News Stories
Sponsored by Earth Etch. Regulatory insight and compliance solutions for today’s energy markets.
MA Senate Rejects House Passed Amendments That Stripped Residential Shopping Ban – Conference Committee To Reconcile Bill Differences
The Massachusetts Senate has rejected House-passed amendments to S.2838 that removed the provision that would have ended residential shopping in the state beginning January 1, 2026. These two different bills are now headed to a conference committee that has been formed to reconcile of bill’s huge differences. (See: Amendment (as recommended by the committee on house ways and means) adopted, published as amended, see H4884.
As previously reported, the Senate-passed version of S2838 included language providing that, “[o]n or after January 1, 2026, no supplier, energy marketer or energy broker shall execute a new contract or renew an existing contract for generation services with any individual residential retail customer.”
Previously, on July 17, 2024, the Massachusetts House of Representatives passed to be engrossed an amended version of S.2838 which strips from the Senate-passed bill the ban on individual residential electric choice.
House-adopted amendments to S.2838 included other retail market enhancements such as:
- Accelerated switching (3 business days) for residential or small commercial customers, upon full AMI deployment.
- Contract portability for a customer moving within an EDC service area, allowing the customer to be served by their existing retail supplier at the new location, with no interim period on default service.
- Day 1 switching, allowing customers to take retail supplier service immediately upon service initiation, without being placed on default service for an interim period
It is also important to note that this provision was also separately passed by the Senate on a stand-alone basis under S.2738 (though it would be effective 2025 rather than 2026). The stand-alone S.2738 remains sitting in a House committee.
