Climate solution: Massachusetts town experiments with community heating and cooling

By ISABELLA O’MALLEY
Associated Press

A community in Massachusetts is about to become one of the first in the U.S. to be heated with geothermal, or ground source heat pumps, that are connected to each other. The network could be a climate solution because it’s even cleaner than if the 37 connected homes and businesses each installed their own heat pumps. Eversource, the gas and electric utility doing the installation, says it’s the first such network installed by a utility. That could prove important because utilities can drill and dig at the neighborhood level, where individual owners can’t. Some of the buildings will be switching away from propane and heating oil to electricity, yet the utility still expects a 20% decrease in monthly electricity bills.