Editor’s note: The authors of this article, Regine Spector and Irina Costache, conducted interviews for this piece between 2022 and 2025. It draws from, and expands upon, an academic article the two published on the subject in January in the journal Energy Research and Social Science.
In September 2008, the Springfield City Council issued a vote that would frustrate and alarm many in their community for over 13 years. Few citizens knew about the scheduled hearing or about the matter the council was deliberating that night. The agenda for the meeting was posted on the bulletin board of City Hall, councilors said, but community members didn’t often frequent its halls.
“I almost felt like it was a done deal before it was even debated at all,” one of two dissenters, then-Councilor Patrick Markey, recounted. The other councilor to downvote, Rosemarie Mazza Moriarty, said to MassLive at the time: “I’m not confident that there aren’t negative effects on the city of Springfield.”
The City Council had voted to approve a permit for Palmer Renewable Energy LLC to build a “biomass” power plant — in this case one that would burn wood — in a residential area of East Springfield.
“So frequently the reason there’s no opposition is because people just don’t know about it or don’t know what to do about it,” said Mireille Bejjani, the co-executive director of the New England environmental justice organization Slingshot.
Only after the permit was approved did Springfield citizens begin to learn about (and oppose) the project. Residents — and later the City Council itself — quickly mobilized in a campaign of protests, petitions, testimonies, published editorials, legal action, and media coverage that would last 13 years. In this time, the project gained the nickname “the Zombie plant” for the many times it seemed to have sprung back to life after activists thought it was defeated.
This campaign took place against the backdrop of Massachusetts’ decarbonization efforts. As the state sought to increase its share of renewable energy production and consumption, conflict arose over what actually counted as “renewable.” The Zombie plant case exemplified how these ambiguities in definition can have significant impacts on environmental and public health. And it revealed how communities sometimes struggle to exert local control in cases of energy disputes.
Today, municipalities across the state, including many in western Massachusetts, continue to work towards finding a balance between reducing reliance on fossil fuels and retaining their decision-making autonomy.
Biomass in western Massachusetts
Environmental scientists and researchers, activists, and lawmakers have long contested the status of biomass as a form of renewable energy. This type of energy is produced by burning organic material like corn kernels, soybeans, or algae, but the most common source is wood — the source Palmer was proposing to burn.
Some consider biomass a renewable form of energy because of its derivation from trees, arguing that trees have carbon sequestration abilities. But others have pointed out that the timescale between chopping down and regrowing trees doesn’t merit labeling it a “carbon neutral” fuel. Moreover, studies have found that emissions from burning biomass are deeply polluting, rivaling those from coal and gas. This pollution can lead to chronic illness and affect the brain, heart, and reproductive system.
These potential emissions were disturbing to many in a city that was already overburdened with pollution and home to many residents with pre-existing health conditions. At the time of the Palmer proposal, 22% of Springfield identified as Black and 35% Hispanic. In 2019, the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America named Springfield the asthma capital of the United States.
“I heard that the City Council had approved it, and we couldn’t understand why, you know, because, as we know, our asthma rates are high, we need to protect our air,” said Zaida Govan, who chairs the Springfield sustainability and environment subcommittee and lives near the proposed project site. “We had to be out there educating people, letting people know why we couldn’t afford having a plant like this in our backyard. And remind people that air travels. So this wasn’t just going to affect my neighborhood. It was going to affect the next neighborhood over, the next town over.”
The First Approvals
Palmer needed to receive permits both from the state and municipal governments to begin building. Municipalities have jurisdiction to make decisions on zoning, like where a project can and should be built. The state, meanwhile, is in charge of evaluating the environmental impacts of a proposal and issuing the appropriate permits for air, noise, and waste.
In both approval cases, there was little deliberation and study of potential impacts.
At the time of the Palmer proposal, the Springfield City Council was not representative of the city’s residents. The council operated only on an at-large system, meaning seats weren’t reserved for residents across all of Springfield’s neighborhoods but were instead elected in a citywide vote. Only one of the nine sitting councilors resided near the site of the proposed plant. And, the council had only one Black and one Latino member, despite these groups representing a majority of the city’s population. Some attribute this unrepresentative voting body to the plant’s initial approval.
“It was shocking how quickly it was approved. There was not a lot of debate,” recounted Markey, who tried to convince his fellow councilors to debate and further investigate the project’s potential health and environmental impacts before putting it up to vote.
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At the state level, decision makers were bound by strict institutional standards that made it easy for the corporation to obtain a permit, provided it met the baseline state regulations. After Palmer submitted an environmental notification form and made a few changes to its proposal, the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs under then-Secretary of Environmental Affairs Ian Bowles decided that Palmer did not need to submit an environmental impact report which would have required the company to do a more comprehensive study of the environmental and health impacts of its plant.
