The Zoning Commission of the City of Boston adopted new zoning for a Small clean energy infrastructure on September 9. The move is also in line with Boston’s climate resilience goals. Now certain solar panels, wind turbines, battery storage and more will go through a consolidated permitting process and must be approved within a year. All municipalities in the state are expected to comply by October 1.
“The goal is to make it easier for everybody, and that’s a big piece of the puzzle of meeting our city climate goals and state climate goals. It’s just helping to enable this new infrastructure as much as we can,” said Travis Anderson, senior energy and infrastructure planner for the City of Boston’s planning department.
The impetus comes from the Climate Act of 2024 which included enabling reform as one of its core measures. Massachusetts has hundreds of municipalities, some with little or no professional staff to approve renewable energy projects. The result is that approvals can take years to come through. The Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources (DOER) was commissioned to issue Clean Energy Siting and Permit Regulations (225 CMR 29.00) which serve as “benchmarks” for municipalities to develop more streamlined permitting processes.
The regulations apply to projects of a certain size, such as battery energy storage with a capacity of less than 100 MWh, solar installations of less than 25 MW, anaerobic digestion facilities of less than 25 MW and wind installations of less than 25 MW. Larger projects will go to the State Energy Facility Siting Board.
According to a DOER spokesperson, the department has consistently heard from developers that projects are more expensive and difficult to finance when there is so much uncertainty about when they will be completed and start generating returns. DOER hopes the one-year approval requirement will help make Massachusetts a more attractive location for development.
There is a stipulation in the new regulations that allows a community to move a proposal to the Energy and Siting Commission if it does not have the ability to approve it within a year, the same DOER spokesman said.
In Boston, entities such as the Boston Water and Sewer Commission, the Boston Public Health Commission, the Planning Department and a few others will now conduct reviews of their proposals in parallel and must make a final decision within 12 months.
Consolidated permits provide the opportunity to deliver coordinated feedback to the applicant so that they have the opportunity to revise their designs accordingly. “It’s really about everybody working in concert with each other and de-conflicting any issues,” Anderson said.
