In the midst of a contentious reelection campaign, nowhere was the metamorphosis of Governor Maura Healey’s position on energy and climate change more evident than in the space of a single day in early October.
On that morning at an elementary school in East Boston, the governor gushed about the virtues of a clean energy project that, in her words, demonstrated “the work we can do together to protect our communities from climate change.”
Then, not an hour later, her office sent out a press release with the title, “Governor Healey Calls on Trump Administration to Expedite Review of Gas Pipeline Expansion.”
The dueling messages underscore how the first-term governor has distanced herself from an uncompromising environmental warrior of four years ago, when she proclaimed she would be the “most aggressive governor in the country on climate.”
She now embraces an “all-of-the-above” approach, as skyrocketing electric and gas bills have become a major political subject and her Republican opponent, Michael Minogue, hammers her over cost-of-living issues, pledging to expand the natural gas supply and do away with some of the state’s most ambitious climate goals.
Where she once bragged about opposing expansion of two natural gas pipelines, clashing with her predecessor over the issue, she is now backing one in Southeastern Massachusetts. And where she once pledged to ramp up electric vehicle usage and invest heavily in climate technology — “big time revving up renewables” — she has delayed some measures and redirected some funds intended for clean energy projects to cut residents’ energy bills.
For some of her longtime fans in the environmental community, Healey’s apparent repositioning is, at times, baffling and disappointing.
“There has been a much more renewed focus on energy affordability, and ... I have seen climate become a bit of a reduced priority,” Kyle Murray, the Massachusetts program director at the Acadia Center, said of the broader political atmosphere. “While they are still taking many steps forward, it is not as vocal as it once was.”
Healey, for her part, says she doesn’t see her messaging as any different from before, saying “it’s one and the same” — a point her office reinforced by noting she signed a wide-ranging climate bill that, among other things, included provisions to curb natural gas.
“We continue to make investments in bringing in energy sources that make sense in today’s world,” Healey said in East Boston. “That’s why I’m continuing with solar deployment and wind deployment and geothermal deployment, all of these things we need to do.”
Left unmentioned: Her embrace of natural gas projects.
The US Chamber of Commerce found in 2025 that Massachusetts’ electricity costs increased by more than 20 percent over the last three years — to nearly double the US average.
The rising costs have animated voters’ concerns and introduced a little déjà vu to this year’s governor’s race from 2022, during which Healey boasted of blocking gas pipelines when she served as attorney general. (Though Healey publicly opposed the pipelines, her office lacked the authority to unilaterally block the projects.)
Earlier in October, Healey publicly urged the Trump administration “to join with Massachusetts and focus your efforts to increase gas supply in New England,” and speed up a review of expanding the Algonquin gas pipeline, a $300 million project in Southeastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
Eversource executives and lobbyists donated thousands of dollars to Healey’s campaign ahead of that push. Her campaign said those donations did not influence Healey’s thinking on the project, which she supported last year.
As attorney general, Healey said Massachusetts “should be setting the path for an energy system that is equitable, reliable, and affordable — not one that pumps more money into gas pipelines.” Increasing gas capacity, she argued, would hamper climate progress.
But during the debate with Minogue on Oct. 15, Healey said she has “never been against gas,” clarifying that she opposed fossil fuel projects that could raise costs for ratepayers. She pointed to a court decision rejecting then-Governor Charlie Baker’s bid to make electricity customers pay for building new pipelines, which she opposed.
“I support clean energy,” Healey said in the debate, “but it doesn’t mean that we stop what we’re doing with gas.”
Energy specialists said while Healey’s broader approach — including pushing for energy affordability legislation — could pay off, much relief would not be immediate. Catherine Wolfram, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology energy economics professor who served in the Biden administration, said getting natural gas into Massachusetts is crucial to address winter shortages.
In the meantime, using other funds to cut consumers’ fees could help alleviate costs, Wolfram said, pointing to states like Virginia and New Jersey that took similar approaches.
