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www.fueloilnews.com | FUEL OIL NEWS | APRIL 2016 11 Maine Energy Marketers Association, based in Brunswick. Allowing utilities to finance heat pumps for their customers would have had extensive repercussions for sales of others types of heating and cooling appliances or equipment, Py pointed out. That lobbying effort by the utilities was defeated, Py said, "but they came back" to the legislature with a proposal that would allow electric utilities to do "on-bill" financing of heat pumps. To address the up-front cost—a hurdle for many consumers considering any heating/cooling system—the utilities propose allowing any installer to install a heat pump, after which the utility would bill the consumer monthly for it, Py said. "What they want to do, clearly, is sell more electricity," Py said. "On one hand it's good for the guys installing the heat pumps because they're not directly in competition with some utility putting them in," Py noted. "The problem is that you have a couple hun- dred thousand customers who [a utility] has marketing advantages and relation- ships with." A utility can pitch the cost of the heat pump as affordable or manage- able on a monthly basis, Py said, but that "excludes installers, mechanical contrac- tors and our members, who might be installing heat pumps, from giving all the options to a customer. The heat pump may not necessarily be the best option." The bill appears likely to pass in a ver- sion that is very restrictive, but restricted as it would be, "It's still a problem for us," Py said. Massachusetts Battling pipeline and carbon tax propos- als, and promoting biofuel and expanding its availability to retailers are among the activities that occupy the Massachusetts Energy Marketers Association. If a proposed pipeline is approved and built, "then the entire Northeast c h a n g e s i n t e r m s o f i t s a b i l i t y t o d e l i v e r n a t u r a l g a s , " s a i d M i c h a e l Ferrante, president of the association based in Burlington, Mass. Whether that will happen is "in the hands of FERC—the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission—right now," Ferrante said. The Commission is reviewing an application for the pipeline, called the Northeast Energy Direct Project, filed in November by Tennessee Gas Pipeline Co., a subsidiary of Kinder Morgan, based in Houston, Texas. ( F o r m o r e , s e e " T h e G a s P i p e l i n e Alternative," pg. 14, in the January 2016 issue of Fuel Oil News.) Ensuring availability of supply of low-sulfur fuel oil blended with biofuel is important, Ferrante said. Retailers can pick up fuel most easily at terminals with rack injection, he noted. Otherwise, they must "splash blend." Some infrastructure constraints affect transport of biofuel into the region, Ferrante observed. "There is certainly plenty of biofuel to be had," he said. "It's just a matter of matching up infrastruc- ture with that. More rail cars have to come in from parts of the country where lots of the biofuels emanate from." He also cited "difficulties in certain parts of the state where biodiesel may have to come up through pipelines. For example, in Springfield it's not allowed to come up the Buckeye pipeline just yet" because of concern that it might be commingled with jet fuel. For more on these issues and on the proposed carbon tax in Massachusetts, see pg. 12 of the February 2016 issue of Fuel Oil News.