Massachusetts town experiments with community heating and cooling

Jennifer and Eric Mauchan live in a Cape Cod-style house in Framingham, Massachusetts, which they cool with five air conditioning units. In the summer, the electric bill for a 2,600-square-foot home can reach $200.

In winter, heating with natural gas usually costs more than $300 per month, even with the temperature set at 18 degrees Celsius (65 degrees Fahrenheit).

“My mother, when she was alive, wouldn’t come to our house in the winter” because it was too cold, Eric Mauchan said.

But starting Tuesday, their neighborhood will be part of a pilot climate solution that connects 37 homes and businesses with a highly efficient underground heating and cooling system. Even taking into account that several of the buildings will switch from natural gas to electricity, people are expected to see their electricity bills drop by an average of 20%. It’s a model that some experts say can be expanded and replicated elsewhere.

“As soon as they told me about it, I was 100% on board,” said Jennifer Mauchan, who works in finance, remembering her first meeting with representatives from Eversource, the gas and electric utility that installed the system. “From a financial standpoint, I thought it was a very viable option for us.” She cited reducing greenhouse gases that cause climate change as an important factor in the decision.

Gina Richard, owner of Corner Cabinet, a kitchen and bathroom cabinet showroom in Framingham, said she felt “very lucky” to be part of the project. She currently uses two air conditioners and two heaters and hopes to replace them all with a single system. Richard said she was told her $900 to $1,000 winter heating bill would drop by up to a third, which she said would be “amazing.”

The Framingham system consists of a giant underground circuit filled with water and antifreeze, similar to the way gas is delivered to multiple homes in a neighborhood. The water in the loop absorbs heat from underground, which remains at about 13 degrees Celsius (55 degrees Fahrenheit) year-round.

Households have their own heat pump units that provide heating and air conditioning, installed by the utility company. They remove heat from the circuit, increase the temperature even further and release this heat in the form of hot air into homes. For air conditioning, heat is extracted from the home or business and released into the Earth or transported to the next home.

Energy sharing works best when some buildings use heat while others need it, just like a grocery store needs to keep its cases cool even in winter.

There are other gridded geothermal projects in the US, including the Whisper Valley community in Texas and Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. Eversource says this is the first utility-led facility in the US. If it works, this could be important because an individual property owner could not do the excavation and drilling necessary to create a neighborhood system.

Right now, homeowners can purchase individual air source heat pumps, which have become common and are efficient. Or they can drill for more expensive and even more efficient solutions ground source heat pumps. Incentives, such as those in the Inflation Reduction Act or local utilities, help reduce the price of these, but the final cost can still be tens of thousands of dollars.

Framingham beat out other communities that applied to Eversource to become pilot sites. The city 20 minutes west of Boston is surrounded by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as well as companies such as Thermo Fisher Scientific, Pfizer and Novartis. Eric Mauchan said the proximity of so much advanced technology and a state law requiring greenhouse gas emissions to go to zero by 2050 helped make the community welcoming.

Nikki Bruno, vice president of clean technologies at Eversource, also cited the state’s emissions law as a reason for the pilot. It was also “an opportunity from a decarbonization standpoint,” she said, because Eversource has its own net-zero goal.

“We’re thinking, okay, we’ll do this pilot now, how can we scale this into a sustainable business model, into a sustainable program to offer in more locations?” she said.

Jack DiEnna, founder of the National and International Geothermal Initiative, a coalition of industry professionals, said utilities are feeling pressure to address climate change, as well as incentives to do so. Geothermal heat pumps are highly efficient, reduce electricity demand on the grid and can be installed in regions beyond the reach of gas lines. They also cool homes and release very little climate pollution compared to traditional heaters and air conditioners.

There is also an issue of equity that concerns some in the climate and energy sector. If people who have the means turn off natural gas, it could have unequal consequences for people.

This “means that the people who can least afford it are stuck paying for this gas system, this leaky gas system,” said Ania Camargo, thermal energy networks manager at the Building Decarbonization Coalition, a nonprofit that works to eliminate fossil fuels from buildings.

“One of the reasons I advocate for public services to be a big part of the solution is because it’s a way to make sure we can do this for everyone.”

Back at the Mauchans’ house, the couple laugh about the adaptations they were making to their old heating system. “I was very conscious of the expense we would incur if we raised the temperature to, God forbid, 70 degrees in the winter,” Jennifer recalled about letting the house cool in the winter.

They hope their new heat pump will change things. “I mean, we’ll keep our house at 71 degrees year-round,” Eric said.

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