In 2007, Zaynab Magave and her husband bought a fixed rupper in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was clearly a home that was loved, but it had a very ancient furnace that even had a little door to put your garbage in and burn it. Our producer, Felix Poon, talked to her about it. Did you use it? No. Zaynab had two kids, and she knew there was a link between natural gas and kids getting asthma. I didn't want to burn anything inside the house, so no combustion. It creates particulate matters, and it's bad for your health. So she looked into her best options to replace the old gas furnace, and she wanted it to be really climate-friendly. What she landed on was geothermal. It seemed really obvious geothermal heating and cooling was basically blowing everything outside of the water. When you hear geothermal, you might be thinking about places like Iceland. They have the kind of industrial plants that tap into super hot water and steam underground that's been heated up by hot rocks and magma. Those plants need to be in volcanic regions, and they also need to have these massive boreholes that go a mile or two below the surface. But there's another kind of geothermal that doesn't need volcanoes or very deep boreholes. This type of geothermal relies on the fact that just about 10 to 20 feet underground, the temperature stays at a constant 50 to 60 degrees. That is year-round and in most places around the world. You tap into that, and you've got geothermal power heating and cooling for your home. For Zaynab, it was a no-brainer. So she reached out to a contractor and it kind of broke her budget. Turns out geothermal energy is cheap, but installation, that's a whole other story. So it's kind of like buying your fuel for the next 50 years on day one. Zaynab was persistent though, so she asked the contractor, like, is there any way this could be cheaper? And he said, well, you know what, I can give you a discount if you can get some of your neighbors to also get a geothermal borehole, because a lot of the cost for me is bringing the rig out, setting it up. I said, oh, that's interesting. So that's how I met some of my neighbors as I knocked on their door and I was like, hi, I'm your new neighbor. And also, could we talk about geothermal energy? And none of my neighbors said yes, which isn't particularly surprising. What were their reasons? A couple of them said, oh, well, that sounds really interesting when my furnace dies, right? And others were just totally uninterested, didn't care at all about their heating system, or even know what it was. Now, for most people, that would have been the end of the story. But fast forward to today, about two decades later, and Zaynab has finally made her dream a reality. She spearheaded a first in the country geothermal project, not for her own home, but for an entire neighborhood. And how'd she do it? By pairing with a very unlikely ally. My name is Bill Eklie. I am president, the evil president of the gas business. I'm Nate Hedgie, and this is Outside In, a show where curiosity and the natural world collide. To date, how a climate activist and a gas executive put their differences aside to find a win-win proposition. It was just science, right? For a little money, you can make a big impact. But is this actually a good idea? Can utilities invested in the status quo really be trusted to drive change? If there are competing goals between making as much money as possible for shareholders and reducing emissions from heating buildings, I think we know, like, what direction the gas utilities are going to go in. Producer Felix Poon has the story. This is Outside In, a show where curiosity and the natural world collide. I'm Felix Poon. So there are two main characters in this story. And I want to start with the one you've already met, Zaynab Mugavi. I have a bad history of gravitating towards the largest problems I can find. She's easy to talk to with a big laugh, short stature, kind of student council president fives. And in the 2010s, Zaynab was taking in the news about worsening climate change. Hurricane Harvey, state of emergency. There were hurricanes in the south and the east coast, wildfires in the west. Erratic and dynamic. That's how firefighters are describing the infernos that have now killed more than 30 people in Santa Rosa alone. Things were looking pretty bleak. And so I felt like I had to do something. And I also had absolutely no clue what to do, because I'd already done a lot. And it wasn't even close to the scale of what needed to happen. And then one day on a walk outside in her neighborhood, she ran into some of her neighbors and they started talking. And they invited me to an event for this group called Mothers Out Front. Mothers Out Front. It was a grassroots group of moms and caregivers fighting climate change. So I joined the group and the first thing we were looking at was methane emissions. Methane is a greenhouse gas. You may know it as the stuff that cows burp up. But when we're referring to it as fuel, we use a different name. Natural gas. Not only does it release CO2 when you burn it, it'll leak out of faulty storage tanks, valve stuck on open, corroded pipes. And when methane is in the atmosphere, it's 80 times stronger than CO2 at trapping heat. 80 times. That's a big deal, especially because in 2012, which was around the time Zaynab joined Mothers Out Front, a new study came out of Boston University. It mapped more than 3,000 leaks in the city of Boston alone. A lot of them were from really old pipes. Some of these pipes, they went in the ground in the 1800s. There