HEET’s drive to cut emissions quickly expanded as we learned. We got a blower door, asked the experts at Sagewell to help us identify the buildings most in need using thermal imaging, and analyzed home energy data. Eager to share what we had learned, we wrote The Honest Book of Home Energy Savings.

Through our work, the energy efficiency message spread. Thousands of people from diverse communities learned hands-on skills at work parties, then took what they learned home to lower their own energy bills and emissions.

Supported by the City of Cambridge, HEET organized the Cambridge Solar Challenge. HEET negotiated a 20% discount for solar installations, then sent a letter through the Mayor’s office to every home with good solar exposure and followed up with a canvass. While the average annual number of residential solar installations in Cambridge at that time was five, our Solar Challenge achieved more than 50. HEET ran the same program in Somerville resulting in 20 solar installations.

Natural gas is largely made up of methane, a greenhouse gas many times more potent than carbon dioxide—and faster acting. Methane’s high global warming potential means that fixing leaks from gas pipelines is a highly effective way to reduce climate impacts.

When a 2014 Massachusetts law required utilities to report gas leak locations to the Department of Public Utilities, HEET mapped every gas leak in the state, capturing the attention of state and local officials, the media, and the public. The map, which we update each year, helped to launch a grassroots movement in Massachusetts led by Mothers Out Front and the Gas Leaks Allies.

Fix the Worst First  Research at Boston University showed a policy path forward when they found that 7% of natural gas leaks in Boston emit half of all the gas pouring into the atmosphere from an aging, leaking distribution system. Within six months, HEET helped pass a second state law requiring gas companies to address these leaks of “significant environmental impact.”

Still, how would the utilities comply? Knowing there was no proven method of finding high-volume leaks, HEET conducted a study with the three largest utilities in Massachusetts—Columbia Gas, Eversource, and National Grid. The Large Volume Leak study confirmed that fixing the largest leaks cuts methane emissions in half, it and established fast, reliable methods for identifying them. HEET worked with utilities and allies to design an ongoing Shared Action Plan that formalizes data exchange, repair verification, and reassessing methods of addressing large volume leaks.

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HEET began investigating the health impacts of natural gas in 2015, following reports about the Porter Ranch gas leak, widely considered the worst natural gas leak in U.S. history.

Nathan Phillips, HEET board member and Boston University Professor, and Bob Ackley of Gas Safety Inc, quickly made their way out to California to survey the area with a Picarro gas detector. The pair began producing maps of methane concentrations near the leak. Their maps were picked up by the press, who listed HEET as a contact.

HEET Co-Executive Director Audrey Schulman began getting phone calls. One woman’s daughter had a nose bleed that wouldn’t stop. Another man was losing weight due to constant nausea. Each person who called wanted to know: What’s in the gas?

To answer that question, Audrey assembled a team that included the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, PSE Healthy Energy, Boston University. With funding from The Barr Foundation and the Putnam Foundation, the team conducted a study on the chemical composition of natural gas, focused on kitchen stoves.

“Until this study was published, there had been no independent academic research on the chemical composition of the gas delivered to our homes,” said Molly Fairchild, a study author and HEET’s Director of Healthy Homes. Learn more here.

The transition to a clean energy future must be equitable, and HEET continues to put environmental justice at the center of its outreach and programming nationwide.

In 2020, HEET established the EJ Air program to help residents of Dorchester, Roxbury, and Charlestown access subsidized home energy efficiency upgrades through Mass Save. The program was funded with the settlement from a bus-idling lawsuit brought by The Conservation Law Foundation on behalf of those three communities.

HEET has also partnered with the nonprofit All In Energy to help households sign up for free home energy assessments, an important first step in getting weatherization and energy efficiency work done.

In January 2022, ScienceDirect published a study by HEET and Salem State University that examined over 26,000 gas leaks in relation to demographic groups. The study found that low-income populations and communities of color—as well as renters, limited English-speaking households and adults with lower levels of education—are disproportionately exposed to gas leaks, and that leak repairs are comparatively slower for these populations.

HEET was a recipient of Boston’s first Community Clean Air Grant to support Boston’s clean air and carbon neutrality goals. HEET used the funds to distribute induction cooktops to Boston residents who had gas stoves and were being treated for asthma, through Boston’s Breathe Easy at Home program.

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Environmental Science & Technology published a pivotal study conducted by HEET, Harvard University, and PSE Healthy Energy, which found that the natural gas delivered to homes contains trace amounts of non-methane volatile organic compounds that can impact air quality and human health. Today, thanks in part to HEET’s work, the dangers of cooking with natural gas are receiving national attention.

HEET is trying to transform how we heat and cool our buildings—which accounts for xx% of carbon emissions nationwide—by building a new kind of utility.

Our solution is for gas utilities to transition to thermal utilities, delivering heating and cooling with networked ground-source heat pumps, or networked geothermal—also known as thermal energy networks and district energy systems.

Legislation and gas utility pilot projects are advancing in a number of states, while in Massachusetts, Eversource Gas is installing the first utility networked geothermal system in the country.

You can learn more about HEET’s ground-breaking approach in our Gas to Geo section.

Tackling climate change takes all of us! You can support HEET by adding your name to our mailing list, making a one-time or monthly donation to support HEET’s work, and speaking up for networked geothermal utility service in your neighborhood.