Join HEET in fixing the leaks!

March 1, 2017

The natural gas we use to heat our homes and businesses is sent to our buildings through pipes under the streets. These ancient pipes begin to leak over time, releasing natural gas into the atmosphere.Natural gas is primarily methane (a remarkably potent greenhouse gas).  A new Harvard/Boston University study sampled the air over Boston looking for a chemical marker only found with natural gas. The results show 2 to 3 times the previous estimates of natural gas are lost in the Greater Boston area.These leaks damage the environment as much as 10% of the state’s inventory of greenhouse gasses.  This is roughly the same as the emissions of all the businesses and factories in the state.Since it's probably easier to fix a significant number of these leaks than to get a lot of businesses to go Net Zero, HEET has been working hard to figure out solutions.For two years, HEET has used data from utilities in Massachusetts and mapped it Google Maps.Please donate to HEET so we can keep doing this work!  New data from utilities has just been reported, so we need to make new maps for all the cities and towns in our state.