The shift to more sustainable heating and cooling usually happens home by home, as individual homeowners install heat pumps to replace fossil-powered furnaces. But in Framingham, Massachusetts, a neighborhood is making the transition together.  

This week, the local gas utility, Eversource, broke ground on a networked geothermal system that will connect to around 40 buildings, including low-income apartments, single-family homes, small businesses, and the neighborhood fire station. Instead of burning fossil fuels for heat, the buildings will rely on zero-emissions heat from underground, along with electricity. It’s the first pilot project of its kind run by a utility in the U.S.

“What we’re hoping to demonstrate is that this technology really is scalable, and it can be rolled out to a larger customer base,” says Eric Bosworth, senior program manager at Eversource.

The idea for the pilot project came from HEET (Home Energy Efficiency Team), a nonprofit focused on climate solutions that originally started working with the utility to try to reduce methane emissions from gas leaks. But as they looked at the bigger challenge—the fact that ultimately the world will have to transition away from gas to meet climate goals—they started thinking about how basic infrastructure also needed to change at a fundamental level.

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