Speaker A: to accommodate her schedule. So— It is officially 1. I'm going to start with— welcome, everyone. My name is JoAnn Bodemer. I am the Director of Energy Efficiency here at DOE. Happy June, and hopefully everyone is enjoying some of the fun festivities with the World Cup in and around Boston and in and around Massachusetts. And there's just so much social media online, and the Scots are wonderful, the Norwegians, the Japanese fans. I mean, it's just really quite amazing. And I love the fact that they're embracing American culture. They love Dunkin' Donuts and their avocado toast. So hey, what— What? What more can we say? So, um, okay. Uh, we are going to follow the virtual meeting procedure. Uh, meeting is being recorded for administrative, uh, purposes only. And we're asking that all attendees except for counselors and presenters, uh, will remain muted, and counselors should use the raise hand function to speak and not put anything in the chat because it cannot be reflected in the meeting minutes. I also want to remind everyone that is here and listening, language access services are available upon request with advance notice of at least 4 business days. And I did request everyone rename themselves to identify their affiliation in their Zoom name. And I am going to start with— Good afternoon. Attendance or roll call. Commissioner Mahoney will be joining us, so I will say present on her behalf. Greg Abbey.
Speaker B: Present.
Speaker A: Brian Biatt.
Speaker C: Present.
Speaker A: Hi, Brian. Audrey Hedinger.
Speaker B: No Audrey.
Speaker D: Paul Johnson. Here.
Speaker A: Hi, Paul. Daniel Leary. Okay. I'm good to— glad to see you, Meg. Meg Luciardi.
Speaker E: Hello, here, but I may need to leave early and will announce if I need to.
Speaker A: Okay. I have that as my note. Maybe late or leaving early or not attend. So I'm glad you're here. Stephen Miller. I saw Stephen before. What happened? Sure, we'll check it out. Hi, Steve. Kyle Murray. Hi, Kyle.
Speaker F: Thank you.
Speaker A: Bob Rio. No Bob. Sean Davenport on behalf of Will Rose.
Speaker E: Here.
Speaker A: Hi, Shawn. Mary Wambui.
Speaker F: Present.
Speaker A: Hi, Mary. Emily Audette for Alexis Washburn. Oh, she's going to be joining around 2:00 PM. Commissioner, I already called your name, so if you could just announce yourself. Sorry, I know you just put food in your mouth. I apologize. Right.
Speaker G: I'm here, and please ignore the misspelling of my name. I don't know, AI's Messing with me.
Speaker A: I'm going to fix that. Okay. And Sharon Weber.
Speaker E: Present.
Speaker A: Hi, Sharon. Brooks Winner.
Speaker H: Hi, everybody.
Speaker A: Hi, Brooks. Tim Costa.
Speaker I: Good afternoon.
Speaker A: Hi, Tim. Martin Floren. No Martin. Cindy Carroll? Good afternoon, I'm here. Hi, Cindy.
Speaker J: Hello.
Speaker A: Margaret Song?
Speaker K: Present.
Speaker A: Hi, Margaret. Kate Peters?
Speaker F: Present, hello.
Speaker A: Hello, Kate. Amy Vavak?
Speaker C: Oh, present.
Speaker A: Hello, Amy. Kim Dragoo? Hello, Kim, and Jillian Winterkorn.
Speaker E: Good afternoon, I'm here.
Speaker A: Hello, Jillian, and we'll circle back. I think it was Audrey Hedinger. Is Audrey here yet? And then hopefully Emily will announce herself when she arrives. Okay.
Speaker B: Excuse me, Bob Rio's here.
Speaker A: Oh, hi, Bob. I thought I heard you when I called your name before, but I didn't.
Speaker B: No.
Speaker I: Somebody's—
Speaker B: Somebody's impersonating me because I just literally got on.
Speaker A: Okay, well, I'm glad you're here just in time. Thank you.
Speaker H: Thank you.
Speaker A: Okay, we do have public comments. We have a very tight schedule to meet the needs of some of our guests this morning, this at the meeting, and I'm going to need to limit public comments at the beginning of the meeting and resume at the end if there's time. I'll try to get through all the people that have registered, but I'm going to ask those that signed up to keep themselves on time or go under. So we'll start with Nicole Wong. And Martin, can you identify yourself and acknowledge you're here? Yeah, thank you.
Speaker B: Sorry, I wasn't sure if I missed it, but Martin Flory, present.
Speaker A: Thank you. Nicole, you should be unmuted and should be able to speak.
Speaker E: Oh, I do not see Nicole in the attendees list. We can go to the next one and come back.
Speaker A: Okay, thank you, Ina. Weezy Wallstein.
Speaker L: Thank you, and I believe there's been— there may have been some conversation and someone else testifying suggesting that a public hearing on the issues of diverse access and the CORI Fair Chance Hiring may be a useful process over the next few months, in a— within the next few months, because these are complicated issues and may be better suited to a hearing, public hearing format where it can be a slightly longer or with a panel or maybe asking questions than just the 3-minute testimony. Just as one example, as we're learning more and meeting with lead vendors, we're discovering examples where it doesn't seem possible to centrally put something in the 3-year plan and then have it implemented through all these different contracts. We've had people from our program who've been told incorrect information by lead vendors about what's required to be certified and needing to do lots of separate meetings to figure that out and not knowing why that misinformation is happening. And this gets to the structure questions that I know there's already been a lot of testimony for. So simply suggesting, requesting that a public hearing on this set of issues be scheduled sometime 2 months, 3 months from now.
Speaker A: Thank you. Thank you, Wheezy. Steve Cowell. Steve, you should be able to speak. Can you hear me?
Speaker D: Yes.
Speaker A: Okay.
Speaker D: Very quickly, I'll do a very quick feedback. One is that we're expecting tomorrow the Senate to release their version of the omnibus bill. And the latest that I've heard is that the Mass Save cut will not be in there. We'll see tomorrow what it gets. Secondly, the Senate hearing On Mass Save that Senator Cream did was fantastic. Great work from all of you. Secretary Mahoney, contractors David and Rick, Mary Wambui, you did a great job too on equity. Kyle Murray, great job on efficiency and effectiveness. And James Collins and Brian Biatta did a great job on presenting lean. So it was an excellent—
Speaker F: Thank you.
Speaker D: Hearing. I think it was very impressive. Great job for all of you. Another piece of information, the OET released a public recommendation on financing that I think it's worth, folks, last Friday it was released, is worth looking at. Just go on to OET, Office of Energy Transformation, and you can call up the energy financing report proposal that was approved on Thursday of last week. I've been actively involved in that and with Senator Barrett. And the result is that we feel that this proposal provides good presentation on how to get financing without the MassSave cut being done. So I'll be very quick. Lastly, last— the last EEAC meeting, I did submit a written, you know, comment around the history of MassSave, which I prepared, and I've been involved with it since 1984. And I would just love to have any feedback that people have. If you had a chance to read that document on the history of MassSave, I think it would be very interesting. I'd like to talk to anyone about it. It's— MassSave has done So amazing things in terms of changing the world. It changed, it created heat pumps that work in cold climates. It created the combination of efficiency, weatherization, and air leakage control that was not in existence until Mass Save made it happen. So there's lots of great things that has been done that we probably don't have our fingers on. But I think it is worth knowing about, and that's why I did that document that I put in the writ— the public document.
Speaker A: Thank you, Steve. I'm gonna move— Steve, thank you so much, because we're at time, and I'm gonna move.
Speaker D: Thank you. Thank you.
Speaker A: Move to Nate Hazlett. Nate, go ahead.
Speaker M: Good afternoon. Thanks for the opportunity to present. I'm Nat Hazlett with Stack Energy Consulting and speaking today on behalf of CPower, which is now a wholly owned subsidiary of NRG Energy. CPower is a leading demand response service provider and has participated in the Connected Solutions Program since its inception. We filed comments last week on the council's draft priorities for the 2028-2030 plan and were unable to participate in the listening session and so wanted to highlight in brief a few considerations to inform the council's ongoing planning process. And on a personal note, I previously served on the team at Efficiency Maine Trust and have admired this group's work from afar and appreciate the opportunity to chime in today. In short, Sea Power would emphasize that expanding demand reduction is necessary to enable a more affordable grid, and achieving this expansion in demand reduction warrants a concerted effort to improve the Connected Solutions Program in this planning process. And to name just a few considerations, first, CPower recommends expanding the Connected Solutions Program to include a winter component. The reliance we saw on oil peakers through the colder months this year illustrates the need to limit winter demand and ISO New England's transition to a seasonal capacity market with a separate winter auction. Creates a clear avenue for winter demand response to reduce costs for all ratepayers. Second, CPower recommends allowing third-party aggregations of residential customers to participate. This change would allow expanded participation and help ensure ratepayers are maximizing the value of investment in advanced metering infrastructure. And lastly, CPower recommends extending the incentive rate locks for C&I customers seeking to enroll storage assets. Avoided transmission and distribution costs are better known over a 10-year period than capacity costs, and fixing incentives associated with that value over a longer term assures resource performance, as system planners cannot rely upon a resource to defer or avoid upgrades if that resource could exit the program within 5 years. And thank you again for the opportunity to speak, and CPAR looks forward to continued work with the council and the program administrators through the plan's development. Thank you.
Speaker A: Thank you. Okay. Is Nicole Wong on, Ina?
Speaker E: No.
Speaker A: No.
Speaker I: Okay.
Speaker A: We're going to move to meeting minutes. We have the March EXCOM meeting minutes for approval. There was one edit. There was missing text brought to our attention by Audrey Idleman, and we added that text. The text that was added was 2025 Q4 results, and that's the only change. Do any members of the EXCOM, EXCOM have any other comments or changes to the meeting minutes? Okay, I see no hands raised. Then these are approved as final and can be posted as such. Next set is the March EEAC meeting minutes. There were no comments or edits brought to our attention, so they are as posted. Does anybody online have any— that was in attendance— have any edits to the meeting minutes? Any counselors? Seeing no hands raised, these are approved as final and can be posted As such. Awesome. Okay, we are moving to council updates. DOEER is gonna keep our update short, again, trying to be respectful of time, but I think we're doing a good job. We— I just wanted to let the council know, you know, DOEER serves as the chair for the council, and in that capacity, DOEER received 2 records requests from the Boston Globe for— from the council, and our very own Rachel Graham Evans prepared a response on behalf of the council and has submitted that. So I just wanted that for awareness. If anybody has any questions, I'm happy to take those offline and answer any questions or volunteer Rachel to do so.
Speaker I: Thank you.
Speaker A: So, and now I'm going to turn it over to Lindsay Henderson from Cape Light Compact, and I think Margaret Song might be joining her for our good news story. And since we have some time, don't feel as rushed as maybe I suggested prior to the meeting. So Margaret and Lindsay, please share the good news.
Speaker N: Thank you so much, Joe. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Lindsay Henderson. I'm the CNI Program Manager for Capelite Compact, and I'm really excited to share two customers with all of you today who have recently participated in our small business program and were able to take advantage of the nonprofit offers that we have available. So the first customer is Mass Appeal. They're a 501(c)(3), 501(c)(3), so a local nonprofit who is instrumental and a valuable resource for for families in the communities on the Outer Cape. So Provincetown, Truro, Wellfleet, and Eastham. They provide families with free clothing, footwear, outerwear, and other essential items. And they've been doing this for over 30 years. They initially called us for an energy assessment because the winters in their space have been very cold and they were using electric space heaters in addition to their normal electric resistance heating.
Speaker O: Mm-hmm.
Speaker N: To heat their space in the wintertime, so they were very uncomfortable. So through an energy assessment, we were able to identify an opportunity for a heat pump system in addition to new lighting. So they now have a very comfortable space for their volunteers and families who need to utilize their resources. And the enhanced nonprofit incentives allow them to use more of their limited operating budget that they have towards actually serving the community and not having to spend it on equipment upgrades or making their space more comfortable. So the executive director and their board are beyond thrilled with this opportunity to enhance their space. Next slide, please.
Speaker A: Mm-hmm.
Speaker N: So the second customer that I'm going to share with you is the Faith Assembly of God. So they had an energy assessment performed on their building. And the results of that identified opportunities for a multi-zone heat pump system to replace their existing oil system. They also had attic wall and basement insulation installed, as well as attic air sealing done. And the pastor noted that the process for the assessment and the installation went very smooth and that they now have a comfortable space to worship. And now I'll turn it over to Margaret.
Speaker K: Thanks, Lindsay, and I just do want to say that, you know, for Mass Appeal specifically, I was actually just driving by and it was actually really heartwarming to see that there were kids that were there getting some new summer gear because they really are making sure that some of the locals there that do not have the money for a lot of these things, have the capability to get stuff. So when I drove by not that long ago, it was really great to see that, to see some of the great work that they're doing in real life. So, um, 2025. Wow, what a year, right? Um, so just going back in the Wayback Machine just for folks, you might remember that 2025 was a little bit of a rocky year, probably in a lot of ways. Um, but for us, Specifically, you know, we were really looking and very eager to start our programs, you know, right, you know, in February. As you guys might remember, we had the compliance filings and they were really important to do and do right, but it did kind of delay us in terms of getting a good start. And, you know, we've been learning. We, you know, I wouldn't say that everything that we do is perfect, but Man, we have learned a lot already in 2025, and I do just want to take a moment to maybe congratulate all of ourselves, uh, and, and definitely the staff that worked really hard on this. You know, even with a slow start, even with some of the headwinds that we had, I think that it's really worthy of taking a moment to say congratulations, right? And good job, all of us, because we are at 85% of spending, which is incredible, 100% of savings. Like, this is Huge. And I think without the partnership, without the collaborations that we've had, without all of you helping us to get to where we are, we would not have been able to make this impact. And I, you know, especially in this day where people are thinking about how to deal with affordability and how to deal with this, we are making a huge impact, right? So a lot of times we kind of, you know, go over the numbers and the numbers just kind of don't really hit hard, but 55,000 homes and small businesses is not something to be trifled with. And really the installations for 32,000 homes with all of this stuff, I think is just worthy. So I know, Joe, you told me I could take time. I do always feel a little bit bad by doing that, but man, what a great thing. And then the last thing, and it's like in tiny text here, but I know that the administration, I know all of you, I know all the folks that worked on the heat pump rate were really excited about it, but we have over 140,000 customers that are on the heat pump rate. Mm-hmm. From this past winter, and I think that is also really worthy of just taking a minute and saying congratulations, good job. It is really miraculous that we got here, so thank you all for your coordination, participation, and collaboration.
