Biden Talks Climate, Roy Passes Key Bill

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Above, cooling towers for Brayton Point station  implode in 2019, the end of a $600 million investment; site will now be hub for green wind energy
As Massachusetts climate policy negotiators closed in on a compromise Wednesday afternoon, President Joe Biden made a stop in Somerset (across the bridge from Fall River) to highlight the environmental and economic promise of offshore wind and to pledge executive action to deal with the threats of climate change.

"As president, I have a responsibility to act with urgency and resolve when our nation faces clear and present danger and that's what climate change is about. It is literally, not figuratively, a clear and present danger," Biden said at Brayton Point, the site of a former coal plant that was given a $600million environmental upgrade and then dynamited a few years later, is being reiused as a hub for the offshore wind industry.

Biden said that the climate situation is an emergency "and I will look at it that way."

“This crisis impacts every aspect of everyday life," the president said in Somerset. He promised that he would take unspecified executive actions in the next few weeks to address climate issues.

Meanwhile, Roy and his colleagues were sequestered on Beacon Hill, trying to work through needed compromises on House and Senate version.

Roy and State Senator Mike Barrett, chairs for their respective branches of a conference committee appointed to resolve differences between House and Senate versions announced in the early evening that they had accomplished their goals, crafting An Act Driving Clean Energy and Offshore Wind preserves the central ideas of bills that each branch had passed separately. The compromise is expected to be filed tonight and to come before each legislative branch for final approval as soon as tomorrow [Thursday], after which it will go to the Governor for his consideration. The chairs issued the following joint statement:

“Massachusetts needs to open up huge new sources of green electric power if it’s to stay on course for reducing emissions. Today’s compromise aims to ramp up clean power, especially offshore wind but also solar, storage and networked geothermal, and run it through cars, trucks, buses, and buildings, the biggest sources of emissions in the state.

“We thank President Biden for issuing a call to action to the entire country today,” the two continued. “Massachusetts legislators hear him, and we’re going all out.”

Speaking at Braydon point, which used to supply 1.5 million homes with electricity, Biden said "In the coming weeks, I'm going to use the power I have as president to turn these words into formal, official government actions through the appropriate proclamations, executive orders and regulatory power that the president possesses.”

A senior Biden administration official told reporters ahead of the president's visit Wednesday that Biden wanted to highlight the "clear and present danger" that the changing climate presents to the country and that "going to Massachusetts is a great opportunity for him to lay that out in a place that really represents the playbook for what it means to tackle the climate crisis in a way that can unlock tons of opportunity for our workers, for our communities, and for our economy."

Massachusetts has two offshore wind projects totaling about 1,600 megawatts under development and two more projects with contracts under review. If all four become operational -- as is expected by the end of this decade -- offshore wind will generate roughly 25 percent of Massachusetts' current annual electricity demand, enough to power about 1.6 million homes, the Baker administration has said. The fledgling industry is also expected to generate thousands of jobs here.

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