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The City of Cambridge is pushing Massachusetts lawmakers to lift state caps on net metering, arguing that the limits are stalling the city from expanding solar energy initiatives.

City Climate Chief Julie Wormser and Energy and Sustainability Project Manager Irina Sidorenko testified before the Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy last week, urging the state to remove restrictions on how much solar power can be fed back into the electric grid.

Net metering lets solar producers offset their energy use by selling excess power to utilities for bill credits — but a state-imposed ceiling means once the cap is hit, no new projects can qualify.

“The technology and regulatory framework are in place,” Sidorenko said at the Massachusetts State House hearing. “What’s holding us back now are policy limits that no longer serve their purpose.”

Cambridge has net-metered more than 7.3 megawatts of solar power and is closing in on its 10-megawatt municipal cap. Hitting that threshold would block new solar installations on city schools and municipal buildings, even as projects are already in development.

Wormser said the limits threaten Cambridge’s ability to meet its legally binding climate targets, which include carbon neutrality for the largest non-residential buildings by 2035 and eliminating fossil fuels by 2050.

“We will quickly blow through our municipal solar cap as we work to meet our own decarbonization requirements,” she told lawmakers.

The two Cambridge officials, however, stopped short of proposing a specific new cap, instead urging the state to simply “lift” the limits altogether.

Steven Nutter — the executive director of Green Cambridge, an environmental protection group which has advocated for expanding solar power into the city — said the caps chill investment and slow innovation.

“You’re just creating this environment where you’re saying that there’s only so much you can produce,” he said. “If you can remove those caps, then you sort of make a better environment for more innovation, for more investment, for longer term planning.”

Cambridge adopted a carbon neutrality plan in 2015 and has steadily expanded its solar infrastructure since — including on city-owned buildings. In April, the Cambridge Housing Authority began financing the installation of new solar panels to eight buildings, which is expected to increase the city’s current solar energy production by more than 200 percent.

But Sidorenko warned that a shared regional cap across territory covered by Eversource, the main energy provider for Cambridge, leaves only about 133 megawatts for all municipalities combined. At the current rate of solar project installations, she expected that Cambridge would reach the limit within three years.

She pointed to recent legislation, like the Clean Energy Act passed in 2024, that requires utility companies to expand the grid and handle more distributed solar energy. Sidorenko warned that if Massachusetts did not lift its cap on net metering, it would make it challenging for Cambridge to meet its legally mandated requirements.

“These caps may have made sense ten years ago, when utilities were concerned about grid stability,” she said. “But they are outdated today.”

—Staff writer Megan L. Blonigen can be reached at megan.blonigen@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X at @MeganBlonigen.

—Staff writer Frances Y. Yong can be reached at frances.yong@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X at @frances_yong_.