Speaker A: Well, thank you, Margaret. Agree wholeheartedly. Great job, collective effort, collaboration, and I'm glad to see it. And thank you, Lindsay, for the two good news stories. Those were heartwarming. And since we have a minute, I will indulge. DOE supported a program, similar kind of good news, out in Western Massachusetts. It's called the Tree House Foundation, and they support seniors who help foster children, and they're providing homes that are upgraded with clean energy technology, and DOE are— Thank you. As well as Mass Housing assisted in the development of a project out in Western Mass, but similar kind of feel-good action. So, and okay, so I'm not gonna take up any more time. I am going to— I saw Anna here earlier, and hopefully she is still here. I do not see her on my Brady Bunch squares right now. Hi, Anna.
Speaker E: Yes, I'm here.
Speaker A: There we go. Welcome, Anna. So I had the pleasure of seeing Anna Johnson present at the Senate hearing that was referred to earlier in the public comments, and she shared her insights on energy efficiency and MassSave. And I thought that the council would enjoy hearing from Anna directly. Anna works— Anna Johnson works for ACCE. And to develop and manage state policy strategies while leading research on equitable rate design and utility policy. She joined ACCEE in 2022 and has also led research projects within the industrial sector with the focus on industrial electrification and demand flexibility. I'm not going to take up any more time because I think we might have a lot of questions, but Welcome, Anna, and I understand you'll be sharing your own slides.
Speaker E: Yes, that's right. I'm going to attempt to do that now. Yeah, I'm gonna send a request, it looks like.
Speaker C: All right. Okay.
Speaker E: Can everyone see my slides?
Speaker A: Yes.
Speaker E: Great. Sorry, we are a Teams organization, so when I switch to Zoom, I always have to remember how to do things. Okay. Thank you all so much for the opportunity to come present to you all today. As Joanne mentioned, we also had the honor of presenting a version of this to the Senate Committee. I guess it was about a week and a half ago, 2 weeks ago. So what I want to talk about more broadly is just how we can maybe do a better job or a clearer job of documenting the benefits of energy efficiency. I think outside of the cost-benefit framework that we're all quite familiar with when working within utility programs, it's— for whatever reason, what we're seeing in policy world is that some of those benefits that we know exist for energy efficiency programs just are not quite getting through. So this is an effort to kind of look a little— step back a little bit and think a little more holistically about what the benefits of energy efficiency are and how we can talk about them. If you are not familiar with the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, we are a nonprofit research organization that develop policies to reduce energy waste and combat climate change.
Speaker O: Um.
Speaker E: So just to start with framing. So, as I mentioned, like, in an era of kind of affordability politics, how do we do a better job of communicating the benefits of energy efficiency? And as this is probably news to none of you, but most states in the US are experiencing residential price increases, especially in the last year, that are faster than inflation. And I'll say, over the last couple of decades, generally prices Energy prices have tracked with inflation or even below inflation. So this is a change for many people, and it has brought sort of energy affordability very much into the forefront of folks' minds. And we know that already 1 in 6 households are behind on their energy bills. This is 2024 data, I believe, or maybe it's 2025, but regardless, I think that number is probably higher now. And the other thing we know is that efficiency is one of the only direct levers that a household has available to them to reduce their energy bills.. And we also know that in general, scaling energy efficiency— oops, sorry, I'm sorry— is going to be a more cost-effective way to access energy resources. This is data from a report that ACEEE put out earlier this year, and looking across major utility programs, we found that energy efficiency is the least-cost resource. In almost all cases when compared to other supply-side resources. So if you look at this figure, energy efficiency is the little green box at the top. And then when you compare the cost per megawatt-hour to many of our other energy resources, in most cases energy efficiency is coming out on top as the most affordable option. And this is true also for demand-side load flexibility and capacity. Many of our utility programs can also deliver more affordable peak reduction than other supply resources. And then, apart from just the relative, like, cost, we also know that demand-side management resources help us hedge against risk, whether that's cost increases or procurement wait times. There's a time benefit as well, not just a savings benefit. Mm-hmm. But I think what we're running up against is that, especially in states, including Massachusetts, which are investing more in comprehensive weatherization, in electrification, in expanding their access and their reach to low-income customers, we're seeing the cost of utility programs starting to rise. This megawatt-hour savings costs going up. And so unfortunately, what that's left us is many states, I think, for the first time in a while, really being on the defense. In terms of energy efficiency programs. So just this year we've seen a lot of states reconsider their energy efficiency program budgets. So Maryland in May cut efficiency program savings by 32% starting in the— In the 2027 through 2029 plan cycle, with the idea that eventually, I think by 2035, it'll come back to their current ambitious targets of 2.5% savings. And then we have a number of states who are considering budget cuts, whether that's in New Jersey where regulators are proposing switching from net to gross accounting metrics for their savings targets, which effectively reduces their targets by about 30% as well. This is still ongoing. In Massachusetts, as we mentioned, there was a proposed billion-dollar cut on the table for MassSave. Hopefully we'll see that get shifted back. In Rhode Island, there were also large budget cuts proposed to efficiencies. But this was overturned by the legislature this month. But then we also see, I think, states that have looked at the numbers and decided that for their affordability story, that efficiency is a key tool. So I think Virginia is a great example where they've rejoined the REGI, the Regional Greenhouse— I never get the acronym quite right. And as a result, they're also expanding their demand flexibility programs and looking at low-income heat pump programs. Mm-hmm. And just generally expanding the role of efficiency. Illinois similarly has passed legislation in January that really increases their efficiency savings targets, as well as expanding their low-income utility efficiency budgets and investing in grid storage. So, so I think there's kind of a mixed bag, but what we're seeing is that given the question of affordability, states are going in different directions with how they use efficiency. So what I want to talk about is the evidence we have today for efficiency being being the right tool for affordability for states. So ACCE runs state efficiency scorecards. We've been doing this for many decades. And in that time, Massachusetts has been ranked either first or second in the nation on our state scorecard since 2009.
Speaker P: The two—
Speaker E: in the two scorecards prior to 2009, I think it was in the top 10, but not first or second. And these scorecards basically look across a range of places where states can invest and incentivize efficiency, and then gives kind of a score. So we look at utility and public benefit programs and policies, transportation policies, building energy efficiency policies, state government-led initiatives around energy efficiency, industrial energy efficiency policies, and then also appliance and equipment standards. And across all those categories, Massachusetts is really at the top. And one of the first questions we had, well, do states when we give them these high scores and these scorecards, is this resulting in meaningful improvements in energy efficiency? And this graph is a little complicated, but what I think— what it shows really nicely, I think, is that states that are consistently scoring high on our scorecards also have shown a clear improvement in their overall energy efficiency across their economy. So on the y-axis, we're showing the percent— the change— the percentage change in energy consumption per GDP. So basically it's saying, looking at sort of the economic value of the state and how the energy— and a state that has lower energy consumption per GDP, that's basically they're being more efficient overall across their entire economy. And what you'll see is that Massachusetts has seen over those 2 decades about a 34% improvement in energy use efficiency. And happens to be one of our highest-ranked states. And the other states that are ranked quite highly in our scorecard, so in that sort of left-hand corner, are also seeing really large improvements in their overall energy use efficiency over that time. So from our perspective, this is pretty good energy evidence that these efficiency policies that they're passing and supporting are in fact working. But again, sort of stepping back, one of the challenges I think we face is that because the drivers of energy costs are so complicated and regionally specific, that it's not always clear on the ground when you're looking at your bill in one state versus another that efficiency is working, right? So we— despite the fact that many of our states that are leading on our scorecard, including Massachusetts, are located in New England, New England still has some of the highest energy prices. Mm-hmm. In the nation. But this is driven in large part because of the long heating season. So in the winter you have to use more energy to heat your home, and we have long winters in New England. And it's also to do with some of the supply dynamics. So we just generally high energy prices and high costs for supply in New England. So this can sometimes wash out, I think, those efficiency gains. But when you zoom into just New England, One of the things we see is that Massachusetts, which again has been really a leader in that efficiency all this time, has the lowest per capita energy consumption in New England. So when you sort of limit your frame just to the— this part of the country, and what we see is that, that as a result, this really reduces Massachusetts household energy expenditures relative to nearby New England states. So even though energy prices are high, because energy usage is efficient in Massachusetts, the overall per capita costs are lower compared to other states. This is using the Residential Energy Consumption Survey data from 2020. We should get an update on this data for— I think for 2024 numbers in spring of next year. So but what we see is that Massachusetts compared to its neighbors Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire are edging them out in terms of residential energy costs. So while you may— so while Massachusetts may have higher residential energy costs and is experiencing high prices compared to the rest of the nation, when you zoom in to just this kind of region, what we're seeing is that Massachusetts is actually doing quite well comparatively. And we think that efficiency is a big part of that story. And then I think the final big set of data I want to share with you, I think that also that it kind of hits this point home is that when you zoom out, I think when you zoom up from the residential sector, the affordability benefits of the state efficiency investments are even clearer. So this graph is looking at— pulled the top 10 sort of all-time top 10 ACEEE efficiency scorecard states. Massachusetts, of course, is one of them. And then it looks at the cost of it, the price of energy in each of these states.
Speaker Q: With—
Speaker E: so that's on the sort of the left-hand side of the graph. With the higher your number, the higher the prices relative to other states. So you see almost all these states that are at the top of our list for scorecards and for investing in energy efficiency are experiencing higher energy prices than other states in the country. And then we mapped that to what is their rank compared to other states for energy expenditure per capita. So how much are folks paying for their energy? Per household compared to other states. And what you see is that they are doing— even though if energy efficiency were not a part of the subject matter, you would expect that high prices mean you pay more. But what this suggests is that even though these states that are really investing in energy efficiency have high energy prices, because of the efficiency investments they have made, overall they're paying less per household than you would expect. With— in fact, you can see New York has some of the lowest energy expenditures per capita in the country, despite being one of the highest energy prices in the country. And then just to close out with one kind of good neighboring, neighboring example, just comparing Massachusetts to New Hampshire. What we see is that Massachusetts residents are paying on average $700 less annually for energy, all inclusively, so across all fuel sources, than New Hampshire residents, and less than most other states in the country. So per capita, Massachusetts residents have the 20th lowest energy bills and the 3rd lowest energy consumption per economic output in the country, while comparatively New Hampshire, which has invested much less in their energy efficiency programs over the year, have only the 36th lowest energy bills and only the 12th lowest energy consumption per economic output in the country. So again, I think we've— this is just evidence from our perspective that the, the many decades of investment the Massachusetts has made into energy efficiency across their whole economy are really paying dividends to the residents of Massachusetts. And although that, I think, can be sometimes hard to see because of the high energy prices, when you look at the numbers this way, I think it starts to tell a pretty compelling story. So with that, I will stop. Thank you, Anna.
Speaker A: And like, I feel like the good news stories continue. So appreciate that. And I If you do have some time, we can take questions from the council. Paul.
Speaker O: How did Massachusetts go from number 1 or number 2 to number 14?
Speaker K: That is—
Speaker E: so that is—
Speaker O: sorry.
Speaker E: You're asking about the final slide or— sorry, could you reframe your question just a little more?
Speaker O: Well, how did we go from being number 1 or number 2 in energy efficiency to be number 14? On your scorecard.
Speaker E: You're not number 14.
Speaker O: I think we are. If I look at your map, we're number 14.
Speaker A: No, the last scorecard, Massachusetts was second.
Speaker E: Yeah, Massachusetts was second in our last scorecard. You guys are just being beat up by California right now.
Speaker O: Oh, well, that's great. Oh, I'm sorry.
Speaker A: I'm—
Speaker E: Yeah, I think the 14 was Connecticut, which is— nearby, but it was a small graph.
Speaker O: So— Well, that's good news. Okay, good.
Speaker E: You've never been 14, always top 10.
Speaker O: Okay, good. I'm happy.
Speaker A: Thank you. Emily.
Speaker K: Not a question, just announcing that I can't talk.
Speaker A: Oh, that you're here. Okay. Does anybody on the council have any other questions for Anna before we can let her go and thank her for her time? Commissioner.
Speaker G: Physically raising my hand. Anna, given that you— ACREE works in many states where this dialogue is happening.
Speaker A: What—
Speaker G: how do we— how does the council, how do the PAs do— how do we kind of write this Chip, about the discussion. You've just presented us with a lot of good news that the investments we're making through this program are paying off for individuals and for everyone. What message is working in other states? What information are we missing? What crystal ball can you share with us?
Speaker E: Yeah, I mean, if I had a really clean, neat answer for you, I think I would love to have that. It's— I think it's really a work in progress. And one of the things I think we're up against is just that when folks look at their— they get a lot of different energy bills at once. When you have a line item that's just energy efficiency, it's easy to just zoom in on that line item and not— and at the same time, you cannot see sort of the the deferred supply costs that are being placed. I think it's really hard for folks and anyone really to kind of— policymakers included, regulators— to kind of put all the very many moving complex pieces of the energy system together to kind of come to like an aligned view of like the role relative to all the moving parts. So I think where things have been work— I think where the messaging has been working well is one, I think, focusing in on this more holistic benefits for system benefits in particular. I think making clear that if you don't invest in energy efficiency, you have to invest in something else because demand is not going down. It's in fact going up. So I think making clearer that our— we have been growing our economy for many years, but in general, the energy demand is not grown, and that is because of the energy efficiency investments we've been making at the same time. It's just a little harder to make that case when demand is growing because you have data centers coming on, you have all these— you have also all sorts of electrification. And convincing people that their bill's only going up a little bit and that's better than going up a lot is a little bit of a harder case, even if energy efficiency is still as effective today as it was 10 years ago. So I think we just need to do a better job of kind of putting those— helping people put those pieces together about if not energy efficiency, then something else. And that something else either is going to be polluting more and in many cases is going to be costing more.
