Melissa Lavinson gets some help as she helps shepherd the state’s clean energy transition – The Boston Globe

The group, Lavinson said, will meet quarterly but will also convene in smaller numbers to work on specific issues. The board already faces three big tasks: planning for what to do after the LNG terminal in Everett potentially closes in six years, reducing the reliance on so-called “peaker plants” that are fired by fossil fuels, and recommending ways to finance important grid upgrades. The board is large, she said, in part to get people who don’t normally talk with each other to interact. There’s a pressing need, she added, to meet aggressive emissions mandates, and to craft sustainable solutions that can be replicated elsewhere.

“We are in a race against time when it comes to climate change,” Lavinson said. “It will take all of us working together.”

She’s held numerous positions in the utility industry over the past three decades, including jobs at PG&E and Exelon — but nothing quite like this role.

“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” Lavinson added. “I can’t think of a better place to be for me right now at this moment, personally or professionally, than here, doing this job.”

Charger debate revs up at Massport hearing

Should Massport start charging for charging?

That question seemed to vex the port authority’s board last Thursday. Joel Barrera, Massport’s director of strategic and business planning, proposed ending the free ride at Massport’s 66 electric vehicle charging ports, most of them at Logan Airport.

He suggested charging 25 cents per kilowatt hour plus a connection fee of $2, starting Sept. 1, ostensibly to dissuade travelers from parking their EVs at a port and leaving them there for days while out of town, preventing others from using it. He said it’s about charger availability, not revenue: The change could raise some $60,000 a year, based on last year’s usage patterns, which is not even a rounding error for Massport. And he noted that state energy officials recommend that public agencies charge for charging; several already do.

Normally, by the time a proposal is ready for a board vote at Massport, it sails through to approval. Not this time.

Board member John Nucci objected, saying charging consumers for the electricity would send the wrong message.

“We’re supposed to be incentivizing electric vehicle usage,” he said. “I know it’s small dollars but I think it might be penny wise and pound foolish in the long run. . . . A lot of other airports don’t charge.”

However, another board member, Worcester County Sheriff Lew Evangelidis, called Barrera’s proposal a commonsense approach. “I’m not a big proponent of just giving stuff away for free,” Evangelidis said.

In the end, acting Massport chief executive Ed Freni offered to give the staff more time to come up with data that could show requiring payments would improve usage. Board chair Patricia Jacobs agreed to the delay, adding: “I do appreciate the proposal and the intent behind it. We just want to make sure we’re incentivizing the right behavior.”

If at first you don’t succeed . . .

Ed Flynn is nothing if not persistent.

The city councilor just sent Arthur Jemison, Mayor Michelle Wu’s planning director, another note calling for a Blue Ribbon Commission to analyze what’s ailing downtown Boston and propose solutions.

At Flynn’s suggestion, the Boston City Council approved a resolution calling for this downtown task force several months ago. No movement from the Wu administration. Then Flynn sent another letter on July 2, after several office buildings were sold at deep discounts. Still, no luck.

So on July 16, Flynn made a third request. He was spurred on, he said, by business leaders who met earlier this month at the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce to talk about how office traffic may never return to prepandemic levels, and the implications for downtown’s future and Boston’s property tax base.

Flynn said the empty offices hurt many small businesses downtown that depend on foot traffic every weekday. Flynn, in his latest request, also noted how he would like to see all city boards return to in-person meetings, in part to set a good tone for the private sector.

When asked about Flynn’s latest letter, a Wu administration spokesperson rattled off the efforts the administration is pursuing to make downtown Boston “a vibrant place to work and to live” including by engaging with large employers to fill vacancies. Among other things, Wu has launched tax breaks to spur office-residential conversions, and used federal dollars to help fill vacant storefronts with new tenants. Still no word on that Blue Ribbon Commission, though.

Your Chamber of Commerce CEO from Boston

Greenville Chamber of Commerce chief executive Carlos Phillips, the departing chair of the Association of Chamber of Commerce Executives, didn’t make any of his usual jokes about Greater Boston Chamber chief executive Jim Rooney’s Boston accent last week at the ACCE annual convention in Dallas.

He didn’t need to. Rooney, who took the baton from the Greenville, S.C.-based Phillips as the new chair of the ACCE board, made sure to bring up the topic.

Rooney got a few laughs talking about sharing a beer and bowl of chowder with a colleague in Boston.

“It’s probably refreshing to you that you’re hearing something different than from South Carolina, and Oklahoma, and Alabama,” said Rooney, a reference to Phillips and other predecessors. “I’m sure someone in the audience will translate if you need it.”

Andy Freed is out of the office again

It’s that time of the year again. Time for Andy Freed’s out-of-office message.

The chief executive of Virtual Inc., a Wakefield provider of services for business associations, takes his vacation seriously — so seriously that if you email him, you’ll get a link to his latest “out-of-office” video in response. Each year, working with buddy Thomas Pimentel of TNT Ltd. Productions, Freed produces a satirical video with a vacation theme in mind. Think “Vacation is Coming,” the year he spoofed Game of Thrones, or “Back to Vacation” instead of “Back to the Future.” This year, he made a five-minute-plus video styled after political ads, entitled “Say Yes to Vacation.”

Freed and Pimentel, along with a few Virtual colleagues and Freed’s terrier Buster, throw together all the cheap campaign video cliches. Think black-and-white footage of opponents, intense symphonic music, Revolutionary War-era clothing, repeated eagle cries. Former Patriots quarterback Drew Bledsoe makes a cameo appearance, trying to keep a straight face as he explains how he’s not going to be the backup while Freed is away.

“In a time that our nation is more divided than it ever has been, I had to come up with something that we could all unify around [and] what’s a more unifying principle in the summer than the idea of vacation?” Freed said in an interview. “We decided to break the record for eagle screeches [in a] campaign ad. That’s just a stock sound. No eagles were employed or harmed.”

Jon Chesto can be reached at jon.chesto@globe.com. Follow him @jonchesto.