“Clean energy will help us break the dependence on these volatile fossil fuels, but it’s going to take a while for clean energy projects to get built and for relief to show up,” Wolfram said. She added that at times, “it’s just not worth dying on the sword for a clean energy program in the state of Massachusetts, when climate change is really a world problem.”
Still, some clean energy advocates see her embrace of expanding gas infrastructure as a pivot from her strict environment-first approach — even if they applaud moves early in her tenure.
Last year, more than half of New England’s energy resources came from natural gas, followed by nuclear energy. Renewable energy made up about 13 percent of the state’s usage.
Advocates have praised the Healey administration for appointing the state’s first-ever climate chief, investing in offshore wind projects, bringing Canadian hydropower into the region, promoting clean grid modernization efforts, and incentivizing climate-friendly building construction.
Healey often cites a 2024 law she signed to accelerate clean energy development by reforming siting and permitting measures, which her administration said would help Massachusetts’ ambitious goal of zero emissions by 2050.
But a combination of economic and political headwinds is complicating Massachusetts’ approach: The Trump administration has slashed funding for clean energy projects, inflation is running higher than expected, and oil prices are soaring amid the war with Iran.
Last year, Healey pushed back the state’s minimum requirements for sales of new electric vehicles. Efforts to import more hydropower into the region at times haven’t yielded as much energy as expected. And this year, her administration delayed implementing the so-called clean heat standard — a program intended to incentivize cleaner heat technologies — until 2028, arguing they responded to requests for additional time to implement changes that could raise costs.
Earlier this month, Healey declared an “energy emergency” and announced she would use money from one of the more obscure fees attached to utility bills, so-called alternative compliance payments, which typically go to local and state clean energy projects, to reimburse consumers, estimating it would reduce heating bills by at least $129 million. She also used $305 million of those funds earlier this year and last year to cut customers’ electric bills.
Her administration said clean energy investments from that fee “remain an important part of the administration’s long-term energy strategy.”
Healey’s approach, some argue, is part of a trend of Democratic candidates softening climate policies they championed just a few years ago in favor of addressing cost-of-living concerns.
To Larry Chretien, executive director of the Green Energy Consumers Alliance, “we’ve always had all of the above, and we’re still overly dependent upon natural gas as a state.”
Rather than look for “quick fixes,” Chretien said Healey “needs to exert some leadership” on issues such as proposed cuts to energy efficiency programs: “The foundation is strong. We’ve just got to keep building on it rather than abandoning it.”
Minogue, who ran the medical technology company Abiomed, takes a different approach. He pledges to eliminate the requirement that fossil fuel emissions in Massachusetts be effectively eliminated outright by 2050 and slash what he calls “climate taxes” on utility bills by “one-third.”
As with Healey, Minogue supports expansion of natural gas pipelines and new sources of nuclear energy. Healey, by contrast, says Minogue would “kill wind” and “kill solar,” tying her Republican opponent to “Trump’s agenda around energy.” Minogue retorts that while he uses solar power at his home, more broadly relying on clean energy would “bankrupt the state.”
His 238-page financial disclosure also showed Minogue owns stock in more than a dozen energy and utility companies nationwide, including Eversource. He also holds stock in NextEra Energy and Dominion Energy, two companies that own New England’s biggest nuclear power plants and are seeking to merge.
Elizabeth Hopkins, a spokesperson for Minogue, said his Eversource investments are held in accounts managed by investment professionals.
“Mike is not making day-to-day trading decisions,” Hopkins said, adding that he has “delegated responsibility to the investment managers.”
Minogue’s approach has alarmed some environmental activists, including the Environmental League of Massachusetts Action Fund, which endorsed Healey and raised flags on Minogue’s “hostility towards clean energy.”
Meanwhile, some climate groups that previously backed Healey are remaining neutral this year.
“When she came into office, she saw things the way we did — that it’s an investment in an outdated and polluting, dirty system that’s also expensive,” Vick Mohanka, director of the Sierra Club’s Massachusetts chapter, said of gas expansion. “And now she’s asking for more pipelines.”
Anjali Huynh can be reached at anjali.huynh@globe.com.