Speaker A: Thank you. Brooks, you had your hand up?
Speaker F: You took it down.
Speaker A: Okay. Paul.
Speaker O: Yes, I have one last question. So, the Trump administration hates clean energy and probably energy efficiency. So, how has that affected your organization in terms of your policy and what you're doing?
Speaker E: I mean, I think that unfortunately one of the answers is that we've spent this year on the defense circuit, which has not been the case for many years because energy efficiency has generally been seen as like an economic good for regardless of your position on the political spectrum. But I think the other— again, I think the other challenge is that when our most— our cheaper supply options are also being challenged and it's being difficult— it's become more difficult to roll out those lower-cost clean energy pieces, there's a need, again, to continue to argue that, well, we need to make some time for the system to catch up with demand. So, again, energy efficiency is going to be the way to do that.
Speaker O: Yeah, but I mean, have you changed your position? I mean, have you— how have you changed your messaging and your strategy?
Speaker E: Yeah, I mean, I think, again, I think it's really we've been leaning into this affordability story that, again, it— regardless of your climate policies, if energy efficiency is the cheapest option to meet our system demands, then it should absolutely be a bigger part of our portfolios.
Speaker A: Okay.
Speaker O: Good.
Speaker Q: Thank you.
Speaker A: Amy. Thank you, Paul. Amy.
Speaker C: Yeah, a little bit off the topic of your presentation, but I'm wondering if you could speak a little bit to how ISEE is viewing electrification in general as it's being integrated into a lot of portfolios across the country, and then even how it impacts the scorecards. At this point?
Speaker E: Yeah, that's a great question. I think, and I think I kind of mentioned it briefly, but it— electrificate— I think there's a need again to step back a little bit more from some of the traditional cost-benefit testing metrics that focus just on energy savings to thinking more holistically about system benefits and what we want, what are the policies that energy efficiency is enabling. So I think I would say we don't have a— we absolutely think that, well, for one, heat pumps are, and electrification is the most efficient option for heating homes in most cases, if not all cases. But making those benefits apparent in the current sort of like energy savings cost-benefits framework is challenging when regulators, for example, are just saying, oh, well, your cost per per megawatt-hour savings is going up. Why, why is that? So I wouldn't say that we're at— we've arrived at sort of an answer for how to deal with this, but I think it's something that utility programs across the country, especially ones that recognize that electrification is an affordability solution for many customers who are using less efficient equipment now, are going to have to reckon with in the coming years. How do we do a better job of incorporating electrification and measuring the benefits in a way that that sort of speaks, speaks to regulators and to the policymakers. So I don't think I answered your question at all, but I'll just say it's a great question and it's one I think we all need to work on more.
Speaker C: Thank you very much.
Speaker A: Thank you, Amy. Commissioner.
Speaker G: That poked my brain a little bit. How is ACCE looking at the efficiency of heat pumps, meaning that Obviously electric baseboard to electric heat pump, that's simple math.
Speaker P: Yes.
Speaker G: Where it gets harder is when we go from gas, perhaps the hardest is gas to electric. However, the reality is that we use less gas to produce the electricity to run a heat pump to heat a home than we use for gas to heat that very same home. So it is very much an efficiency tool in the wintertime.
Speaker A: Mm-hmm.
Speaker G: It is very much an efficiency tool if you think about our last 2 weeks here in New England, which were quite hot and steamy, to run heat pumps for cooling rather than central AC or window units. You know, there is significant efficiency. So I think, you know, back to my point earlier about messaging, we have not done— we have failed to make some of these points about the efficiency-ness of— that's a made-up word— but the efficiency of heat pumps. So I am, I guess, building on Amy's question, how is ACEEE starting to look at electrification, not for electrification's sake, but for efficiency's sake? And are you— have you changed any of your methodology there?
Speaker C: Yeah, I—
Speaker E: this is where I wish I had my colleague on the line with me right now because we're sort of in the middle of a— we call it a scorecard revamp as we put together our next stake scorecard. We've been doing a number of focus group meetings to really get at like what metrics should change going forward. I think a big part of that is to accommodate and recognize that some utilities are investing in electrification for those very reasons you lay out. And maybe there are metrics that better capture the efficiency benefits of, of that electrification pathway. And I think, too, also there's this systems efficiency question where if heat pumps and electrification allows us to increase grid utilization and while also reducing the proportion of new load that goes on to peak, hours, that is an efficiency, that is an efficiency story. Um, and I, yeah, and I, so I do, I do see in the coming years that there's going to be probably a lot more savings at peak load and how we can shift demand around in addition to just reducing overall load.
Speaker A: Thank you, Commissioner. Thank you, Anna. Does anybody have any other questions for Anna? I don't see any hands raised. Thank you so much for joining us today. It was relatively short notice. Appreciate your presentation and your time, and hopefully we can have you or one of your colleagues back in the future on a different topic. Really do appreciate it. Thank you.
Speaker E: No, thank you. I really— it was an honor to be invited, and I hope we— AC triple E can continue to be in dialogue with you all about solving this, because I think we're all on the same team here working for the same goals.
Speaker A: Awesome. Thank you so much. Have a great rest of your day.
Speaker F: Thank you.
Speaker E: You all too.
Speaker A: Okay. Our next topic, we're a little— efficiency. We're a little ahead of schedule, and so I'm going to try to go as slow as I can because we have other people joining us who haven't joined yet, is our standing segment on planning. And want to update you guys all on what we have done. So, DWR and the consultant team have compiled the public comments that we received at the June 9th public listening session. We received comments at the meeting, and some of you were in attendance, you heard them live. We encouraged everybody who provided oral comments to provide them in writing. We received some in writing, and then we received others that didn't present at the hearing, but submitted written comments. And so we compiled all of them. Thank you. We put them into one document with links to if there were written comments, so you would see the full written submission. And we're going to post that to the EEAC website if it's not already— not already posted. The gentleman from CPower, since I was part of the summary, I did not remember seeing him, so I think we're adding that now. So we might have to to repost, but we're getting there. We're gonna have a full list of everything. And so it'll be posted on the website, but it'll also be an appendix to the briefing documents that you will be provided in preparation for the workshops that are coming up. I just wanna say that we receive very thoughtful feedback from some active stakeholders many people you know that are continually advocating in this space. But we also received, which was refreshing, some new voices to this process. And they were very thoughtful and deliberate in the feedback that they offered to us. So I encourage the council to review the public feedback as you prepare for the workshops, because it's only through you— Thank you. That the public's voice can be heard and incorporated into the plan. It is the council that acts, and we take input from the public. So you need to read them and to be able to be at the ready to share with and during the workshop process. So, uh, any questions on— Yes. The public comments and how we're incorporating them? No? Okay. Well, I don't know if I killed enough time. I need 4 more minutes, I think. Ina, are the people from UMass on yet?
Speaker R: They have not joined just yet.
Speaker H: Okay.
Speaker A: Why don't we— okay, well, I'm going to take—
Speaker G: Brooks raised his hand.
Speaker I: A workshop-related question?
Speaker A: Yes, I will welcome a workshop-related question for about 4 and a half minutes. Perfect.
Speaker I: We have to help.
Speaker S: So I got a question today that I I don't know how to answer some stickers, which— what is the specific timing for the— do we know that yet? I have like big, big, like, all-day holds on my calendar, but I wasn't sure if we had specific timing yet.
Speaker A: That's a great question. And so I'm waiting to introduce our selected facilitator and Once they're on board, which would be any moment now, we will work with them to finalize the workshop schedule, and we're going to do our best to keep the dates that we have already given to you guys, and then we will narrow down the time, but it is really subject to their availability as well. So there might be some changes, and we will immediately notify the council if anything changes. But great question, Brooks. We're working on it, and hopefully by early next week, we should be able to have final dates and times for you guys to put on your calendars. Great.
Speaker S: Okay. And we should hold most of those— yeah, just hold the days that we were given for the time being.
Speaker A: Yes.
Speaker H: Yeah.
Speaker Q: Okay.
Speaker A: Thanks, Joe. Yeah, because that'll give us the most flexibility because the date might work, but the time that we were thinking might not be good. They might move it to the afternoon. So hold those dates and we will narrow it down as soon as possible. So, um, DOE-ER and the executive committee had the opportunity to review the bids that we received for the solicitation for a facilitator. And collectively, the review team selected a new facilitator, and we selected the team at UMass Amherst, the Donahue Institute. And we're waiting for them to join us. They clearly took direction.
Speaker H: Mm-hmm.
Speaker A: We are going to be working with them, as I just said to Brooks, to finalize the workshop schedule. We're super excited. They bring a strong, strong background on facilitation and will be partnering with their Energy Institute on— for their depth of knowledge on energy efficiency. And we believe that it will give us a new perspective through these workshops during some challenging times that MassSave faces as we're developing the next 3-year plan. Ina, are they on yet?
Speaker F: Not yet.
Speaker A: Okay. Why don't we take a 5-minute break And then we'll split our break and we'll take 5 minutes now. So we'll come back at 2 o'clock and then we'll take another 5-minute break after the next presentation. So thank you everyone. Sorry about that.
Speaker N: Thank you.
Speaker A: Welcome, team from the Donahue Institute. We were ahead of schedule, so I gave everybody a 5-minute break, and we should be returning at 2 o'clock. And so you were prompt, we were early, so thank you. Okay. A little stretch break, and we're back. And we have, again, want to introduce the council to our facilitator for the workshops. We have with us Sonya, and if I mispronounce Last names, I apologize, I will get better at it. Sonya Bouvier, Katherine Swaim, Dr. Erin Baker, Lauren Madison, and Sharon Vardatierra. And welcome, team. I think Sonya, you're gonna be doing, leading the talking, and so the floor is yours.
Speaker T: Thank you very much. Actually, Sharon, do you want to do that?
Speaker E: Yes.
Speaker T: Sharon's my director.
Speaker J: Yes. Hi, it's so nice to meet you all. And it was confusing to jump in and hear all silence.
Speaker E: So I was like, what is happening?
Speaker J: So thank you for that clarification there, Joe. So good afternoon, everyone, and I thank you for giving us the opportunity to join you today. We are genuinely excited to be able to support this important process. So I am Sharon Fardateera, and my last name was going to really be a challenge for you, Joe, so I appreciate you tackling that. I am the Director of Organizational and Community Solutions, which is a business unit at the Donahue Institute. And the Donahue Institute is a capacity building and research organization housed at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and we've been around for about 50 years, and we've helped over that time public agencies, nonprofits, communities tackle complex challenges through planning, stakeholder engagement, facilitation, project management, research, capacity building, you name it. We, we have done a lot of different things over the time. I've been with Donahue for over 10 years, and during that time and before my career with Donahue, I've worked extensively on statewide planning initiatives, stakeholder engagement processes, and systems change efforts for organizations and communities. My role is to provide high-level oversight for this project. It will in fact be Sonya who you will see most of the time up front and center. Sonya is the senior— is a senior project manager at Donahue Institute and and the lead project manager for this work.
Speaker A: And I'm—
Speaker J: I think maybe since you're ahead of time, I might let people introduce themselves briefly. So I think it will be more natural coming from them than for me to tell you who they are.
Speaker Q: So, Sonia.
Speaker A: That's perfect, Karen. Thank you.
Speaker F: Thank you, Joe.
Speaker J: Okay, go for it, Sonia.
Speaker E: Hey, thanks. Hi, everyone. I'm Sonia Bouvier.
Speaker T: I've been with the Donahue Institute since 2008. First worked with their Applied Research and Program Evaluation Unit for about 8 years, and then I started working with Sharon in 2016. And as she said, we work with organizations, some local and small, but some working on statewide planning efforts. So a few of the efforts that your— this group's work coming up over the coming year comes to mind are, I was the lead project manager and facilitator for community engagement efforts for the Massachusetts Farmland Action Plan, which was a— I want to say it was supposed to be a 50-year plan, but it's through 2050. Not 50, 30-year plan through 2050. I also led all of the community engagement efforts and supervised the research efforts for the Resilient Landscapes initiative, which was also a statewide planning effort. So those are two of the things we've worked on. We've done smaller efforts to engage public input or other stakeholder input through— basically involved the local dam that's up in Northridge area.
Speaker F: First Falls, right?
Speaker E: Yeah, thank you.
Speaker C: That area.
Speaker T: We facilitated a planning process there.
Speaker A: So we—
Speaker T: I enjoy hearing different stakeholders' points of view and bringing those to the fore, and that's my role in this case. However, I'm not an expert in energy, which is why we have partnered with two— with an organization and two representatives from the organization. UMass campus can share a bit about their background and expertise and their joining our team.
Speaker J: So yeah, we're gonna— I'm gonna pass this to you, Erin, and again, this is the UMass Amherst Energy Transition Institute. So you have two institutes coming together here to work together, and we're both part of UMass Amherst.
Speaker A: So yeah, go ahead, Erin.
Speaker K: So I'm Erin Baker. I'm a professor of industrial engineering here at UMass Amherst. And the faculty director of ETI, the Energy Transition Institute. So ETI at UMass Amherst, we do stakeholder-engaged research that's really at the intersection of the technological aspects of the energy system and social justice. We bring together researchers from all across campus, from computer science and engineering on one side to anthropology and even comparative literature on the other side.
