“Massachusetts’ major gas utilities, facing the eventual demise of fossil fuels under the state’s decarbonization mandate, are contemplating a new business model: replacing neighborhood gas pipeline networks with pipes that capture and share thermal energy underground.”

“……we found that burning wood and biomass in buildings and in industry had a combined public health burden of at least 18,000 deaths, higher than that of coal-fired power plants.”“Alternatives to wood and biomass for home heating exist. These include air-source heat pumps, ground-source heat pumps, and GeoMicroDistricts — a novel home heating and cooling technology with six demonstration projects underway in Massachusetts.”

“A growing body of research shows that natural gas leaks at the distribution level are much more common and extensive than previously thought.“Although scholars and advocates have raised alarms about the climate change and economic significance of these leaks, there has been little consideration of the problem from an environmental justice perspective.”

“Last month, after years of prodding, state regulators approved a $16 million project that Magavi and Schulman proposed to demonstrate that there’s a financially viable, technically sound way to heat and cool the vast majority of the state’s homes and businesses without fossil fuels. The project uses linked heat pumps and subterranean pipes that can harness steady underground temperatures to heat and cool buildings.”

“Philadelphia wants to see if this can work on a larger scale, and possibly replace natural gas. Philadelphia Gas Works has agreed to take steps toward exploring how to reduce its carbon footprint as part of the city’s overall goal of reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2050.”

“Study co-author Dominic Nicholas built the database used in the study. Nicholas, a program director for the Cambridge-based nonprofit Home Energy Efficiency Team (HEET), had taken the natural gas utilities’ records of gas leaks, geocoded them, and made the data publicly available.”‘With this large data set finally being geocoded and really high quality, it allowed us to explore the problem at different geographic scales, which was a breakthrough, I think, for this work,’ Nicholas said.