was literally a pipe from Lincoln's presidency that was still running. The study got front page coverage on the Boston Globe. And while media coverage brought more awareness to the issue, Mothers Out Front took it a step further. This tape is from the Living on Earth podcast, by the way. Mothers Out Front activists fanned out into their neighborhoods, and they started sticking yellow flags into the soil where there were documented methane leaks. The flags had flyers that said in all caps. We have over 20,000 gas leaks statewide. Leaks speed up climate change, kills trees, and waste energy. They were taking an invisible problem and making it visible. And members of the public, they started seeing these flyers and calling 911. It caused a real stir. The gas companies definitely took notice. Find your local leak and take action for our children's future. We're going to come back to Zaynab and Mothers Out Front. But for now, I want to introduce you to character number two, Bill Aigley. Where'd you grow up and do you remember how your parents heated your home? Yes, very much so. Grew up in New York. This is New York City? This is on Long Island, outside of New York City. And my parents definitely heated the home with oil because I remember my father used to do delivery for an oil company. And once in a while, he would take me out with him. So I knew very much about oil, oil deliveries. And I knew our house was oil, and every smell that came with it. His family's burner was literally right next to their kitchen. This is inside the house? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. You could hear it humming along when it was on. So it's funny that I end up in this space a little bit, but that's my memories from the childhood. The space Bill ended up in is the energy utility industry. Went to work for Brooklyn Inigas. Love the industry. He studied engineering in college. That turned out to be a good fit for this work. National Grid was my first big company, but in 2014, I took a job, a position with Eversource, being president of their gas business. Eversource is a utility, the largest in all of New England. And they're an NHPR underwriter, by the way. But we report on them as we do any other organization. They had no influence over this story and our editorial decisions. So Eversource doesn't frack gas or run power plants. What they do is they maintain the vast network of pipes and transmission lines that deliver electricity and fuel to 4.4 million homes and buildings across multiple states. What was your understanding of climate change? You got into the natural gas business. What was your understanding of climate change? And based on that understanding, how did you feel working for these companies? Well, when I started, natural gas was seen as a solution, not only for affordability, but also reliability. And it was displacing fuel oil. In fact, in New York City, there was a big mandate to shift commercial buildings away from fuel oil to natural gas. Bill's right. There was a time when natural gas was seen as a climate solution. People sometimes called it a bridge fuel. Heating oil was more expensive and worse for the environment. So policymakers figured switching to gas was a climate win. But at the end of the day, natural gas is still a fossil fuel. And in the 2010s, news of how widespread methane leaks are was coming to light. It was the worst methane gas leak in U.S. history. About 109,000 tons of methane leaked from the U.S. The public was seeing these leaks for the first time because of infrared photos published in the New York Times and street mapping projects that showed huge spikes of methane readings throughout cities like Boston. We're coming on to Packard's Corner 2.3. So we're getting a leak here. As Al Gore's climate nonprofit put it in 2019, if natural gas is a bridge, it's a bridge to nowhere. With all the negative press from the Boston Globe and rising pressure from groups like Mothers Out Front, Bill couldn't stay silent. He was the president of Eversource's gas division. And these moms kept writing in repeatedly asking for a meeting. And eventually, he said yes. Would it end up to be a highlight portraying the company of very negative light? It was a lot of contention in the air. That meeting after a break. Where I am in southeast Alaska, we are about to wrap up the snowiest winter on record. I mean, it is spring and it is still snowing. But I know that's probably not the case for the rest of y'all. And spring means warmer weather and new duds. And that's why I keep coming back to Quince. They've got classy clothes that you can actually afford. Quince makes high quality everyday essentials using premium materials like 100% European linen and their insanely soft flonet active wear fabric. I can speak from experience. I have one of these flonet t-shirts and I wear it when I'm running, when I play hockey, when I'm cross country skiing. The shirt still looks brand new even though it's been going on a couple years of hard use. Refresh your wardrobe with Quince. Go to quince.com slash outside in for free shipping and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. Go to quince.com slash outside in for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com slash outside in. There are some weeks where it feels like you have no free time between work, taking the kids to school, walking the dogs, picking your car up from the mechanic. It's all a lot. I mean, you are tired, you are hungry and all you want is a good home cooked meal. But if you're like me, you often turn to the same dinners on repeat. Mac and