Speaker A: I myself work work on decision-making under uncertainty applied to energy system analysis and energy justice.
Speaker K: And so with that, I will hand it over to Lauren Madison.
Speaker C: I'm Lauren Madison.
Speaker F: I'm the director of technical services and applied research in the Energy Transition Institute and also affiliated with UMass Clean Energy Extension. I have an engineering background. I've been doing energy efficiency work mostly in Massachusetts for 20 years, including providing technical assistance to municipalities and working closely with the Green Communities program and leading the Massachusetts Energy Efficiency Partnership training program. And I'm excited to help out with this process.
Speaker J: So I just wanted to, to wrap up our little introductions here by saying there are other people on our team, so you'll see from time to time, but we were able to gather this this core group here today, which I think was important. And I just wanna say that we, you know, we're gonna find out more about our role, I'm pretty sure, but we see it as like really helping create a productive environment in which everyone's expertise can be shared, deliberated, and translated into clear actionable recommendations. And we are incredibly honored to be selected and are excited to get started. Thank you. Started. So, um, thank you for this opportunity.
Speaker A: Thank you, Sharon, Sonya, Erin, and Lauren, for joining us on relatively short notice. Uh, we do have time if any counselors have any questions, want to pose it to anybody, uh, you're more than welcome. Otherwise, we will look forward to meeting with you and getting, uh, our rolling up our sleeves and starting the planning process for the upcoming workshops. Any counselors have any questions? Mary?
Speaker P: I don't have a comment. I mean, I don't have a question. I actually have a comment that I am really excited that there's an energy justice angle to this facilitation and totally appreciate this.
Speaker A: Thank you. And Mary is our residential consumer representative and is also part of our Equity Working Group, which is a subcommittee of the EEAC, and is a co-chair of that group. So you will hear a lot from Mary as well as the rest of the council. Thank you, Mary. Anybody else? Okay. Well, thank you, ladies, very much. Enjoy the rest of the day, and Ina or I will be in touch.
Speaker I: Perfect.
Speaker J: We look forward to it. Thank you so much. Have a good meeting.
Speaker A: Thank you.
Speaker R: You're welcome.
Speaker A: Okay. Okay, we are now ready to move to the MassSave 2026 Q1 performance report, which will be presented by the consultant team, and I'm going to turn it over to I think it's Griff, Gretchen, Margie, and Adrian. And Ina will control the slides. And so the floor is yours.
Speaker E: Great, thank you.
Speaker U: Hello everyone. Ina, you can scroll to the first slide there. Thanks. So hello, this is Gretchen Kalkani with the consultant team. And we are here today to talk about the quantitative results from Q1 2026, which represents January through March. And as we've talked about in past presentations, it can sometimes be a little bit difficult to draw meaningful conclusions about the year from the first quarter of data, particularly when we often see a hockey stick effect where there's significantly more program activity that occurs later in the year or the term. But our slides, we've tried to provide some context by comparing results to recent quarters and first quarters of recent years to try to assess places where the PAs are kind of off to a good start and those places where we want to continue to monitor. And at a high level, there are, you know, some places where the PAs are seeing success, including strong performance overall in the C&I sector, and also seeing some encouraging equity trends, particularly with weatherization activity increasingly reaching designated equity communities and rental units. And then there are also areas that we are continuing to watch. We've had a slow start across— Uh-huh. Many residential and low-income measures compared to recent quarters. And also importantly, heat pump adoption, while it's performing relatively well in the market rate sector, is lagging behind for moderate income and low-income customers. Next slide. And just to set the stage, we have a couple of slides that look at higher-level portfolio results. This chart shows the percent of annual planned value for some key metrics broken out by gas and electric. That dotted line that's there at 25% is there because we are 25% of the way through the year, or at least that's what Q1 represents. That is a reference. As I previously mentioned, it's not uncommon for results to be under that number at this point in the year, but did want to provide that as a reference point. And a couple of takeaways here. First, gas performance is straight— slightly stronger than electric on savings metrics. Costs are tracking pretty consistently with benefits on the gas side as far as percent of planned value completed. And then on the electric side, costs are a bit lower than percent of benefits achieved, suggesting that those benefits on the electric side are being achieved at a lower cost than planned.
Speaker E: Next slide.
Speaker U: And then this slide looks specifically at benefits achievement, comparing Q1 performance over time to other years of quarter 1 data. I will note that we, we did not have any Q1 data in 2025, so that's why those bars are blank. But the key takeaway here is that, you know, the benefits in Q1 2026 are generally tracking at or even above where we've seen them in recent years in terms of percent of planned achieved. So from a benefits perspective, this— Thank you. This year is off to a relatively consistent or stronger start than we've been at this point in previous years. And this data is looking at sectors as a whole. So the, the story of sort of how specific offerings or customer segments are performing will be further fleshed out by Margie and Adrian as we dig into more of these details in our presentation. Thank you. And with that, I will hand things over to Margie.
Speaker R: Great. Thank you, Gretchen. Good afternoon all. My name is Margie Lynch. I am the lead residential and low-income consultant to the council, and we'll be talking about the residential and low-income sector results for Q1. Uh, start with just a summary of takeaways. Some of this will echo or build on what Gretchen shared in her intro remarks. Q1 was a slow quarter for many of the residential and low-income measures we analyzed. Do wanna call out that heat pumps on the market rate side, which we also call non-low and moderate income, non-LMI, are an exception to that. We'll have additional details. You know, Gretchen indicated that Q1 is often slow for a year, and I think we wanted to talk a little bit more about what we feel are unique circumstances for this term that make us eager to hear more about what we see in those Q1 results.
Speaker A: So—
Speaker R: Gretchen, One is we, we know there was a late start to this plan with the DPU approvals. And with that, I think we would expect that Q1, you know, would, would need to show pretty strong production to make up for the loss of 2 to 3 quarters of activity. Um, not an entire loss, but lower, lower activity. Um, reminder that the res sector experienced a $500 million budget cut. And again, as a result, we would think since, since goals were cut back that were planned on, we would expect to see again strong and consistent production, including through Q1 as a result of that. We also have the situation with aggressive low-income cost controls resulting in delayed delivery of services to some customers, strong pipelines. And I guess our thought is that that would like meter demand more consistently throughout the quarters. And finally, you know, in the end, this is a 3-year plan. Um, and Yeah, as such, you know, we, we would think to see more consistent results over the 3 years. So those are just some things to kind of throw out. We're, we're hopeful that the PAs can speak to that in their presentations. They are closer to the trends and cycles throughout a year and through a term, and Look, look forward to hearing more about that. Weatherization trends are favorable in the designated equity communities and for rental properties, less so for heat pumps, but there's still some promising activity there. And as Gretchen indicated, for the portfolio in general, gas achievements are stronger relative to electric for both sectors. Next slide. These are the high-level data residential achievements. You'll, you'll see that lighter bar is the gas, which generally is showing stronger results. Left is 25% of the year complete. Right is the term, 42% of the term. Complete. You'll see progress towards term is, is, is reasonably good. It's not too far behind that proportional amount. I, I'd say the electric program costs are probably the lowest there. Program costs in both instances are lower. And on, on the one hand, we love seeing benefits and greenhouse gas reductions— and savings proportionally higher than program costs. On the other hand, we love to see full program cost spend because that means we're delivering even more benefits to customers. So that's just something to flag. Next slide is low-income achievements. You'll see, especially on the left side, with 25% of the year complete. The low-income sector is farther behind meeting goals than the res sector, and we highlighted there the program costs again, just because we have been talking so much and focusing on where program costs are. And you'll see electric is notably behind gas. And again, for, for the year, a slow start across all categories.
Speaker A: Next slide, please.
Speaker R: This is the low-income spend by individual PA. We again have been focusing in on this to show that there are considerably different circumstances between the different PAs, and this— we did present this same chart at the end of Q4 and just wanted to make sure we updated folks on where we are for Q1. Q1. And again, 6 of 10 PAs are behind the proportional spend for the term, recognizing there's a hockey stick effect typically in, in early in a term. But did want to call out, and I know the PAs will be providing more detailed info on this, Enstar Electric and Gas and Liberty are forecasting lower than 100%. To spend for the term.
Speaker E: Next slide.
Speaker R: Residential home energy assessments. You'll see the summary bullets there at the top. They're 17% of the 2026 goal through Q1 and 26% of the term goal through Q1. We presented info dating back to 2024. So you can kind of see how HEAAs, you know, have, have cycled over the course of each quarter. These are incremental results. One thing we'd call out is the exceptionally high results in Q4. Hopefully the PAs will be able to speak to why those numbers were so high, because if there's a good news story there, that should be replicated, we would love to hear about it.
Speaker E: Next slide.
Speaker R: Uh, this is insulation, all 3 sectors, non-low and moderate income, upper right, low income, lower right, moderate income. Um, you know, a little bit of a slow start for low income and market rate. That being said, if you look at the percent of term goal through Q1, um, those are pretty close to the proportional area. So no alarm bells from our perspective. Um, but again, just notable to see how low the Q1 activity is, uh, relative to the planned goal for the year. Next slide. This is non-low moderate income, otherwise known as market rate heat pumps. I alluded to this earlier. Strong Q1 result there, 30% of the 2026 goal through the end of Q1. So that is ahead of where one would expect to be— it to be from a purely proportional basis. And very close to the proportional term goal there at 39%. Continue to see strong activity for gas to electric heat pumps denoted here by the dark blue bar at the bottom of each one. Next slide. Moderate income heat pumps continue to be A little bit of a tough, tougher news story. 9% of the 2026 goal through the first quarter and 19% of the term goal through the first quarter. And I, I wanna, you know, tie something together for you all. Certainly this is a key factor in the lower than planned residential sector spend. Through, through the end of Q1. These measures have pretty high per unit costs, and so not meeting those goals is bringing down the res sector spend all told. So just wanted to give you all some context there. I think one thing that we noted, and again, these are incremental results in the table below, the, the turnkey heat pump installs were progressing nicely through the course of 2025, you know, up to 347 installs in the fourth quarter of 2025, and they dropped down to 97 in Q1. So hopefully that is an aberration and blip and we'll return to that. But that would be another thing. It would be interesting to hear, uh, Pia, insights on.
Speaker E: Next slide.
Speaker R: Low-income heat pumps were quite low in the first quarter, 8% of the 2026 goal, 30% of the term goal. You know, hope, hope to see that situation change significantly. Obviously, as you can see, there's a there's a pretty big goal for the year at, you know, roughly 5,500. So a lot, a lot of progress to be made there.
Speaker F: Next slide.
Speaker J: Water heating.
Speaker R: We, we don't feature water heating activity very often. We have 3 lines there, which include low-income heat heat pump water heaters, which are the bottom line. We have low-income fossil fuel water heaters, which are the more true red at the top. And are, are the biggest category of water heaters across those two sectors. And then we have non-LMI heat pump water heaters in that light line, kind of in the middle. So, you know, of the categories, the low— the non-LMI heat pump water heaters are the farthest behind goal. I also did want to call out that 83% of low-income water heaters are fossil fuel, and most of those are gas. So would, you know, would love to see the upswing for low-income heat pump water heaters. And also wanted to call out that the trend line for market rate heat pump water heaters appears largely flat despite introduction of the online marketplace last fall.
Speaker E: Next slide.
Speaker R: Uh, new construction is another one we don't focus on too intently, but you'll, you'll see the, the Q1 return trend of lower production reflected here. Uh, multifamily units are the middle blue, single family are light, and we have renovations and additions in the darker one. Um, did want to call out that high-rise multifamily units account for 41% of all residential new construction units, uh, term to date.
Speaker T: Next slide.
Speaker R: A few, few quick slides on equity investment. We've been presenting this table every quarter. I would say the, the trends we have highlighted in the past, you know, continue with this Q1 period. Moderate income incentives still lagging. We spoke about that earlier. The workforce development and language access line items are low, and the, the PAs are in a position to speak in more detail to what is giving rise to the numbers presented in the table. And then for comparison purposes, we just have the term spending for res and low-income sectors as a whole, so you can kind of compare how the different equity spends.
Speaker O: Um.
Speaker R: Relative to the, the full, the full sector activity. Next slide, please. Um, these 2 charts show activity in designated equity communities, and you'll see on the left, uh, that fantastic upswing of percent of all weatherization jobs that are occurring occurring in the DECs, and that went up in Q1, which is great. More than half of low and moderate income weatherization jobs have occurred in the designated equity communities, which is great. Little bit of a different story on heat pumps. You see the share of heat pump jobs in the DECs trending downward, especially for moderate income. But we have roughly a third of low and moderate income jobs in the DECs, which is still a pretty, pretty solid result. So good, good, good situations there. Next slide. This focuses specifically on rental units in the left on weatherization. That lighter orange is the percent of weatherization jobs for rental units in the DEC. So again, DEC offers rolled out in roughly Q3, and you'll see the upswing of activity there. So that seems to be a positive indicator. Um, though on a, on a statewide basis, the production dropped. But, you know, again, that might make sense given the increased emphasis on the DEC. And then we see in Q1 a pretty big drop in the share of heat pumps installed in rental units, especially in the DEC. And I guess I want to remind us that this is at the same time that statewide heat pump production was very strong for Q1. So this is an interesting little trend there. Next slide. That is it. I'm going to hand the mic over to my colleague Adrian.
Speaker A: Great.