“I have determined that the [Environmental Notification Form] has sufficiently defined the nature and general elements of the Palmer Renewable Energy project and proposed measures to avoid and mitigate environmental impacts,” Bowles wrote in the decision. “The proposed project, as described in the ENF, requires no further review under MEPA.”
Bowles was referencing the Massachusetts Environmental Policy Act and his decision that the project didn’t fall under that law’s purview also proved consequential. It meant the state didn’t need to invoke its environmental justice policy in this case. (The state environmental justice policy, adopted in 2002, mandates the state to enhance its environmental review and public participation in designated environmental justice communities like Springfield.)
These two permitting circumstances made it challenging for activists to raise health and environmental justice concerns; the city wasn’t in a position to consider health- and air-related concerns, and the state was not mandated to consider environmental-justice concerns either.
“This is one of those contexts where the specificity of what we’re challenging comes into play. Since we’re challenging the building permit, we can’t complain about air quality,” said Johanna Epke, a former lawyer with the Conservation Law Foundation who helped defend the City Council when Palmer eventually sued to try to push the project forward.
Thus, two parallel campaigns began — one at the city and one at the state level.
A battle in the city
Very quickly after the City Council vote, organizers in Springfield began advocating for change in the council’s makeup. Organizations like Arise for Social Justice and its founder Michaelann Bewsee successfully petitioned the city to adopt a ward representation system. The council grew from nine to 13 seats, of which eight became ward seats voted on by residents of those neighborhoods. The following election, a far more diverse group of candidates ran for office as part of what became the greatest number of new candidates running in 50 years.
The newly elected City Council was opposed to the Palmer project and voted 10-2 in the spring of 2011 to revoke the previously granted permit. In response, Palmer initiated a multi-million dollar lawsuit against the city. Over the course of four years, the case went through the Massachusetts Land Court, Appeals Court, and the state’s highest court, the Supreme Judicial Court.
This lawsuit hinged on the interpretation of one word: incinerator. The City Council argued that, based on a city zoning ordinance, Palmer required a special permit to build because it was a commercial activity involving incineration. Palmer argued that its plant was not an incinerator and that, therefore, it did not need a special permit to build.
“It came down to what was incineration,” Markey, the former city councilor, said. “Is incineration just burning traditional garbage? Or is it burning things that are waste? So I argued that yeah, it’s waste. You’re telling us you’re gonna pick up trees that fell over on the side of the road, so they’re not good for anybody — that’s waste. And if you’re burning that, you’re burning waste.”
Markey, who is himself a lawyer, helped represent Springfield pro bono because the City Council was struggling to secure the funding it needed to hire an attorney. Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno, who had been on record supporting the Palmer project, is in charge of drafting the city budget and did not appropriate funds the City Council needed to hire outside legal help.
This documented tension between the mayor and City Council also contributed to a lack of information flow for the council, according to State Rep. Orlando Ramos, D-Springfield, who sat on the council at the time. Local organizers and activists were crucial to keeping the council informed.
“They kept us informed in terms of how the project was moving forward, timelines, all of that we had to get from the outside because we were not getting that from the administration,” said Ramos.
Ultimately, the Supreme Judicial Court ruled in Palmer’s favor, granting them permission to break ground.
Controversy in the state
Despite their win in court, Palmer stalled. The developers didn’t break ground on the project for three years.
At the time of the proposal, Palmer expected to be included in Massachusetts’ Renewable Energy Portfolio Standard, which was adopted in 2002. The standard requires utilities to purchase an increasing amount of renewable energy each year to help the state meet its decarbonization goals. As an accounting method, the state also created renewable energy credits that energy producers sell to utilities. Those credits help account for renewable energy generation and are a source of revenue for energy producers.
Biomass was included in the Renewable Energy Portfolio Standard when it was first adopted, and a few other developers proposed biomass plants in western Massachusetts around the same time, including one in Russell and another in Greenfield. But after activists campaigned to change the Renewable Energy Portfolio Standard, the state tightened its regulations to require biomass facilities to meet a 60% efficiency standard to qualify for renewable energy credits, compared to a previous 25% standard. The Russell and Greenfield biomass proposals soon shuttered due to this difficult standard and new financial barrier, but Palmer pressed on.
In 2019, activists said they discovered a reason why Palmer might have been waiting: the state unveiled a proposal to roll back existing efficiency standards for non-forest derived wood biomass plants, making them eligible for the Renewable Energy Portfolio Standard.
If implemented, Palmer would have stood to earn $13 to $15 million a year from ratepayers.
In addition, Energy New England — an energy trading organization that services the energy supplies of many state municipalities — posted an announcement including Palmer in their green portfolio options a day before the regulation was publicly released. That raised suspicion for activists that the regulation was written with Palmer in mind.
