Ips...

Gun manufacturer money backs a new ballot question in the Commonwealth
By JP Thomas

There are two crucial things Massachusetts voters need to know about a referendum on the November ballot to repeal a 2024 common-sense gun safety law.

First: The ballot question was seeded with $50,000 from gunmaker Smith & Wesson. Second: If the ballot question is approved, it will become a blueprint for the fi****ms industry to start rolling back strong gun laws in state after state, exposing more Americans to violence.

For me, gun violence is not an abstract issue. Day to day, I work with survivors of gun violence from Boston and New England, who can never fully escape the memory of those lost to gunfire.

Gun violence in America is all too common, and shootings often spike in the summer. Cities, like Boston, are successfully fighting gun violence with violence-prevention programming, but the crisis remains urgent. Despite a decline in homicide rates in Boston compared to this time last year, Roxbury, Dorchester, and Mattapan saw five shootings in four days in May.

Meanwhile, the gun lobby has been working to dismantle Massachusetts’ critical public safety laws. An alliance of political operatives, a gun shop owner, and the state’s gun lobby, operating as the “Civil Rights Coalition,” gathered enough signatures to force the upcoming statewide referendum to repeal the “Act Modernizing Firearm Laws.”

This landmark legislative package addressed critical gaps in the state’s laws by outlawing build-it-yourself, unserialized fi****ms; empowering clinicians and school administrators to file Extreme Risk Protection Orders to remove a gun when a person poses serious danger; and strengthening the state ban on the possession, transfer, and sale of assault-style fi****ms.

If this law were to be repealed, communities would be less equipped to stop shootings. Without a comprehensive legal framework to remove a gun from a dangerous situation, school officials and doctors, who are using Extreme Risk Protection Orders for deescalation, would have their hands tied even when they see clear warning signs.

The act also created a public dashboard to track the state’s landscape of gun-related incidents, supported the state’s firearm registration system and violence prevention infrastructure, and required evidence-based firearm safety courses for gun owners. Now, for example, the Basic Fi****ms Safety Course covers secure gun storage, suicide-prevention education, disengagement tactics, and live-fire training.

These changes are already yielding tangible results. Local law enforcement report that the law has given them tools to curb gun violence by dismantling the supply chains for unserialized guns and G***k switches that transform pistols into automatic weapons. Research by the National Policing Institute has found that unserialized guns are the weapons of choice for those barred from purchasing fi****ms, from high schoolers to people with violent histories.

This referendum is bigger than Massachusetts. The gun lobby is using the state to test a new strategy to erode gun safety laws across the country. If it succeeds in rolling back good public safety laws here, it will probably push other states to follow, putting even more Americans in more danger.

Violence and hate, abetted by unfettered access to guns, are a scourge on the nation. Massachusetts has embraced tools that save lives. Voters should keep them strong by defeating the ballot question in November.

JP Thomas is the organizing director of Brady: United Against Gun Violence.

Rolling back this Massachusetts gun law would only be the beginning - The Boston Globe Gun manufacturer money backs a new ballot question in the Commonwealth.

https://www.propublica.org/article/snap-benefits-children-food-stamps

More Than 770,000 Children Are No Longer Receiving SNAP Benefits After Trump Changes Federal Food Program Republican backers of Trump’s signature domestic policy bill repeatedly claimed that revisions to the food benefits program wouldn’t affect the most vulnerable. But reports from a dozen states show children are losing access.