The Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities approved this week the state’s new three-year energy efficiency plan that outlines utility directed energy savings programs and with it congratulations are in order for the all those who pushed it to include support for Passive House. This includes Passive House Massachusetts and many of our individual members along with other partner groups across the state such as LISC and MCAN who provided technical support, wrote comments, attended hearings, and gave feedback on the plan as it developed.
The approved plan includes funding for Passive House training for contractors and consultants, Passive House pilot projects and data benchmarking, and green design charrettes, and includes a stated goal of doubling the number of trained and certified Passive House professionals within Massachusetts over the next three years.
Specifically, the plan states that they will develop Passive House offerings including incentives to mitigate soft costs to help provide financial certainty early in projects, including an early modeling subsidy, design team incentives, design charrette incentives, and a certification subsidy. These programs will cover both residential and commercial projects. How exactly this will work is still under development and the Program Administrators have until July 1st to implement the new incentive programs.
Thank you to all of our members and partners for their support in getting this passed. PHMA will continue to work this year to make sure the program is designed well and set up to succeed. You can download the full plan here and see planning notes on the EEAC’s site at http://ma-eeac.org/plans-updates.