cheese, tacos, a really boring salad that is mostly just spinach and dressing. You deserve a change that is easy and adventurous. With Hello Fresh, you can cook up bold flavors from around the world without ever leaving home. Our producer, Marina recently ordered barramundi with zesty cilantro sauce. She said the prep was seamless and the results tasted like something that took a lot longer to make. And that zesty cilantro sauce was chef's kiss. Go to hellofresh.com slash outside in 10 FM now to get 10 free meals and a free NutriBullet Ultra Plus 2-in-1 compact kitchen system on your third box. Free meals applied as a discount on the first box. New subscribers only. Veries by plan. Disclaimer, must order the third box by May 31st, 2026. Welcome back to Outside In, a show where curiosity in the natural world collide. I'm Felix Poon. When natural gas executive Bill Aigley agreed to meet with a group of climate activists, his company, Eversource, wanted to take some precautions. What is this about? I heard that they asked you if you wanted guards and a lawyer. Well, I think there was concern again because things get misunderstood. We may need time to formulate what's the best way to respond to what may be a very aggressive kind of contentious meeting. The Massachusetts-based group, Mothers Out Front, wanted to talk about methane leaks, which an increasing body of research showed was a major driver of climate change. Bill declined the security detail on the lawyer, by the way. And that's when he met Zana Magave. It was an office building. It was a small group. And there was a big rectangular table. It was three of us. From the advocate side. Incidentally, all women sit down. Is the other side all men? Totally. So we're evened up a little bit. Three of us and three of them. So we're on different sides. Well, we weren't like opposing each other. No. Gently kitty corner. So they shake hands. They sit down. Zana talks first. I started by saying, look, I am here because I have three kids. And I, you know, I'm increasingly worried about the data I see. And I want to do something. And I think there's something practical we could do. We're interested in working together and finding if there's a win-win we can do. And there was this pause after this. And Bill, he kind of looked at us. And he said, well, I have three kids too. Turns out Bill was worried about his kids' future too. It immediately just made me feel like we were in a really good spot. They talked and they listened to each other's perspectives. Apparently, not all big gas leaks are safety hazards. Like if it's not in a contained space or near the foundation of a building, leaked gas just dissipates into the atmosphere. So companies like Eversource tend to ignore them. But from a climate perspective, new research found that these big so-called super leakers, they make up just 7% of leaks in the state of Massachusetts. But they account for half of all leaked methane emissions. Fixing those leaks could go a long way towards curbing emissions. So this was just a change in kind of perspective. And to me, it was just science, right? Yelling at you to say, boy, it is a pretty economical case to say, for a little money, you can make a big impact. But also, fixing leaks could save money. Estimates vary, but according to a Harvard paper, Boston's pipes were leaking about $90 million worth of natural gas every year. And that cost is most likely passed on to ratepayers. From that first meeting, Bill and Zaynab agreed to work together. Zaynab actually went out with gas workers to test out new methods for identifying the biggest leaks. I ended up with a hard hat and steel toe boots and going out with gas trucks. You're sitting in the passenger seat with these? No, I'm like, I pull up either on my bike or in my car, depending on where it is. Okay, you're following them on your bike? You're not following them on your bike? I did, yeah. I had one of the, just when they were local, like, it's who wants to park in Cambridge. Good point. This was an eye-opening experience for Zaynab. It gave her a new appreciation for the people who do this work. The time with the trucks made me care and realize all these people have jobs and they work hard and we need to continue to keep the systems safe, realize the extent of it. The climate activists and the gas utilities came up with a new regulation that required the gas companies to identify all the super leakers and fix them within a certain time. The state regulator was like, wait a second, I have advocates and local distribution companies agreeing on a new approach to leaks, to chair at the time, said it was the easiest, one of the easiest days he's had in the job, something that would have never happened if we stayed in the media, kind of taking shots at each other. And it was around this time that an idea started to form in Zaynab's head. Geothermal. Over the course of one weekend, I start sketching out how I could put together the geothermal heat pump that I've been so excited about. Not just for one home, but for a bunch of them. Basically interconnect boreholes and pipes filled with water and deliver a thermal supply to geothermal heating and cooling equipment in buildings. And in fact, you could do large buildings, small buildings, all kinds of buildings. In other words, instead of replacing older leaky gas pipes with more gas pipes, could she convince the utilities to replace them with geothermal pipes? Could we build a geothermal utility? By the time we get to the point where I've got this geothermal proposal and we've sketched out some slide decks, we had