Thursday, November 13, 2025
Chair Barrett, Chair Cusack, and Members of the Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities, and Energy:
My name is Jonathan Cohn, and I’m the policy director of Progressive Massachusetts, a statewide, member-based grassroots advocacy organization fighting for a more equitable, just, sustainable, and democratic Commonwealth.
We urge you to give a favorable report to H.3547/S.2290: An Act preventing gas expansion to protect climate, community health and safety.
As we speak, the 30th COP conference of the United Nations Climate Change Conference is taking place in Brazil. Countries from across the world are discussing how to make their climate pledges into climate realities and how to muster collective global action to address the climate crisis. Notably absent, of course, is the United States.
This year so far, we have seen the Trump administration take countless steps to sabotage our response to the climate crisis and our transition to clean energy. The Trump administration is seeking to rig the future for heavy-polluting fossil fuel companies and deny present and future generations the blessings of cleaner water, cleaner air, and good-paying jobs. We need you to not join them and, instead, to chart a different path in line with our commonwealth’s promises and values.
This bill would prevent new gas facility construction or expansion near environmental justice neighborhoods because we know that we need to leave fossil fuels in the ground (and have known that for decades) and that the communities that have borne the burden of pollution for decades should not be forced to continue to do so.
But this bill is not just about saying NO. It is about saying YES to what the future can be.
It centers a vision of a just transition, one in which we usher in a clean energy economy with good-paying jobs that does not leave people behind. The bill requires gas companies to submit just transition plans, including not only measures to meet zero-emissions goals but also measures to do right by their workforce through workforce development, training, staffing, pension system solvency, and other steps. It creates a training fund for workers in the clean energy economy. And it creates a Just Transition Office to guide this energy and economic transformation.
Time and time again, when Massachusetts voters are surveyed, they say that they want strong action on the climate crisis, and they know that our future is with clean energy.
We need to continue the progress from recent years on that front, not do Trump’s dirty work for him with more fossil fuels and abandoned commitments.
Sincerely,
Jonathan Cohn
Policy Director
Progressive Massachusetts
