By Louise Bullis Yarmoff, Sustainable Marblehead Board Member
If you’ve had an errand to run at Abbot Hall this summer – and tried to park on Washington Square – or if you’re driving in and out of town along Humphrey Street, you’ve noticed that National Grid is replacing its aged, cast-iron gas pipes with new, yellow-plastic ones. Although necessary to eliminate gas leaks, this work could also be viewed as an expensive waste of effort to build a system that will soon be obsolete, given that Massachusetts has pledged to be off fossil fuels by 2050, and Marblehead has an even more ambitious net-zero goal of 2040.
Aware of the necessity of phasing out natural gas, the Massachusetts House and Senate are currently negotiating a joint energy reform bill, which they expect to vote on before the end of the legislative session on July 31. To address the leaks vs. obsolescence conflict, the Senate proposal requires utilities to consider clean-energy alternatives BEFORE repairing leaky pipes. Stay tuned to see if this proposal is included in the final joint bill.
Clearly, the transition from gas to clean energy is not simple. Cities for years have tried to reduce buildings’ reliance on fossil fuels, including by banning gas-powered new construction. Individually, consumers have reduced their carbon footprints by replacing fossil fuel-powered appliances with more climate-friendly versions, like heat pumps, when the original breaks down. But we need to turbocharge this building-by-building, appliance-by-appliance approach if we want to reach our climate goals.
Neighborhood-scale decarbonization, including through geothermal energy networks, offers a new approach. If the entire neighborhood gets off the natural gas system at once, the gas pipeline serving that area can be capped and decommissioned, reducing carbon emissions and saving costly maintenance.
Abbot Hall, the Marblehead Municipal Light Department and several Marblehead homes are already heated and cooled using geothermal energy. These systems rely on the consistent underground temperatures of around 55 degrees Fahrenheit. Buried pipes allow heat to be transferred into buildings in the winter and out in the summer, using ground-source heat pumps to reach the desired room temperature. (To learn more about geothermal energy, click here.)
Now, Marblehead is studying the potential of heating and cooling not just single buildings, but networks of buildings, with geothermal energy. Recently, a consortium including the Light Commission, Sustainable Marblehead, the Fair Housing Committee and the Housing Authority applied for a US Department of Energy grant to study a possible geothermal network that could include the Housing Authority properties on Broughton Road, the Community Center, the High School and the Widger Road municipal offices.
Although our grant proposal was not accepted, the town continues on its learning tour. On July 12, Town Administrator Thatcher Keezer, Sustainability Coordinator Logan Casey, and several Sustainable Marblehead members visited the nation’s first utility-owned networked geothermal system. Built by Eversource Energy, the system went live June 4 in Framingham. The roughly $15 million network of ground-source heat pumps will cool and heat 36 buildings without fossil fuels. The Framingham project includes Housing Authority units, a school and a fire station, with a mixture of buildings similar to that of the proposed Marblehead project.
The July 12 tour was organized by HEET, a nonprofit working on the gas to geothermal transition. According to HEET, networked geothermal offers many benefits, including increased equity in the energy transition. Currently, those who can afford air-source heat pumps transition on their own, and each customer leaving the gas system increases the cost for those remaining – often renters and those who can’t afford a new heating system. A transition to networked geothermal would convert whole neighborhoods, providing equitable access to renewable energy and keeping energy rates stable.
The HEET presentation also pointed out that networked geothermal offers safe and green jobs. Gas HDPE (High Density Polyethylene) pipes installed now are the same as the water pipes needed for geothermal, allowing the existing gas workforce to transition. Another benefit of geothermal networks is that they produce energy locally, increasing resiliency and reducing the cost of upgrading the electric network.
Some college campuses and private developments already use networked geothermal systems. But highly regulated utilities like National Grid and Eversource have been slow to get into the game because they are limited in the types of energy they can sell. Soon, however, that could change in Massachusetts, thanks to the energy reform bill under negotiation at the State House. On July 17, the Massachusetts House passed H.4876, An Act Accelerating a Responsible, Innovative, and Equitable Clean Energy Transition. The act includes a section from the “Future of Clean Heat” bill submitted by Marblehead’s State Representative Jenny Armini (and originally proposed by our former Representative Lori Ehrlich). H.4876 would revise the definition of "gas company" to clarify that utilities may make, sell, or distribute utility-scale non-emitting thermal energy, including networked geothermal.
“Utilities currently do not have statutory authority to pursue alternatives to gas,” said Armini, “So, this is big!”
All eyes are on Beacon Hill to see which proposals make it into the final joint energy reform bill to be voted by the end of the month.