Speaker H: Thanks, Margie. So getting into key takeaways for the C&I sector, I mean, at the highest level, they're really good indicators looking at, you know, one, Powell 2025 wrapped up. As the PAs had spoke to earlier, but then two, looking at even incremental activity in Q1 2026. So really where all the numbers end up, the programs for the CNI sector are on pretty good pace to either meet or exceed plan goals. And also that's impressive when you consider the fact that, you know, costs might end up being a bit less than what was planned. So really, you know, again, good indicator so far. We're monitoring progress on, you know, some of the newer offerings that the PAs have launched, pretty notably the existing building commissioning offering, which we're excited about, and hopefully we'll see some of those projects come through in 2026 and then 2027 data as the term goes on. Next slide. So this is a look at the C&I sector achievements across all the really core metrics that we look at for both electric and gas. So again, the chart on the left side is showing progress toward 2026 plan values, You know, it's not uncommon that, you know, we see a hockey stick effect in the CNI sector. So, you know, being below that 25% mark doesn't necessarily mean that the CNI sector's behind. And then looking at the chart on the right, you'll see that 42% of the plan is complete and most of the metrics, at least on the electric side, are right around that bar. So if you compare this to, you know, historical performance throughout the term, really for electric CNI core initiatives, being at about 38% of achievement at this point in the term is, you know, being on pace to meet goal. And that number has worked out to about around 35% on the gas side. So overall, again, as I mentioned, the C&I sector is generally on pace to meet or exceed its planned goals, particularly on the electric side. And then for the gas core initiatives, they might be, you know, on pace to meet goals or slightly below what's planned for the term across all the core metrics we we look at.
Speaker D: Next slide.
Speaker H: Looking at the electric core initiatives in particular, you'll notice, you know, some pretty strong performance for the CNI small business turnkey offering in addition to the CNI equipment rebates and instant incentives core initiative. This is where all the pooled electrification activity occurs. So really, you know, some measures that we look at that are key drivers of activity to start were custom HVAC, custom process electrification, also our prescriptive motors and drives. You know, one thing to note is that you'll see the CNI Existing Buildings Core Initiative isn't performing quite as strongly as small business and equipment rebates and instant incentives. The thing is, a lot of the custom activity happens in the Existing Buildings Core Initiative, so, you know, naturally those projects take a bit longer to develop. So really what we'd expect is that, you know, some of the other core initiatives would pick up in performance as the year goes on. But again, this is only looking at Q1 2026. So really impressed by the activity that's been seen in Small Biz and in the Equipment Rebates core initiative.
Speaker D: Next slide.
Speaker H: Similar trend here on the gas side. Again, some really notable measures that again are captured within the Equipment Rebates and Instant Incentives or the electrification pool are heat pumps that are displacing gas equipment, whether that's heat pump water heaters or heat pumps that are used for space heating. And then also a key driver with that small business turnkey core initiative has been our prescriptive weatherization. I mean, really, it's overwhelmingly the top-performing measure for small business and, you know, something that we view as a very positive change, as that's a core initiative that was very heavily dependent on lighting savings before. So, you know, the PAs have done a good job at kind of helping the market shift away from lighting end uses into getting into more non-lighting. end uses. Looking at the C&I sector total though, all the way to the right, you'll see that the program costs represented by that lighter blue, they are outpacing the greenhouse gas reductions and benefits by a fair amount. And, you know, really the top measures that I highlighted being heat pumps, displacing gas, and weatherization, they do have a higher cost to achieve, you know, relative to— that is cost to achieve emissions reductions and, you know, kind of cost per benefit. Achieved, those costs are higher than the gas portfolio as a whole. So, you know, it skewed the cost a bit higher through Q1 2026. So, you know, as some other measures and end-use categories come through throughout the year, we'd expect those costs to levelize a bit, but just wanted to explain why the costs are a bit higher proportionately than the other metrics we look at. Next slide. This is something we've looked at a bit. Again, just for the sake of you know, monitoring the PAs' pace toward achieving term goals. So again, that green line you see is kind of like an estimate of where we'd want to be in any given point in the term to kind of be on pace to achieve the term goals. So looking at Q1 2026, overall, at least in terms of cumulative savings achievement, the PAs are about 15% of, you know, where they want to be to achieve plan goals. So again, definitely a good sign. Again, keeping in mind that, you know, the program costs are a bit lower than what we'd expect here. Next slide. Getting into some measure-level detail, this table just captures, you know, the top 10 measures which account for 60% of actual savings. So you'll see the columns represent the measure category, plan savings for the term, Then there's actual all fuel savings through Q1 2026, so that's cumulative for the term. And all the way on the right indicates progress toward the term goal. So, you know, again, looking or at least referencing the chart that we had just looked at, being, you know, around 35 to 40% achievement at this point in the term indicates that something is very likely, you know, on pace to exceed goals. So, what I did was just highlight a couple of measures that are, you know, very notably ahead of what data— Mm-hmm. You would expect that they would be at to achieve the term goals. So, you know, again, I mentioned prescriptive HVAC displacing— excuse me, prescriptive heat pumps displacing gas in addition to prescriptive weatherization measures. But the point is, there are a lot of really prolific measure categories that we've seen through Q1 of 2026.
Speaker I: Next slide.
Speaker H: So a similar table here. The main difference is that it's organized in descending order, looking at planned lifetime savings for the term. So just highlighted really two measure categories that appear to be, you know, notably behind where we'd want them to be, being custom electrification, and then the second pathway in the New Construction program that focuses on energy use intensity reduction. So again, you know, I think you'd notice on a prior slide, the New Construction Core Initiative was lagging behind in terms of in terms of performance, and, you know, again, it's really not a market that the PAs control, but you can see that it's only at 24% of achievement towards its term goal, and then custom electrification only at 13%. So again, I mentioned, you know, the caveat that custom projects do take a bit longer to develop. So, you know, just wanted to highlight them for the sake of monitoring, you know, what's kind of behind in terms of performance. And again, naturally, we would expect that more custom electrification projects would come through as the term goes on. So again, just something we want to monitor moving forward and track progress to goal. Next slide. Okay, looking at electrification activity in particular, this is just looking at Q1 2026. So the numbers in the chart are relative to 2026 plan values and also achievement that was just in Q1 2026. The pooled electrification is on the left. You can see that the PAs have already achieved 60% of the 2026 goal for the electrification pool, and that number is a lot smaller when you look at the non-pooled electrification. So I just spoke to the fact that, you know, custom electrification was behind in terms of achievement toward its term goal. So the non-pooled electrification is, you know, about 90% of that is really custom electrification measures. So again, you know, just wanted to show this as an indicator that there's really high electrification activity happening in Q1 2026. Ina, if you want to go to the next slide. So, this is kind of another look at incremental activity from electrification. This chart is showing greenhouse gas emissions reductions. So, it starts off with 2025 Q1 and Q2. That data is combined because we didn't have Q1 broken out. But if you notice the trend from 2025 Q3 moving ahead to 2026 Q1, that number is steadily increasing, again, which is an indicator that there's really high electrification activity that's been happening even in Q1 2026. And again, I know we spoke about the fact that there's typically a hockey stick effect, you know, an increase in projects throughout the year, particularly for the C&I sector. So seeing an increase in activity from 2025 Q4 to Q1 of this year is a really strong indicator that the electrification pool is having a lot of activity this year. The PAs have already implemented some changes to help manage to their filed budgets. I know we spoke a bit about the fact that they lowered electrification incentives by about 20% in a prior council meeting. The latest change that the PAs have made was to reduce the tonnage threshold for projects that are eligible to go through the pool. Previously, that— — threshold is at 150 tons. That was reduced to 35 tons to, again, help the PAs manage to their filed budget for the pool. Next slide. So this is shifting more to kind of a term-to-date view as opposed to just looking at Q1 2026. So again, the chart's set up in a similar way, but looking at achievement to the term goal. Pool electrification is already at 63%, and we're only 42% through the term, and the non-pool is at 37%. So looking at the PAs' latest budget forecasts, they had the pool coming in at, you know, somewhere between 95% and 105%, whereas, you know, they also expected to exceed the pool savings forecast by about 23%. So really the thing to look at here is, you know, again, the PAs have already implemented some changes to mandate to manage to their file budget for the pool because it's kind of treated as its own program administrator. So that 105% budget threshold is going to be in mind for us, you know, as the term goes on. Great, that's all for me.
Speaker A: Thank you, Margie. Thank you, Adrian. Council, do we have questions for the consultant team. Okay, Paul, and then Mary.
Speaker O: So this is for, um, Margie. On slide 10, uh, the fourth quarter, uh, you show a huge increase in, uh, HEAs, but then, uh, on the following slides, you show that the— on slide 13. No, I'm sorry, there's like 11, I guess. The, the number of weatherization jobs in the first quarter of this year dropped precipitously compared to previous years. So how can we have so many HEAs through the roof on the fourth quarter of 2025, and then drop down below previous records in the first quarter of 2026?
Speaker R: I don't know the answer to that. I do know that the insulation/weatherization installs would typically trail HEA production by some number of weeks, if not months. But beyond that, hopefully the PAs can shine some light on that situation.
Speaker O: But how did— why did they do so well with the HEAs at the fourth quarter of 2025? I mean, that's phenomenal. What did they do right?
Speaker A: Is there a PA that wants to address this? Because it's really not a consultant question.
Speaker K: Joe, I was just going to— or Kate, go ahead if you want.
Speaker F: I was just going to note, I don't know that we have kind of a major reason or trend there. A lot of the times at the end of the year, we are pulling in a lot of activity as we close out billing and close out projects and kind of get everything in at the end of the year. That can lead to some blips in the fourth quarter and then a bit of a dip in the first. But I don't think we have a specific trend that I could point to at the moment other than those more general dynamics that happen at the beginning and end of every year.
Speaker A: Margaret, do you have anything to add?
Speaker K: The only thing I was just going to say is that, and it follows along with what Kate was saying, is that just a reminder that this reflects what gets billed, right? So you could have had projects in Q1 that don't get billed into Q2. Like a lot of these numbers are sort of in some ways, you know, false, false silos, right?
Speaker R: It's what you see, what's booked, what's in your system.
Speaker K: Here as of X date. So I do just want to caution us from thinking that these are like such bright lines when really this is a continuous effort that we've got going on.
Speaker A: I'm muted. I'm sorry. Thank you, Kate. Thank you, Margaret. Mary Martin and Sharon. Mary.
Speaker P: So my first question is based on the fact that, you know, these slides say that there's a slow start in 2026 for income eligible. So I'm finding it really hard to reconcile the fact that that in August we were told that the program has been oversubscribed. So in my— while in my opinion, if it was oversubscribed, we should still be having people in the pipeline, and that means that we would not be having a slow start. Am I— Am I thinking about this correctly, or—
Speaker A: Again, I think that that's a PA question, unless Margie, you have something to add first, and then do any of the PAs have anything that they want to share?
Speaker F: I do think so. Different operating companies are in pretty different circumstances on the low-income budgets, and so I do think you have to, like, hone in on some of those dynamics. I will say that Eversource Electric is one of those areas that is kind of more behind at the moment. We've talked about this in the past, and clearly that's one of the larger budgets. So when you look at it overall, that has an impact, and, and maybe that's contributing. We are doing in Eversource Electric some significant outreach along with ABCD for that pipeline, trying especially to bring in those oil and propane heat customers. I think the other thing that impacts low income quite a bit that is lumpy is the multifamily projects. And so if one PA had a multifamily project hit at the, you know, in one quarter and then had two quarters without a multifamily project, you can see some big lumpiness in production there. But Mary, I just, I want to acknowledge we are slow in Eversource Electric. We know it. We are working on bringing in more customers. I think almost every other operating company is, is in a more constrained environment and being very careful not to kind of overdo budgets for the term here. So I'll, I'll stop there. It looks like Amy might have a comment. Amy.
Speaker L: Yeah.
Speaker C: Just a really quick comment on it too, to add to what Kate said. I think that actually when you look at Q4, or when you look at slide 4, I should say, with the, you know, Q1 achievement, low income for 2026 is actually on a pretty good track in comparison to other years. So I do think that we are seeing a decent amount of production, in comparison to the other years shown on that chart. The other thing is that it kind of goes back to what Margaret had said, is that, you know, really it's about reported production and not necessarily program activity. So certainly in, you know, the later parts of 2025, we were wrapping up a lot of projects, making sure that they get through QC and final billing. And so what you see in Q1 can show a little, not necessarily less program activity, but a little bit of the lag on the reporting because of the time that we put into the year-end reporting.
Speaker N: Thank you.
Speaker P: Okay, so I think what I'm really raising here is we need a consistent message. If you're a CFP and you're told do not market the program because it is oversubscribed, and then here you are in May— I mean, in June of 2026, and Eversource is putting in extra effort, or National Grid or any other company, there's some lack of consistency in the messaging. So there are people who are— there are cities and towns that were interested in helping reach income-eligible customers that were told to halt their efforts. And then here we are with struggling in this— in 2026. So we need to— Thank you. Do something about that. And then my last— my last, I don't know if it's a question or it's a comment, is on spending. So I just want to say that I'm kind of troubled by the way energy efficiency programs prioritize fiscal pacing. So I understand that, you know, that spending is like a primary metric, but I think that we need to think twice or think differently, even if these programs have been run in this manner for years, because that hockey stick effect that was referenced, in my, what I'm thinking is, we are measuring program administrators by their ability to deploy capital, we are not leaving any incentive to optimize the— to optimize or maximize the breadth of efficiency measures. So we need to— something needs to change. I don't know what. 'Cause I think if you're— if spending is the way you determine whether you're getting to your goal, quality of work may not be prioritized, and there may be a perverse incentive there. I don't know who I'm talking to, but I wanted to raise it.
Speaker C: Well, I think to that— yeah, to that point, Mary, I think that, you know, we do think it's important that we're focusing on the savings and the benefits that are coming in to the programs, not just dollars spent. We want to stay under budget, but I think that where we are under budget, I actually think that's a huge success for us as all, all of us that are deploying these programs. So, you know, I, I would appreciate more of a focus actually on delivering on the savings benefits and GHG goals that we promised through the plan. I do feel like that is our objective, not the total amount of dollars that we spend.