enough trust that we simply asked for meetings with the presidents of the three gas utilities and we got them. This was her pitch to the gas companies. State law in Massachusetts says that fossil fuels have to be pretty much phased out by 2050. That means the clock is ticking on every gas pipe that's in the ground now. So if you don't want to lose customers, if you want your workers to keep their jobs, replace your gas pipes with geothermal pipes, become a geothermal utility. That was basically the pitch. What was your reaction to that? It was kind of, you know, a little bit of, whoa, you know, it was a very major change to what we do and how we do it. But at the end of the day, it was intriguing. The more they talked about it, the more Bill was convinced, not only that they could do it, but that gas companies were actually the perfect ones to do it. They build, they operate, they maintain underground infrastructure all day long. They have the customer relationships, they have the billing, they have 24-7 resources available to respond to any emergency. So Eversource agreed to try it as a pilot project. So I don't think it was blind like this is definitely going to be the solution and the answer. It has the potential, but we don't know for sure. My name is Bill Eklie. I am president, the evil president of the gas business. In 2023, seven years after Zaynab and Bill first met in that board room, Eversource held a groundbreaking ceremony for the very first utility-owned geothermal network in the country just outside of Boston. Zaynab was there too. Today, she's the executive director of an organization called HEAT, H-E-E-T, that's leading the charge to expand this sort of thing to greater Massachusetts and beyond. Bill retired from Eversource not long after the pilot project was built. He now serves on the board of Zaynab's organization. I think the thing more than even the technology that we are celebrating today is that we're coming together across boundaries that we typically didn't in the past. And so instead of just breaking ground on this project, we're breaking ground on a new clean energy industry. But can for-profit gas companies really be trusted to lead the decarbonization of homes and buildings? I think that's the billion dollar question. This is Kevin Kirscher. He's an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University. And Kevin agrees, gas companies do have the skills we need to build geothermal networks. But Kevin says they're not the only ones. So I think the main candidate would be city governments. Municipal water systems involve pipes, typically buried five to ten feet underground, something like that. And cities are fine at digging holes and laying pipe. There's a few benefits to having cities install geothermal networks instead of gas companies, according to Kevin. He says, since cities aren't for profit, it could end up being cheaper. Could being the operative word. Plus, cities can have progressive tax brackets, meaning that wealthy folks in theory would pay more to fund the upgrades. Compare that to a private utility, which could pay for geothermal projects with rate hikes for everyone, forcing poor people into making tough choices between putting food on the table or says heating their home. But Kevin's real concern here boils down to an even more basic question. Will we actually achieve our goal of phasing out gas if gas utilities are the ones leading the way? And to understand Kevin's skepticism, it's worth just a bit of background on how gas companies make money, since they're kind of public, kind of private entities. So they're regulated monopolies, they're guaranteed by the state to have protection from competition. And as a weird part of that regulatory arrangement, they basically are not allowed to profit from the sale of gas. But the way that they make money is basically by building and maintaining infrastructure. So if Eversource runs new gas pipelines out to a new subdivision that's being built in a Boston suburb, they get to take essentially the value of that infrastructure and take a profit around 10% of it roughly every year for a while. Did you know this was a thing? I didn't. What it means though, Kevin says, is that this incentivizes gas companies to build and maintain two different sets of infrastructure, one for gas and one for geothermal for as long as possible. Now you might think, well that's fine, gas for cooking, geothermal for heating, that's still a big reduction in emissions, right? Turns out probably not when it comes to methane leaks, which remember are 80 times more potent than CO2. Kevin says, if you're not cutting off the gas supply, if you're just papering over it with geothermal pipes, then we haven't really touched the methane leaks problem. And if utilities gets around two parallel systems, Kevin says that wouldn't save customers money, it could wind up costing them more. And that's beautiful for gas shareholder profits, right? Because now you have twice the infrastructure and twice the profit. That's music to their ears. But for ratepayers, I mean, ultimately the money comes from the bills that we pay to these companies. So then we're looking at potentially, and probably not double, but maybe 1.5 acts of the bills that we're paying today. And I think that would be a bad situation for energy affordability. Fundamentally, a gas utility has a legal obligation to maximize shareholder profit. So that is their overriding directive, right? And if there are competing goals between making as much money as possible for shareholders and reducing emissions from heating buildings