‘We have to work with the pieces we have,” said Magavi. “The fastest way forward is to flip utilities’ financing mechanisms and customer networks, all these pieces that we can redirect toward building a better energy system.”

“It’s just fiscally irresponsible, and it sets up a classic utility death spiral,” said Zeyneb Pervane Magavi, co-executive director of HEET, a Cambridge nonprofit that specializes in energy efficiency. “As people move off the gas system, you have fewer people paying for it, meaning they will be shouldering more of the costs. It’s a disaster.”

“We need to avoid rebuilding, basically, a 19th-century infrastructure,” said Nathan Phillips, a professor in the Earth and Environment department at Boston University who lives in Auburndale. “Instead, we need to pivot toward the heating of the 21st century.”

“With widespread deployment of community-scale geothermal systems, utilities could become thermal distribution managers. ‘They would predict thermal demand and make real-time decisions to move or store energy,’ said Zeyneb Magavi, HEET’s co-executive director.”

“‘You can move what would be wasted energy around to the building that needs it,’ in a form of energy sharing and load canceling. A state-wide study two years ago found that ‘any place that has gas systems currently can get almost all the heating and cooling done through a network of ground source heat pumps, but it may be challenging in densely populated areas.'”

“One way of helping people, especially during this pandemic, is to make sure they can pay their bills, which is part of HEET’s plan for the Transdev funds. The organization plans to provide outreach to residents to access the low-income discount rate for their energy bills and enroll in energy efficiency programs that further cut emissions while reducing their bills.”