Speaker A: Thank you, Amy. Thank you, Mary. Okay, Martin, Sharon, and then Brooks.
Speaker B: I have, I have 2 questions as well, also more for the PAs that the consultant team has kind of raised. So these are more questions for the PAs. And the first one really is essentially the exact same questions Mary had, only from the perspective of the contractors, because it's the same— they're in the same situation. Contractors have been told, do less work, don't do low income, don't go over budget, all that kind of stuff. And these charts bring up those same questions of, okay, hey, but if these numbers are— if we're actually below on spending, etc., then, you know, these things don't change on a dime. And if those targets need to change, then they should be changed as soon as possible so that contractors can adapt. You don't necessarily need to answer that because you've already talked through to Mary on the same points. But on one of those points with Mary, where it's true, what we're looking at here, as you said, is reported numbers, not actual production. But that leaves us as a council talking about essentially artificial numbers. Yeah. Right? It's not actually— artificial, maybe not the right word, but it's not actually representative of what is going on in that specific time period. It's representative of what completes the paperwork process during that time period and makes it all the way through to billing. And so my first question on that is really, how can we see the real numbers? Can the C-team get access to that? Is there— can they get access to pipeline information that you guys maybe are using to say, yes, it, it only shows 25%, but we know that there's actually this much more in the ready-to-be-completed paperwork bucket, and it's really this much. Can that access be shared?
Speaker F: I think, uh, Chris McClellan provided a kind of pipeline-type look to the Equity Working Group a number of months back, especially on the low-income program. We had a kind of whole focus discussion about that. So I'm sure that's, you know, the sort of thing we could bring back to the Equity Working Group or elsewhere. And I do just want to note, I think we have been trying to communicate with contractors for some time about the need to shift efforts and production from constrained budgets in gas areas to less constrained budgets in electric territories. I know we've had a lot of meetings about it. I know it's a hard thing to do in the real world because you got to find those right customers. But I do think we've had a lot of discussion with contractors and vendors about kind of making those shifts and trying to prioritize the areas where we've got the most budget headroom.
Speaker B: And I agree on that. I think my callout is in the C-team numbers, like, gas is also way below low. So like, that's why I'm like, that's why it raises that question basically of are we actually targeting the right stuff there. Can I just, my second question though, which was, you know, actually Amy, you had mentioned it of, hey, if we can achieve the savings targets while staying under budget, that's good. And I think at high level you say, okay, that makes sense. But I do just want to clarify that, you know, saying we can hit 100% of target while being at 88% of spending, which was what it was looking like, Does hide a couple potential serious issues. As a lot of you know, contractor community feels kind of bled dry by this program and that the industry is in a bit of a downward spiral and contractors don't understand why the RFQ process is rolled out in such an aggressive manner when there is budget to provide for reasonable pay. And that's very frustrating in that side. And they feel like long-term damage is being done that's not gonna be easy to fix. Even if we take that off the table, if it also means if we instead spent 100% of the budget, we could achieve almost 120% of savings targets by that same math. We're trying to win the hearts and minds of like Massachusetts residents. Why wouldn't we be maximizing the impact of the approved budget? We've already kind of paid for this budget, collected it, etc. We shouldn't be— we shouldn't be holding those funds back. We should be driving maximum savings at 100% of spend.
Speaker M: Yeah.
Speaker B: As opposed to driving 100% of savings at whatever spend we can, we can link that to.
Speaker A: I think, Martin, that is a lever and a balancing because one, we haven't collected all the budget. We continue to collect the budget. And if we can achieve the outcomes that have been approved with less spending, that means ratepayers get a break. And, you know, and that is what has been the affordability issue right there is like, this is an expensive program. If we could deliver on what we are expected to deliver on and do it in a way that is less costly, that benefits everybody. So it is a balance. I agree with you, like we can get— maybe it makes sense to spend more of the budget and get more outcome.
Speaker M: But Mm-hmm.
Speaker A: maybe not. And I think affordability is really the consideration there. And right now there has been a tremendous outcry to lower electric bills. And so to be able to return money back to ratepayers that was unspent is a beautiful thing right now.
Speaker B: Can I just make one final comment on that, Joanne?
Speaker O: Sure.
Speaker B: Just very short. I think the only thing that's missing is what we just talked about today from AC/EE of, well, actually it's even more benefit actually driving those savings.
Speaker A: Again, it's a balance. I agree. I agree. It is a balance. Sharon, then Brooks, and then Greg. Thanks, Joe.
Speaker Q: I wanted to talk about or focus on the moderate income heat pumps and It's kind of interesting that we had the consultants speak and the PAs haven't yet, because I know that PAs do have a slide addressing this. But I, as you know, have been pushing the question about measures that are lagging and needing to figure out what we can do to turn around any measures with lagging performance. As a matter of fact, When I was reviewing the EEAC meeting minutes from March, I had made a comment at that meeting about the lagging moderate-income heat performance. And at the time, I was glad— the notes say I was glad to hear that the Equity Working Group was going to be digging into why the moderate-income heat pump performance was lagging to to bring their good thoughts to the table too. So now that we actually have the first quarter results, I'm interested to hear about what those conversations were with the EWG and what are the actions, what's actionable things that are going to happen that will try to change the trajectory on the moderate income I know we have the PA slides make a comment that it was slow to start, and yes, that was true last year in Q1 and Q2, but here we sit now almost through Q2 of this year. Maybe, maybe the PAs have knowledge that things have gotten better, and maybe that data we wouldn't have yet, but maybe the PAs have some hope to offer us that, that we just haven't heard yet. I'd love to hear that if that were the case, but I don't think this is really a consultant question.
Speaker E: I think this is a PA question.
Speaker A: But it's also a note for the Equity Working Group co-chairs that this is a topic that we should raise to the Equity Working Group about thoughts on and working with the PAs if there's a need to help. So I will give the PAs an opportunity to respond if there is a response. Otherwise, I'll move to Brooks. Any PA?
Speaker F: Kate? Moderate income heat pumps is one of our most kind of challenging and new program delivery items, and we are working on it, and we have seen a kind of trajectory of increase, but we have more to do. I know we're working on some multifamily projects at Eversource that have not kind of finalized or closed yet. Those, if they come to fruition, will not show up in the numbers for quite some time, but they're in, you know, discussions. So I do appreciate Joanne's note. Maybe it's worth a kind of more in-depth chat at the next equity working group or elsewhere to dive into some of those details. Dynamics. I think we might have talked about it at a recent one, but we could bring it back because clearly it's a kind of evolving measure and there's a lot to do there.
Speaker A: Yep. Thanks, Kate. Anything else, Sharon?
Speaker E: Nope, that was my issue.
Speaker A: Okay, thank you. Brooks and then Greg.
Speaker S: Oh, and apologies, my internet's been Copy all now. Let me know and I'll turn my video off.
Speaker A: Yeah, turn your video off.
Speaker I: Yeah.
Speaker A: Still here.
Speaker S: Is that any better?
Speaker A: Yeah, so far.
Speaker S: Okay. So just building on Sharon's question and highlighting of the data about moderate income heat pumps, I think maybe just a— well, I'll make this a question. It's also a bit of a comment. I am I am reflecting on the findings in the Q1 data that like moderate— or sorry, market rate heat pumps are going well and we're kind of falling behind moderate income heat pumps. And just thinking about, you know, want to dive into more in the equity working group. So just thinking about the sort of the scenario— Wealthier folks get heat pumps, folks who can't afford them are stuck on the gas system as it becomes more expensive to operate and run, and gas prices go up. And just like looking at this this is only one quarter's worth of data and we only have, you know, a year, a year, five quarters' worth of data from this plan term. I'm a little bit concerned that like the programmatic choices that the PAs have kind of been forced into in this plan term, particularly around excluding customers from participating in heat pump retrofits are creating the exact scenario. So I don't know that, you know, I understand the reasons for and the— that the gas PAs in particular are under in this planned term. I think that it's worth tracking going forward, and I guess the question for the consultant team and/or maybe the PAs is like, is, you know, is there anything that we can do in this planned term to avoid falling further behind on moderate income and low income heat pump deployment, or are we doomed to enact that scenario?
Speaker A: Unless the consultants have like a silver bullet answer, which I would be very happy to hear. I think, Brooks, you've amplified Sharon's concern. Mary keeps putting her hand up and down, so I'm sure she's gonna add to it. But I think that this is a good topic for the Equity Working Group, and the PAs then could prepare and have some further market insights that they could share with the equity working group, and we can have a fulsome discussion in that forum and then bring it back to the council. So I'll pause to see if the C-team has that silver bullet, and if not, I'm going to move to Greg and then Mary.
Speaker F: Can I just say really quickly, I don't think we're doomed. I think we, we just rolled out a moderate income heat pump turnkey offer in Q2 of last year. That is like less than a year from when this, this report is happening. And the special offer that we designed with the Equity Working Group for the designated equity communities for rental units with 100% covered heat pumps just rolled out in October. October of last year. Like, we are not doomed. We're at the beginning of— maybe not the total beginning because we've been working on this stuff for a while, but like these offers are, and the delivery of them is pretty new in the marketplace. So we definitely want to keep working with you to refine it, to make it better, to get it out there. But I think we have lots of room for continued progress.
Speaker A: And that's a good reminder. Kate.
Speaker S: I hear that, Kate. And Joe, if I might just respond quickly, I, I hear that, but I also know that, like, when we designed those offers with you, we were not— like, there's a lot more gas heat pump conversions in low— in the income than we are likely to see if the Q1 numbers carry forward. So I think we, like, we do correct there when we can, but the result is near blank income and moderate income customers, gas customers, from participating, doing heat pump retrofits right now. And if that's the case, I just don't know that there's, like, that we're going to find enough oil and electric resistance customers to get there. And even if we do, that doesn't really solve the issue that I flagged of the sort of fairness for gas customers.
Speaker A: Okay. Thank you, Brooks. Greg and then Mary and Margie, we may run out of time. Go ahead, Greg.
Speaker I: Question for the C-team. Margaret enthusiastically shared the great results that the savings goals were at 100%, benefits at 95%, and greenhouse gas emission reductions were at 92% for 2025. I'm wondering if there was a particular measure mix that— some measures were really doing yeoman's work and kind of putting the programs on their shoulders and carrying it forward, particularly as it pertains to the value proposition. Where managed to achieve many of those goals and didn't spend the entire budget. Is there a particular blend of measures that contributed to that?
Speaker A: I would say that's a— there's a lot going on in that question. Don't have an immediate answer on like the ultimate drivers. I will point out that as Adrian said, C&I electrification had really took off last year. It included some incentive cuts. So that's going to be achieving savings at a better rate than planned. I know there's some other drivers in C&I where, you know, process electrification, which can be very compelling in its value proposition, way ahead of planned. And then on the res and income eligible side, we saw a good amount—
Speaker I: Thank you.
Speaker A: Weatherization come through last year. I know some of the corrected numbers increased that weatherization, which is a good value proposition. I know in some PAs there were some variations on planned costs. So I don't have a, like, a full picture answer. That's a complex thing. But I know we're due to give an update on the end-of-year data because there were some changes from the Q4 report. If we find anything of compelling, we might integrate that into that presentation next month.
Speaker I: That would be fantastic. Thank you.
Speaker A: Thanks, Greg. Mary, close us out.
Speaker P: Yeah, so I would like to make comments on the moderate income offer. I think we, we need to acknowledge that the PAs have done a better job than has been done before. I think it's important to think about our moderate income baseline years ago when we had a pilot that only had 150 folks across the entire Commonwealth being moderate income consumers. And right now we're just talking about one element of the plan, which are heat pumps. And so far we have like 545 heat pumps done. So if we think about where we are coming from, we need to— we need to be fair. We need to be fair to the program administrators. And in the last Equity Working Group meeting, the PAs actually provided information on designated equity communities. They talked to us about what their challenges are. They talked to us about what they hope to change. And I have participated in a conversation with Eversource on moderate-income consumers. So the— a conversation happened, and if you go to the website, you will find some of those issues, uh, in there. I want to I would also say that the way we need to rethink how we are apportioning responsibilities for the meeting of equity goals like moderate income. Number one, we have CFP partners and we have designated equity communities. I believe some of them are here in this meeting, and it's good for them to hear that they have a responsibility to work their magic because the rationale in having CFPs and DECs is that those who are closest to the community will help with outreach. So this is not just the responsibility of program administrators.
Speaker B: Anyone—
Speaker P: I mean, the city of Lowell is getting money from this program. They have a responsibility to share with their PAs where their moderate-income consumers are, and we rarely do that. Like, we are not— we're only talking about the PAs, the PAs, the PAs. But the program has shifted, and anyone that's a part of that This new shift has a responsibility to do something about making this program successful. Thank you.
Speaker A: If we had a virtual mic, we would drop it. Thank you, Mary. Margie.
Speaker R: Thanks, Jo. First, I wanna emphasize installation results for moderate income are great. That has not been the case before. So let's make sure that good news story is there. You know, I, I think there's a lot we can dig into at Equity Working Group, and I look forward to that. I think I wanted to flag two things. Mary, as a follow-on to your point about the CFPs having a responsibility, I think we have the complicated situation right now where the CFP— Remember the, the line between low income and moderate income. Low income is fluid. It changes a lot. And if the CFPs are being asked to ease up on promoting the low income program offers, it's possible that we're losing the opportunity to promote to moderate income customers. So I, I think that's something we should examine at Equity Working Group. And the other thing is— You know, just to remind folks that heat pumps for market rate customers come in through the rebates program, and I think structurally that provides a very challenging situation for getting moderate income customers on board because there's not an incentive for them to do so as much. So those are just a couple issues I just wanted to highlight for folks, and that I hope we have an opportunity to discuss along with other things at Equity Working Group.
Speaker A: Thanks, Margie. Okay, it is 3:13. We're almost back on schedule. Uh, we now, we can take a 5-minute break to 3:18, and we'll come back and we'll hear from the PAs.
