State announces $3.5 million fund for stakeholders to intervene in the utility siting process

WHEN A POWER STATION or energy facility is proposed, its eventual placement and the impacts on the surrounding area can feel inevitable. Groups affected by these siting decisions have long decried what feels like a lengthy and opaque process, where the ability to intervene can ultimately come down to dollars and cents.

Officials are starting to spread word on a new fund, expected to be up and running in March of 2026, which will distribute grants to people and groups who would legally be able to participate or intervene in utility siting decisions but for the cost.  

Energy and Environmental Affairs Secretary Rebecca Tepper said Monday that the administration is working on regulations over the next year to create and manage the grant program, funded mainly through utilities assessments with up to $3.5 million available annually. 

A stakeholder working group, convened by the Massachusetts attorney general’s office in 2021, released a report last year with recommendations for improved public participation at the agencies.

The group found “it’s often extremely challenging for communities and stakeholders to meaningfully participate in proceedings at the Department of Public Utilities and the Energy Facilities Siting Board,” said Jessica Freedman, an assistant attorney general in the energy and rate payer advocacy division, at a press briefing on Monday.

“Meaningful participation in these types of proceedings typically requires substantial financial resources to do things like retain legal representation, expert witnesses, and consultants,” she said. Intervenors have a number of powers during the proceedings, like issuing information requests and examining witnesses, so there is a higher bar to be an intervenor than just offering public testimony.

A sweeping climate bill was signed into law in November, months after disagreement between the House and Senate dragged negotiations past the end of the formal Legislative session in July. It ultimately included a suite of reforms including some intended to make it easier to site clean energy infrastructure, while offering the opportunity for those who often feel shut out of the process to meaningfully participate.

To that second end, the law empowered two government arms – the Office of Environmental Justice and Equity and the Division of Public Participation at the Department of Public Utilities – to ensure that individuals, local organizations and municipalities can participate in the siting and permitting process. It also laid out a broad description of an “Intervenor Trust Fund” to help stakeholders pay for lawyers and independent experts.

Almost 20 states have some model of intervenor funding or compensation model. The California intervenor compensation program has been in place since the early 1980s, giving eligible people and groups that participate in state public utilities proceedings involving electric, gas, water, and telephone utilities access to compensation for the costs associated with their participation. But that still leaves an initial cost barrier.

Groups receive reimbursement after the end of a proceeding in the Golden State, which the AGO’s stakeholder group found is not tenable for smaller organizations, let alone individuals. 

“For interested stakeholders, gaining a working knowledge of a proceeding requires a significant amount of time and resources. Meaningful participation as a stakeholder intervenor can cost tens of thousands of dollars,” the report notes. “Even simply gaining access to the full record of a proceeding may be expensive.” 

The Bay State program is designed to be grant-based. It does not change the rules for who is able to intervene in a proceeding, officials note, and to be eligible for the grants the individual, organization, or municipality would need to be able to meet the legal standard to be an intervener. Specifically, an intervenor needs to prove they are “substantially and specifically affected” by the proceeding.

Grants will generally be limited to $150,000 for each participating grantee, or $500,000 per docket, said Benjamin Meshoulam, senior advisor for climate and energy the energy and rate payer advocacy division at the attorney general’s office. A “small assessment” on utilities operating in the state, various filing fees, and possible state apportions will fund the program so that it always sits at $3.5 million, Meshoulam said.

Utilities can recover costs for attorneys and experts through rates paid for by customers, noted Environmental Defense Fund attorney Jolette Westbrook. 

“Rate payers and community groups are substantially disadvantaged in their ability to participate,” said Westbrook. “And, very importantly, the agencies are deprived of important input – input about differing perspectives, perspectives that could facilitate more equitable decisions that are aligned with state energy legislation and policy.”

Officials say they aren’t worried that more intervention would be an impediment to their clean energy goals. Additional public participation is no guarantee that a project must be scuttled or altered significantly.

The Supreme Judicial Court this year put a button on a decade-long fight over an electric substation in East Boston, greenlighting a project that local environmental groups fiercely opposed. The groups argued that the Energy Facilities Siting Board should not have approved the project without adequately considering “the equitable distribution of energy and environmental benefits and environmental burdens.”

That substation dispute was what prompted John Walkey, director of climate justice and waterfront initiatives at the environmental justice group GreenRoots, to explore intervenor funds. His group was ultimately able to find an attorney to do work for GreenRoots as an intervenor in that case for free, and then they were able to get assistance from the Conservation Law Foundation. 

“That’s not the story for folks in Gateway Cities, or environmental justice communities around the Commonwealth, where something’s proposed in some other town and you may not have the capacity or the connections to find an attorney to represent you,” Walkey said. “So the process did really seem to be complicated and a challenge for people – especially in environmental justice communities – with limited resources to begin with.”