“There is only one plant in the entire northeast that would immediately qualify for that. That would have been Palmer,” said Laura Haight, the U.S. policy director at the Partnership for Policy Integrity, which opposed the project.
Energy New England also began promoting energy from the Palmer plant to municipal light plants across the state, distributing a fact sheet touting biomass as a clean source of energy and writing that it was expected to be eligible for renewable energy credits by the end of the year. Eight of those municipal plants ended up signing contracts with Palmer.
The Partnership for Policy Integrity slammed Energy New England in a response that sought to dispel what it called “misleading,” “unsubstantiated,” and “dubious” claims.
“ENE appears to have taken PRE’s word regarding the environmental impacts of the project rather than exercise due diligence and examine the company’s claims,” wrote Partnership for Policy Integrity director Mary Booth in the response letter.
Another suspected reason for the proposed rewrite was a petition from the government of Maine. When biomass was cut out of Massachusetts’ Renewable Energy Portfolio Standard in 2010, Maine’s biomass plants were effectively cut out too, since New England states can purchase renewable energy from each other across borders. The former governor of Maine, Paul Lepage, met with then Massachusetts governor Charlie Baker in 2016 to ask him to consider changing the state’s standards.
“[Baker] sees Maine and Massachusetts as part of a regional economy. When Maine’s doing well, Massachusetts can do well,” Patrick Woodcock, the former director of Maine’s energy office, told Maine Public Radio about the meeting. Woodcock later became Baker’s commissioner of the Department of Energy Resources.
For Massachusetts, the change would have benefited their decarbonization goals. If biomass could be once again eligible for renewable energy credits, the state would be able to count it towards its renewable energy targets.
The zombie plant dies
In April 2021, the Department of Environmental Protection revoked the plan approval it had issued Palmer in 2011.
“MassDEP has determined to exercise this authority due to the amount of time that has elapsed since issuance of the PRE Final Plan Approval, more recent health-related information, and the heightened focus on environmental and health impacts on environmental justice populations from sources of pollution during the intervening years,” Michael Gorski, the regional director in the western Massachusetts office of the Department of Environmental Protection, wrote in the revocation letter.
The official grounds for the revocation were that Palmer had stalled too long on breaking ground and that their permit had effectively expired. But the department also cited the state environmental justice policy and Springfield’s vulnerability as an environmental justice community as factors in its decision. This mention of key environmental health concerns that activists had been voicing for years demonstrated their progress elevating environmental justice priorities at the state level.
Activists also captured the attention of U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey, who later in 2020 had written a letter to the Department of Environmental Protection urging them to revoke Palmer’s permit. The senators requested that the department consider the city’s environmental justice and health concerns.
“What we really tried to do is get enough people on fire about it so that it didn’t really matter what the folks at the top thought,” said Susan Theberge, an activist with Climate Action Now. “They got that they were gonna look really bad if they didn’t support us.”
Ramos, the former city councilor and current state representative, said that without activists’ efforts, the Palmer plant would have been built.
“We would have a biomass power plant in East Springfield right now,” he said.
Their success also translated to changes at the state level.
In 2021, Ramos introduced two bills that would have definitely cut biomass out of the Renewable Energy Portfolio Standard. Though lawmakers didn’t pass the two bills, the state’s comprehensive 2022 climate bill did remove biomass from eligibility for the Renewable Energy Portfolio Standard.
“It was exciting that the Springfield issue really did ignite a bigger push and more awareness, not just in Springfield but across the state,” said Bejjani, the Slingshot co-executive director.. “That this isn’t just that we don’t want biomass here in Springfield, it’s that we don’t want biomass anywhere.”
Bejjani added that this systemic change is a focus of her organizing work.
“When we do win a local victory, how do we leverage that into more systemic change?” she said. “How do we not have that just end at the borders of that town?”
The biomass debate is not completely over, however. Two loopholes still exist that make biomass eligible for subsidies in Massachusetts — one that allows them to qualify for Alternate Energy Portfolio Standard (similar to the Renewable Energy Portfolio Standard, but for state businesses and institutional buyers) and another that lists them as a “non-carbon emitting source” for municipal light plants to purchase from.
Palmer is also still in court fighting to revive its permit. A decision is expected from the Massachusetts Court of Appeals later this year.
What’s next for environmental justice in Springfield?
In November 2024, Gov. Maura Healey signed into law another major climate bill aimed at accelerating the state’s progress toward its goal of reaching net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
One of the bill’s biggest changes will be to the state’s renewable energy permitting process, taking effect in March, 2026. Whereas currently, proposed clean energy projects (solar, wind, battery, transmission, and anaerobic digestion) would have to seek out many siting and environmental permits from the relevant municipalities and state agencies, developers will now only need to get one consolidated permit. Large projects generating over 25 megawatts of power will go to the state’s Energy Facilities Siting Board, which will have 15 months to approve the permit. Small projects will go to the municipalities with a 12-month time limit.