Speaker Q: Where the fuck is this?
Speaker K: Sharon, just want you to know that you're not on mute.
Speaker G: Thank you.
Speaker A: Hi, everyone. We can start up again. Okay, we now have the program administrators. As a gentle reminder, for everyone along with the Q1 program update that we receive every quarter, or along with every quarterly report. The program administrators are required by the DPU's order to submit a budget report. So this is now the PAs reporting on the budget report that they just submitted to the DPU, as well as providing PA updates or responses to the Q1 performance report. So we're gonna start with, are we gonna start with the updates or are we gonna start with the, or let me be more clear. Are we gonna start with Margaret and Mary or are we gonna start with Amy?
Speaker I: Mary.
Speaker A: Okay, thank you.
Speaker V: Hi everyone, Mary Downes. I am not sure if my audio and video are coming in okay.
Speaker A: You are great.
Speaker V: Great. So I work at Unitil. I'm the manager of strategy. I work in both Massachusetts and New Hampshire. You've seen me before, so we can go on to the first slide. We've tread over this ground a lot today already, but I will just I would just reiterate that the hockey stick is reflective of when projects close and are paid for, and it's really typical for us to see a big increase at the end of the year. And some of that is that the PAs and our vendors are looking to close jobs, get things done before the worst of the winter season for our customers and for making sure that we get the books closed. So there, there does tend to be an administrative aspect to that. Because that gets closed out in the end of 2025, Q1 can be a little bit lighter because a lot of those projects are, you know, get rushed to get covered and paid in the end of the year. So that, that helps explain some of that. For some PAs, our multifamily production, what has been lower than planned, that was something that had been brought up earlier, but we all typically plan for increases. Increases since last term. So overall, I'm going to reiterate what Margaret said earlier in the meeting, which is that we are doing, you know, we're very pleased with where we're at. We are at where we would expect to be at this point in the term, and especially since we are managing to budget, we're pretty pleased with where we're at. And again, our spending is trending lower than our greenhouse gas reductions. Our energy savings, and our benefits, which is in fact, you know, what we're concerned about and what we're incented to do. Yeah, so you can go on to the next slide, please. Okay, so this is getting into the specifics of residential and low-income weatherization, and this shows that through the term, through Q1, what, you know, where we are versus where the 42% of the term being over and where we are. So again, we've talked about a lot of this today already. We have more work to do and there are differences among the PAs in terms of where we're at. I think Kate spoke to that as well. If one of the larger PAs has a particular trend, then that can affect the whole statewide. It's really important to look at each PA. Okay. And I know that the consultant deck also provided some of that. One of the things that I wanted to talk about in terms of residential and low-income customers, we did a survey recently which was published in a relatively new Mass Save Community Insights, which has been circulated to our municipal partners and CFPs. And we're really pleased that there's— [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Growing awareness, even though it's already very— you know, it was very high to begin with, but we're seeing increasing awareness of the MassSave programs, including gains among both homeowners and renters, which is really important because we're really working to serve renters this term. And then trust. So asked whether MassSave programs are trusted, the increases are very impressive. And they're even more impressive and almost unanimous among Spanish-speaking respondents to the survey that we did. So we feel as though we're making inroads into those, those, you know, hard-to-serve customers that we've been focused on through the Equity Working Group and the work that we've been doing over the last few years. Okay. So I think, yeah, this has been said already, but weatherization performance to date is relatively strong, especially for low- and moderate-income customers. And so we're pleased about that. And then on the next slide, we look at the low- and moderate-income heat pumps. And the— looking first at low income, low-income electrification performance has been a little mixed. It's been very strong in single-family, not so strong in multifamily. And what I had said, uh, couple minutes ago about, we all had, um, made, uh, plans to increase our, our, um, reach to multifamily properties, um, over last term. That's been a little bit more, uh, difficult to date than, than we had hoped, but we are still working on that to, to reach multifamily projects. And those can tend to take a little bit longer, uh, than single-family projects as well. And then also with our budget constraints, um, Many of us are also—
Speaker F: we can't—
Speaker V: we kind of need to serve the single-family homes that are— that have been waiting for service. So we are working with our partners to shift our efforts to make sure that those communities that have more delivered fuel customers are— that's where our vendors and our home performance contractors are focused so that we are reaching those customers where the impact of switching to heat pumps will be the greatest. So I think that's good for that slide. Moderate-income heat pumps, we've had a— we have discussed that a lot. We are struggling there, but we are— it's, you know, it's been— it hasn't been that long, as Kate pointed out, since we've really shifted our focus to that and been able to, given the DPUs order taking a while to finalize last year. It's hard to believe it's only been a year and a half, but it has been. So we are confident that we will see increasing numbers, and they have been increasing since we started, but that, that increase will continue. And we're definitely focused on reaching out to the designated equity communities as well.
Speaker E: So next slide, please.
Speaker V: We switch now to CNI, and we've we heard from the consultants, I think, you know, we're very pleased with what's happening in the C&I sector. In some cases, we're looking to actually cool the, you know, cool the demand off a little bit so that we can manage to our budgets. Our small business turnkey savings has been excellent. We're very pleased about that because that's been an area that's been a little tricky, especially as lighting has left the portfolio. It's— we've really, I think, hit our stride in terms of engaging the small business community. We've been doing vendor trainings. We plan for additional Main Street events this year. We had a very successful business partner event in February. And word is definitely getting out that MassSave rebates are available and easy to work with. So we're very happy with the progress there.
Speaker E: Next slide.
Speaker V: I think actually the next slide is— I'm going to hand it off to Margaret to talk about the QBR. So I will go on mute.
Speaker A: Thank you.
Speaker K: Thanks, Mary. Again, my name is Margaret Tsong and I'm with Cape Light Compact. I'm here to talk to you about forecasts. So, you know, we've talked a little bit about this, that, you know, we are anticipating that we're going to be either very close in some cases or maybe slightly above. And I, I, I kept thinking about the term hockey stick, especially with the World Cup. I feel like we should have had a soccer term, but there's not something apt that I can really use, and I'm not very well versed in a lot of sports. But, you know, at the end of the day, what I was thinking about with the analogy with soccer is that they do all of these very fancy tricks and it looks very easy on the field, right? But in reality, it's very complicated. It takes a lot of practice. It takes a lot of effort. It's— there's a lot behind the scenes while they're learning to do all of these things. And my long way of saying that, you know, this pipeline or this budget forecast is really as a result of a lot of other things that are going on behind the scenes, right? So we do see strong pipelines in some cases, particularly You can see with some of the gas PAs that they've got, you know, some, some strong indications of interest, right? And so I think, you know, I just want to be clear that, you know, we're looking at these, we're adjusting them. You know, this is something that you all have asked us to review, that the DPU has asked us to review, and this is currently where we're at. And what we just want to be able to do, I think, is be able to serve all the people who are coming to us. But as Mary has referred to, and others have as well, including Kate and Amy, it's kind of, it's PA-specific. So you can see where there's some room, and, you know, my recommendation to folks is if you are able to pivot to the, to the places that really need the attention, right? Because that's really maybe the end message that I've got from this one.
Speaker A: Next slide.
Speaker K: So, for CNI, it's kind of a similar thing. So, you know, you all have heard that we are trending very well, which is a good sign. You know, I can say that a lot of effort is going into play for our commercial programs. You know, we're really trying to build projects, but a lot of it is really going to depend on some of our big projects, a lot of what's going to happen with the heat pumps. It— there's, there's a lot of variables out there right now. We believe that we're going to get pretty darn close. I think about that goal, you know, I would never be able to kick a soccer ball past those giant humans into a soccer goal, but somehow they can do it and they can make it look magical, right? And that's kind of a little bit of what we're trying to do here is we're trying to get to that goal. We're going to get as close as we can. And if we can overperform, that's great. But, you know, I've always been told to set expectations low and overachieve where we can. You celebrate later.
Speaker A: That was it. Mary, thank you, Margaret. Paul.
Speaker O: I have begged you years to label the slides. All right. So I think it was back at number— slide number 6, and they showed that, uh, they did a really great job on something or other. It was seeing—
Speaker A: I—
Speaker O: excuse me, but please label the slides. All right, so I think that, uh—
Speaker A: You mean number them, or—
Speaker O: Yeah, when they present them, put numbers on the bottom of them. Okay, so we can see them.
Speaker E: Okay.
Speaker Q: So there's a tiny number on the bottom left, Paul.
Speaker O: Well, no, I, I don't see it on my screen anyway. All right, so anyway, let's go back. So I think they did a great job. Anyway, I'm not good for praising the PAs for anything, but they did a great job on something or other, and I think it was on slide 6. So, what do you think, Sharon?
Speaker A: So, Rick, no, I think, Paul, we end it there. It's a great way to end the meeting with you praising the program administrator.
Speaker O: No, they just did a great job. I wanted to compliment them on what the hell they did, but I don't know what they did because I can't remember this slide.
Speaker A: I think it was C&I. They are definitely doing well in C&I, among other areas. So I'm going to turn it over to Martin. He's got his hands raised.
Speaker O: Okay.
Speaker A: Thank you, Paul, for bringing joy when you can. Martin.
Speaker B: I'm going to take over the Paul role here for a moment and bring it back down the other way. But more just because it's relevant from timing. And so basically, I just need to reiterate again because it was brought up here, the reality that it sounds great that the benefits and savings are outperforming the cost, but it papers over what I would consider a deeply troubling reality. I don't think we're talking about it today, or maybe it's coming up next, but, you know, thank you for uploading presentation on the RFQ results that were recently announced. So that is available to the EAC members. I know that's been uploaded.
Speaker A: We're talking about it next.
Speaker B: Are we talking about it next?
Speaker M: Okay.
Speaker A: Yeah.
Speaker B: It's related to the conversation, or I can wait till we get into it. Do you want me to wait till we have the presentation?
Speaker O: No, I think you should talk about it, Martin.
Speaker A: Well, no, why don't we have the presentation and then we could talk about it, Paul. One second. I'd rather if you're talking about the pricing, the RFQ pricing, then I think it's fair that everybody's on the same page and hears from the program administrators.
Speaker D: So, yeah.
Speaker A: Absolutely.
Speaker B: Is the agenda not updated? It's not clear when we're supposed to talk about what on the agenda. So I'm happy to wait for it. I just didn't see it on the agenda, so I wanted to make sure I talked about it before the meeting finished. So happy to wait.
Speaker A: It's part of the PA updates, and so we keep that just PA updates. So, okay, um, so why don't we stop if there are any questions on Mary's or Margaret's presentation, raise your hand. If not, we'll have Amy Wawak present on the RFQ, the weatherization RFQ. Okay, Amy, floor is yours.
Speaker C: Great, thank you. Well, I look forward to your question. Thank you, Martin. My name is Amy Vavak and I am from National Grid. And today I will be presenting on the results of the 2026 Mass Save Weatherization Services Pricing RFQ that National Grid and Eversource does every year. So let's see, timeline-wise, We're gonna just go on ahead and— sure, we'll start right here. Okay, so RFQ goals. That's fine.
Speaker F: Go—
Speaker C: this slide is good. I know. So the RFQ is currently an annual process, and it has 3 main goals. It establishes RTS weatherization pricing for the year. It sets zones for qualified IICs to receive allocations from the statewide MassSave marketing efforts. And it sets the customer acquisition fee for HPCs and IICs who bring in customers into the programs for services as a result of their own efforts. We have established this process because it creates market-based pricing for customers while taking away the need for each customer to go through the bidding process and pricing negotiation for themselves. So overall, we, we feel pretty strongly that it actually makes the process much easier for customers to complete with us, and it's part of the reason for our success in weatherization. Additionally, you know, I think the EAC has traditionally supported offering this reliable pricing to customers, and really we think that the process helps to ensure that program dollars are being spent effectively and that we're meeting our statutory obligation for competitively procured services. Think in particular that the RFQ is very important because of the current focus on affordability and making sure that costs are kept low for customers who are paying for these programs. Thank you. through their bills. Next slide. So the timeline, um, we issued the RFQ and milestones on roughly the same timeline that we did, uh, last year. Uh, we started the process on February 11th. We actually hosted a meeting with HPCs and IICs to get their feedback., so that we could integrate it into the RFQ process, uh, this, this time, um, in this round. Um, we were not able to take every recommendation for that meeting, but I can assure you that we did carefully consider everyone's input. Um, we announced RFQ results on May 27th. Um, and, uh, the new pricing was effective on June 8th. And the updated IAC allocation, um, will be effective and begin on July 1st.
Speaker K: Next slide.
Speaker C: Uh, so, uh, participation results. Um, we had 99 contractors that were invited, uh, to bid. Um, of those 99, we actually only We only had 2 folks who did not respond, one IEC and one HPC. We reviewed all contractor pricing equally on the measures that are required for all contractors to provide to customers through the program. We also did some separate pricing that was determined for optional measures that some contractors provide for customers. For the required measures, we took the average across all submitted bids, which resulted in an average price change of just right under 1%, so 0.83%. We had 54 ISEs that were allocated zones, and the standard acquisition fee for the IECs and HPCs was increased from last year's amount by that same amount as the average weatherization price change. And then we indexed the HPC acquisition fees based on the HPC weatherization pricing submissions.
Speaker N: Next slide.
Speaker C: So this slide shows where all of the weatherization bids landed. Each little dot on this chart is an HPC or an IEC bid, and the scale on the left is their average percent change over current pricing. Each measure was weighted in the calculation according to how often it was installed in 2025 to ensure that measures that were installed more frequently frequently impacted the average appropriately, and conversely, measures that were installed less frequently carried less weight in the average. As you can see, um, the submissions were as high as 15% above, um, current pricing and, um, 21%, uh, below. And then the red line across the middle shows what the average calculation pricing ended up with, which was that 0.83% increase. So one thing that I want to note is that the low bids below— like bids that were below 10% on the graph, so 10% below the current pricing, We actually went through and asked all of those contractors who submitted those bids to provide additional reasoning. And so we received some really thought— well thought out responses. And in some cases, we actually received some additional backup from those contractors about why they thought they were able to provide pricing at those amounts. And so the most common reasons listed by those contractors included a few things. Number one, some of those contractors said that they have, you know, well-controlled, low overhead. Other contractors said that they use bulk procurement for large— Material Large orders.
