News and Events

Green Justice Coalition Defends Its Wins

At the end of 2009, the Green Justice Coalition intervened in legal hearings to defend our breakthrough agreements with the state’s utility companies and nail down the commitments they made. The final documents we filed with the DPU give a clear and thoroughly documented argument for our Green Justice model.

The Initial Brief says that the utility companies must:

• detail how they will provide upfront financing for low-to-moderate-income customers and communities of color;
• make a binding commitment to use community mobilization outreach strategies in 2010’s pilot programs and then statewide;
• ensure that jobs come with good wages and training, health and safety standards, local hiring, CORI-friendly policies, and Responsible Employer Requirements;
• gather data to track who’s getting the services and the jobs; and
• create a process to get Green Justice constituencies on their working groups.

Mary Jo Connelly’s testimony describes the Green Justice model for energy efficiency with equity..

Karen Courtney’s testimony describes responsible contracting and how it will create quality local jobs.

2009: Victory for Green Justice 

First-in-the-nation, $1.4 billion energy efficiency plan will bring economic revival to Massachusetts's working class communities in 2010

On October 27, 2009 Massachusetts adopted a $1.4 billion plan that will cut the state’s greenhouse gas emissions, cut energy bills and create high-quality jobs in the state’s highest-unemployment communities. For national feature stories on this breakthrough plan, see Apollo Alliance and Partnership for Working Families.

Under the plan, the state’s utility companies will work with the Green Justice Coalition to:

1. Pay for "Community Mobilization Initiatives” – intensive, door-to-door outreach campaigns that sign up hundreds of low-to-moderate-income residents for high-quality home retrofits.

2. Find up-front financing so residents can afford “deep” retrofits, save money and energy.

3. Make sure weatherization contractors hire community residents for good “green” jobs with family-supporting wages and benefits, proper job classification, and training for lifelong careers.

The state Energy Efficiency Advisory Council (EEAC) will set up an Equity Committee to see that these new jobs and services reach working class neighborhoods and communities of color.

The plan calls for several pilot programs which the Green Justice Coalition is now negotiating with the state’s largest utility companies. The pilots will use Green Justice’s unique model combining community mobilization with “bundling.” When community-based organizations mobilize a neighborhood and “bundle” hundreds of local retrofit jobs into one contract, high-road contractors can successfully bid on that contract, hire new local workers, and provide good jobs that bring money back into that neighborhood. “Bundling" will create new jobs in the middle of our jobless recovery and start to repair the state’s broken labor market, which provides ever fewer blue-collar jobs. Lessons learned from the initial pilots in 2010 will be plowed into the utilities’ statewide energy efficiency programs in 2011.

The agreement reached today is a triple win against the economic crisis, the opportunity crisis, and the climate crisis. Community mobilization and bundling will significantly lower greenhouse gas emissions and help the state meet its greenhouse gas reduction goals, especially in marginalized communities with the draftiest, oldest, and least energy-efficient homes.

The EEAC’s decision follows several months of advocacy by the Green Justice Coalition, a new alliance of community organizations, labor unions, environmental and faith groups. The coalition mobilized for EEAC hearings, surveyed lower-income neighborhoods, and gathered thousands of cards calling for the changes listed above.

For details on the issues at play in this campaign, see our Issue Brief below.