The state Energy Facilities Siting Board will still consult municipalities on issues they have jurisdiction over when making permitting decisions. Grants will also be made available to municipalities that seek more support for reviewing these consolidated permits.
“At the local level, one of the things we really wanted to do is make sure that we’re preserving the municipalities’ right to issue the permit right there,” said Michael Judge, the undersecretary of energy in the Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs.
But some advocates and municipal officials are concerned that the state’s approach may override their ability to regulate developments with their own municipal bylaws.
“They’re going to write regulations that tie everybody up, such that they’re going to be forced to use these state guidelines and regulations regardless of their zoning bylaws,” said Janet Sinclair, an advocate with Save Massachusetts Forests.
Municipalities across western Massachusetts have been facing particular challenges retaining agency over solar permitting, which they worry will be built in their communities at the expense of forested areas. In Springfield, for example, 13 acres of trees owned by the grocery chain Stop & Shop are poised to be chopped for a new solar-panel build.
Currently, a state law known as the Dover Amendment prohibits municipalities from “unreasonably regulat[ing] the installation of solar energy systems.” A solar developer sued the town of Shutesbury in 2023 for its local solar zoning bylaws that the developer argued violated the amendment.
Activists unsuccessfully attempted to strike this clause from the state law in 2023.
“Everyone I can speak for, certainly everyone on the Planning Board, and probably everyone in town who’s voted for the solar bylaw, acknowledges the climate crisis and wants to actively do stuff to sort of address it. It’s just about appropriate siting,” said Michael DeChiara, the chair of Shutesbury’s Energy and Climate Action Committee.
A 2023 study by Mass Audubon and Harvard Forest found that the state could reach its energy goals by building solar on rooftops, parking lots, and already developed lands.
The state said that it is working on drafting specific guidelines for the new permitting process that will help provide more clarity and baseline standards on how municipalities can regulate developments like solar. They are expected to have a proposal by the spring and a draft rule for formal comment by the summer.
The state is also working to set up webinars and a website that municipal officials will be able to reference for information on how to follow the new permitting process.
Advocates have also voiced concern about the new 12-month municipal deadline for issuing a permitting decision. DeChiara explained that municipalities need time for consultations, public meetings, and reports. Since many local planning boards are volunteer-run, 12 months is not always a feasible decision timeline, he said.
If the 12-month deadline isn’t met, a project will be automatically approved. (The legislation states if too many permits are automatically approved in a year, lawmakers would revisit this rule.) Or, if a town foresees that their 12-month timeline can’t be met, the proposal would be sent to the Energy Facilities Siting Board for a decision.
Advocates and researchers have pointed to other ways that the state could accelerate its clean energy development, like addressing the backlog of connectivity to the energy grid. A 2023 report by the Applied Economics Clinic explains that “proposed projects must wait their turn in the interconnection queue; and when the number of proposals grows faster than the utility can process them, the interconnection queue can become quite long.”
“In Massachusetts alone, at this writing, the proposed capacity additions waiting in the interconnection queue represent approximately $8 billion in planned investments, or 1.2 percent of Massachusetts’ total economic activity for 2022,” the report continues.
Other provisions in the bill include a mandated cumulative impact analysis for large builds, which activists have lauded. This means that all proposals reviewed by the Energy Facilities Siting Board will have to take into consideration a community’s existing share of infrastructure and existing vulnerabilities. If this provision had existed at the time of Palmer’s proposal, the project would have needed to undergo a cumulative impact analysis and may not have been approved.
The bill also made some changes to the state’s regulation of what the fossil-fuel industry calls “natural gas” — more accurately described as methane gas or fracked gas. However, none will impact the potential viability of a proposed Eversource extension of a pipeline running from Springfield to Longmeadow.
“Folks in Springfield are really tired of saying ‘no’ to things, and they want things that they can say ‘yes’ to,” Bejjani said.
Today, Springfield is working on updating its climate action plan and implementing a community choice energy program that advocates hope will give residents more decision-making power.
“It’s been a lot more collaborative,” said Naia Tenerowicz, an organizer with the Springfield Climate Justice Coalition. “Not so much, ‘Don’t do this thing,’ but, ‘How can we make this thing actually benefit our ecosystem and the community to the best that it can?’”
Irina Costache is writer based in Brooklyn. She holds a degree in Political Science from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and is currently pursuing a Master’s in Cultural Reporting and Criticism at New York University. Follow her on Twitter @irinaacostache
I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst where I teach comparative political economy, development, energy and Central Asian politics courses. My current research examines New England energy politics and electric grid reform, among other topics. I work in partnership with colleagues and students at UMass, and with multiple New England organizations, seeking to advance a cost-effective, democratic, and carbon-neutral grid that will enhance the quality of human and non-human life.