Speaker O: orders.
Speaker C: And then other businesses offered examples where they were actually already using lower pricing and, you know, basically said that they were able to operate at those prices because they do it in other parts of their business. So for example, some of the contractors participate in our Multifamily 5+ Unit Program. And there's a competitive bidding process for jobs in that program, and they regularly offer similarly priced weatherization in the multifamily program is what they bid in on the price for this RFQ. Additionally, some of the contractors offer non-MassSave private installations. Okay. They said that they offered installations to customers at those lower prices. Some IECs who bid on the lower side responded that they actually do a lot of subcontracting for HPCs that are in the program. And in those cases, they're actually taking pricing that is sometimes up to 25% less than the program pricing. Mm-hmm.. And so they thought if they were able to receive direct allocation as an IEC, then, you know, that actually would be favorable to them pricing-wise. And then one of the final— one of the other reasons that we received from people is that some of them actually work in other out-of-state programs, notably in Rhode Island. A close neighbor of ours, where they are actually operating and installing weatherization at these lower prices. So those were, like I said, they were very well thought out, thought out reasons, and we appreciated all of the people who followed up with us on our line of questions there.
Speaker G: Next slide.
Speaker C: So the slideshow— the slide here shows the breakdown of IEC allocations made through the RFQ. Basically, we had 54 IECs that were awarded at least one zone. IECs could bid on as many zones as they wanted, and they could receive up to 6 zones in that allocation. There were 8 IICs that were not awarded zones because of their contractor grade. They did not have at least 1 month with a 9.0 score in February, March, or April. If an IIC has a program-eligible contractor grade but did not receive an allocation for some reason or another, the contractors can still bring customers into the program. That is why we have that acquisition fee, which we'll talk about here in a few seconds. So IECs that did not really receive allocation, which again is allocation from the statewide MassSave marketing that we do, IECs, HPCs, they can still bring their own customers into the program and they can receive $396 as a customer acquisition fee for their outreach and marketing efforts. Next slide. So this slide shows the 6-month average of the contractor grade for all awarded IEC bidders. Like I said, we took the, the 3 months— in 3 months, a contractor had to have contractor score that was above a 9, but as you can see right here, 90% of those who received allocation actually had a 6-month average of 9.0 or better. So while there were a few that came in below 9.0 on their contractor grade over that 6-month average, There were those, those few that, that meant, that met that 9.0 for, for one of those months of either February, March, or April. So I'm showing you this data because what we have heard frequently in this process is that this RFQ creates a race to the bottom for contractors and that it is the lower performing contractors, lower quality contractors, that receive allocation. And what I'm showing here is that contractors with high grades were awarded the majority of the allocations and were included in the pricing averages.
Speaker G: Uh, next slide.
Speaker C: So, uh, what did we do different this year than the RFQ, um, from last year? So in Uh, response, uh, a few of the things that we changed in this year's processes, um, uh, that we thought were worthwhile, um, and while still preserving the competitive elements, um, of the RFQ were that we increased a focus on, um, contractor grades, uh, by making sure that the ISEs being awarded zones had at least that 9.0 contractor grade in February, in either February, March, or April. So again, we were making sure that we had high-quality contractors. We actually— One of the— some of the feedback we got from that very first meeting that we had with IICs and HPCs, we actually took the feedback and we increased the IIC zones that were awarded from 12 zones to 15 zones, and we did this to break some of the larger zones, particularly some that had some densely populated areas. And then lastly, last year's RFQ asked for pricing on approximately 400 measures, and one of the things that we changed this time was that we consolidated that list to a little closer to 100 measures, and so we hope that that made the process easier for everyone. So, you know, in closing, we just want to thank everyone who participated in the process. We know it's, it's not a particularly fun process, and we really appreciated the contractor, continued contractor engagement and commitment to serving our customers across the Commonwealth with— Thank you. All of these with high-quality installations. You know, we, we do believe in the RFQ. We believe that it provides fair pricing from contractors that supply the pricing to us. And this process allows us to balance the needs of contractors' businesses and the customers who are paying for the services.
Speaker U: Thank you.
Speaker A: Thank you, Amy. Paul? Paul? Do we have any other— okay, Mary, and then Emily, and then Martin.
Speaker P: My question is, did any MWBE—
Speaker O: Sorry, I'm sorry.
Speaker F: Hang on.
Speaker O: Ann, Ann, Ann, I'm sorry. All right, can you see me now?
Speaker A: We can, but Paul, let Mary start it and then I'll go to you next. Okay.
Speaker P: Did any MWBE contractors participate?
Speaker C: They did. I'm not sure of— I haven't really taken a look at the— what kind of allocation they received, Mary, but they definitely did participate.
Speaker O: Oh, yes.
Speaker A: Right. If that's easily shared, maybe you could follow up with that, Amy. That would be helpful. Paul.
Speaker O: Well, first of all, Amy, you're wrong about Rhode Island, New Hampshire. Those prices there are 20% higher than here. But secondly, this is basically— how many people, how many contracts have you dumped this time around? This is basically extortion. You must become familiar with the Sherman Antitrust Act of of 1890 and the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914, you have basically violated the law with your practices here. All right, you cannot do this. It's against the law. All right, so this is going to be taken up in court. You can't be forcing people to bid lower so that they're gonna— so they're gonna— they're gonna get a few jobs, and their prices of their— of their materials have gone up 20%. So why is it that these guys bid less than 1%? They bid less than 1% when their prices went up 20% because they were extorted to— they were extorted.
Speaker A: Paul, I just muted you because you need to lower your voice and you need to maintain respect. Okay?
Speaker O: I'm sorry.
Speaker A: Yep. Go ahead. Unmute. Unmute.
Speaker O: You can't threaten these guys with no business if they don't bid lower. That's against the law. All right, so you'll be in court with this one, right? This is the second time around and you didn't learn it the first time. This time we're going to be— we're going to be there. We were there 15 years ago with you. So this is— you can't force people to bid lower to get jobs. All right, you can't force them to do that.
Speaker A: All right. Thank you, Paul. We got your point. I'm going to turn it to Emily and then Martin and then Greg.
Speaker O: See you in court.
Speaker A: Thank you for controlling yourself. Martin. Oh, wait, Emily. As soon as your hand went down, you went to the end of the line. So I'm sorry, I lost— yeah, go ahead, Emily.
Speaker K: No problem. Amy, I was wondering, what is the contractor grade based on? Is that like quality assurance post-installs?
Speaker C: Yeah, there are 3 things that it's based on. It's based on customer satisfaction.
Speaker U: Oh, sure.
Speaker C: It's based on—
Speaker A: Good job, Amy.
Speaker C: —administrative quality. And it is so the quality of the invoicing, the backup paperwork, work that is given to us, and it is also based on a contractor's ability to have—
Speaker A: Right.
Speaker C: Do customer recruitment. Emily, did that answer your question?
Speaker K: Yeah, that answers my question. Thank you. I'm just thinking about the point you made around potentially racing to the bottom, if there's any way we could, like, try to incent quality as much as possible within that.
Speaker C: Yeah. And one of the ways that we, you know, we think that customer satisfaction is a very large measure of quality, right? Because it measures not only the job and the actual installation, but it also then, you know, recognizes that contractor's relationship with the customers. Are they explaining what they're doing with the customer? Are they, you know, leaving the job clean? Are they showing up on time? Those sorts of things. So we think that customer satisfaction does a pretty good job of helping us to determine quality installations.
Speaker A: Okay. I'm going to move on to Martin. And Martin, we're at— we have 7 minutes and then we have Greg too. So just— Go ahead, Martin.
Speaker B: Greg, no, I'm just kidding. But, um, so look, to a certain extent, there's, there's not a ton of point diving into details in this format or setting, right? Unless the EAC is going to get involved directly. My comments are more really just to provide the contractor's perspective to what was just provided by the PAs, and to a certain extent, to kind of set the record straight from the contractor perspective on what was just presented. So I think first and foremost, like these conversations in terms of what the PAs present are always focused on kind of the clean outcomes of here were the bids based on that math, here's the fair and equal outcome, which all sounds very nice. Uh, you know, you collect a bunch of reasons from low bidding contractors on why low pricing works and share that, but of course don't collect reasons from high bidding contractors on why high prices are necessary and share that. So obviously that feedback and that information information is going to be a skewed perspective. I think the issue is that this pulls the conversation away from the actual problem. It's not the performance of a competitive RFQ that is the problem. It's the way it's structured to be, in contractors' perspectives, so aggressively competitive that raises the alarms. And I think that conversation has been relatively consistent, you know, across the years. That's the part— Thank you. That contractors are up in arms every time saying, you know, as Paul brought up, should be illegal, the way you do this is unreasonable, how can you get away with this, etc., right? All those things that, that you hear getting feedback back from the contractors in those meetings. Maybe just like to put that together, right, the RFQ resulted in a price increase this year of 0.83%, less than a 1% increase. For context, after this increase, this minor increase, contractors are still getting paid less than they were 3 full years ago for the same work. So a negative change in pricing over 3 years. And to a certain extent, like, honestly, I'm tired of barking up this tree. I'm sure you're tired of hearing it. The impact of this is real. You just don't see it at the program level. Contractors are at the point where they're just trying to survive and hoping something changes and brings pricing back to the real world. You know, nobody's going to give up their entire livelihoods, their family's livelihoods without a fight. But, you know, from the contract perspective, they've just been holding on now for kind of 3 years hoping something can change with how pricing is set up. You know, contractors and their employees are constituents, residents, ratepayers, etc. And the budget simply doesn't, as we've seen today, the budget simply does not require this kind of evil mastermind structure of an RFQ that contractors feel is really putting the boot on the neck. We could actually just have fair pricing and offer fair wages to employees and not have to deal with this situation. So that's my comments on contractor perspective on how this kind of RFQ process runs.
Speaker M: Yeah.
Speaker A: Martin. Amy, I'm going to go to Greg. That was a comment. And then I'm going to go to Greg. Greg?
Speaker I: I'm just trying to understand what it is that's going on. So on slide 6, I want to make sure I have this right. The percent change from weatherization measure cost is related to last year's pricing? Is that right?
Speaker C: No.
Speaker E: What's it related to?
Speaker C: It is— well, yes, it's 0.83% above last year's pricing. Pricing, correct?
Speaker I: Right, but the different bids that came in from all the 98 little dots along that line are where each of those individual folks bid relative to the prior year's pricing.
Speaker C: As an average, yes.
Speaker I: Yes. So what I'm trying to understand is we're hearing from Martin and Paul that the prices are unsustainable, We're losing contractors. Inflation's going crazy compared with last year. We've had a war, and that has impacted rolling the trucks and all that stuff. And yet when I count all of the individual dots of the 98, 40 of them are below the line, suggesting that, you know, 40 out of 98 folks that bid said that they could do the same work for less money. So in a world where inflation keeps going up and, uh, everything is getting more expensive, I'm trying to just square in my head how it is that 40 contractors, 40% approximately of those that bid on work, bid on it for less. And, and it drops off too. I mean, it drops off fairly considerably. Some folks are throwing stuff down there that's like -20%. I think it's one thing if folks wanna make sure they get a job. I think it's another if let's say they're buying all of their materials at the beginning of a year in mass and therefore able to get a bulk discount on it. Just trying to square these things for myself.
Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, I think that's why we, you know, went on ahead, Greg, and surveyed and asked questions of the contractors who bid lower. And I, you know, you mentioned the bulk procurement, but again, I'll, I'll reiterate that we had people tell us that they are doing non-MassSave jobs at that lower pricing. They are subcontracting to HBCUs for less than the pricing, taking 25% cuts. And that the Rhode Island programs in particular where some of them work are also operating at lower pricing. So again, these are prices from contractors and what they said they could do the work for.
Speaker B: Can I just add the contractor side to answer Greg's question, Jen?
Speaker A: We have less than a minute, so make— —making—
Speaker B: I would just say that's exactly my point, Greg, is when you look at the numbers, you just say, hey, this is a bid, these are the bids that came in, this makes sense, this is the outcome. What we don't talk about is why did those bids come in so low. This is what Paul is, is kind of getting at, which is, uh, the way this works is, uh, you don't have to do the work at the price you bid, you do the work at whatever the average is, but you only get work if you're a lower bidder than than most other people. And so it becomes more of a prisoner's dilemma game where as long as somebody else bids higher than me, I'll get work and I can bid lower. And so the feeling is more of, I'm gonna, at the last RFQ, I haven't talked to people this year, but talking to IACs at the last one, the end result was somewhere around, if you ended up bidding around a 3% increase, you essentially were down to 1% zone or no zones. And a 3% increase for a year over year is a normal kind of inflationary amount to ask for. And so it creates a situation where you basically have to put in an artificially low percentage to make sure you get allocation, make sure you're allowed to be in the program, and then hope that enough other people bid high enough that the price is still okay. And that kind of year after year after year creates this stagnant, actually lower price over time. And that is what contractors are so upset about. That's the bidding for your life terminology that—
Speaker O: It's called extortion. It's called extortion.
Speaker A: Okay, Paul, Martin, it's 4:01. I'm going to end it on that. And I want to thank everybody for their participation and conversation today. And enjoy the rest of your day, and we will see everybody in July. We have a busy month in July. Don't forget EEAC and likely our first workshop. So have a good rest of your June, and thank you again.
Speaker E: Thank you.