© 2023
1078x200-header-mic.png
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
Available On Air Stations

Holyoke Hearing Set On Massachusetts 'Clean Energy' Subsidy

biomassinhaler.jpg

Environmental and health groups are crying foul over proposed changes in Massachusetts regulations concerning wood boilers.

Critics of the proposed new regulations claim it will significantly undermine landmark steps Massachusetts took in 2012 that effectively eliminated biomass fuels from the state’s clean energy portfolio.

Rules adopted under then- Energy Secretary Rick Sullivan followed a study that challenged claims that burning wood is clean energy.

" Its based on the science and the Manomet study," he said.

Proponents of the changes in regulations say it will not worsen pollution.

A public hearing is scheduled Monday in Holyoke.

Paul Tuthill is WAMC’s Pioneer Valley Bureau Chief. He’s been covering news, everything from politics and government corruption to natural disasters and the arts, in western Massachusetts since 2007. Before joining WAMC, Paul was a reporter and anchor at WRKO in Boston. He was news director for more than a decade at WTAG in Worcester. Paul has won more than two dozen Associated Press Broadcast Awards. He won an Edward R. Murrow award for reporting on veterans’ healthcare for WAMC in 2011. Born and raised in western New York, Paul did his first radio reporting while he was a student at the University of Rochester.