in Massachusetts, I think we know what direction the gas utilities are going to go in. So then is networked utility scale geothermal just a greenwashing stunt? A solution that sounds a lot better than it actually is? Kevin thinks there's only one way to find out. Pass new regulations that require Eversource and other gas companies to take out as much gas infrastructure as they put in geothermal. Gradually, of course. In a pilot phase, I don't think you want to risk making people uncomfortable if the technology doesn't work out. I think keep people safe and warm in the winter for the first couple of pilots makes sense. But as we progress beyond the initial let's try it out phase, I would love to see a state say, yeah, you can run geothermal to this neighborhood, but if you do, you need to shut down gas and then see what the gas utility does. So it looks like we're in Framingham now, right? We are. And we're going to pull right into this parking lot at the school, which incidentally has an awful lot of boreholes under it. Eversource finished building the pilot project in 2024, which now heats and cools dozens of single family homes, a public housing complex, the fire department, a school. Zainab took me out for a tour of the system. And now we get the scintillating tour of things you cannot see. Zainab told me that underneath our feet were several clusters of thin pipes, kind of like garden hoses going in and out of these boreholes, right? And they carry the water down and up to exchange temperature. This was just the first pilot project. It seems to be going well. And there are plans to expand the network, potentially doubling its size. As for the gas pipes, they're still there. But that makes sense for now. Kevin Kershaw did say that you have to be sure the new technology works before you go ripping out the old stuff. I asked Zainab when she thinks we'll have reached that point. I can't answer that. There's been a really live debate between our legislature and our agencies and utility regulators about how we're going to meet the mandates of the state. She's referring to the Massachusetts mandate for net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. And how to do it in a way that is fair and very affordable for the people. Critics have called natural gas a bridge to nowhere. Maybe it's a bridge to this, but if it is, how long will it take to get to the other side? I reached out to Eversource, and they said they're open to decommissioning gas pipes for customers who want to disconnect from gas. But they can't force anyone. People have to want to transition to geothermal, and there needs to be pressure from the public and lawmakers to move the needle. So in a way, it's not entirely up to them. And Zainab recognizes this too. It's not an easy problem, like I mentioned before. I'm certainly not going to be the one deciding. Yeah. All I can do is offer a really good path forward. So, you know, you first started this whole journey, basically, from your own home, initially wanting to do your own home, but your house is still running on gas currently, right? Yep. Do you feel like you've achieved what you've set out to achieve? Yes. We went through my story, but there are so many people who are part of this. I didn't take out a shovel and build this. They're a gas utility. They built it. They actually built this geothermal utility. And so I think that the way forward is when we really spend the time to build relationships, to hear each other out, to work together, and it is people that will lead the way to the future. Yeah. It was never, like even from the first day, even without knowing any of this was going to happen, it wasn't about me or my house. It was about the future. All right. That is it for today's episode. This episode was reported, produced, and mixed by Felix Poon. It was edited by Taylor Quimby. I'm your host, Nate Hedgie. Our staff also includes Justine Paradis, Marina Hanky, and Jessica Hunt. Our executive producer is Taylor Quimby. Rebecca LaVoy is NHPR's director of On Demand Audio. Special thanks to Jamie Beard, Mike Barnard, and Dan Stein for speaking to me about enhanced geothermal systems. Really fascinating stuff, but ultimately we didn't get to include it in this episode. Music in this episode was by Walt Adams, Arthur Benson, and Blue Dot Sessions. Outside In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio. Do you want the truth about the organic food on your plate? Then check out the Chart Topping Real Organic podcast. Recently named one of the best climate podcasts by Earth.org, it's hosted by Dave Chapman and me, Lindley Dixon. Each week we feature eye-opening interviews with farmers, scientists, authors, and journalists to uncover the forces reshaping the food system. From why corporate lobbying is redefining what organic means to how organic farmers are fighting back. So don't miss it. Follow and listen to the Real Organic podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Have you ever wondered what businesses are doing and should be doing to tackle climate change? Then check out the award-winning and chart-topping podcast, Climate Rising, produced by Harvard Business School and hosted by me, Professor Mike Toffle. Recently named one of the best environmental podcasts by Earth.org, Climate Rising shares a behind-the-scenes look at how some of the world's top entrepreneurs and business leaders are addressing climate change from climate storytelling and marketing to AI, regenerative agriculture, and beyond. Don't miss out. Follow and listen to Climate Rising wherever you get your podcasts.
