STARTING IN 2024, a group of 10 Massachusetts communities kickstarted a first-of-a-kind experiment by pledging to go fossil fuel free. These ordinances would help determine if a complicated transition away from natural gas could be successfully implemented without scaring away developers with high costs and red tape.
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But there’s one not-so-small problem with going fossil fuel free, and it’s the existing gas and pipe systems in these cities and towns. Moving off gas for new buildings doesn’t preclude the utilities from needing to spend tens of millions of dollars each year upgrading the existing infrastructure by replacing pipes and ensuring residents and businesses currently served by gas stay on gas.
This week on The Codcast, CommonWealth Beacon reporters Hallie Claflin and Jordan Wolman discuss Wolman’s latest piece uncovering how utilities have spent $100 million on natural gas infrastructure in nine of those 10 communities, roughly since they adopted their fossil fuel-free ordinances.
It all comes as the state, by 2050, pushes to cut pollution by 85 percent compared with 1990 levels.
“It sounds good, being fossil fuel free, and it’s certainly ambitious,” Wolman said. “And yet these 10 communities are a little bit at the mercy of the gas companies — maybe a lot at the mercy of the gas companies.”
Claflin and Wolman zero in on the state’s Gas System Enhancement Plan (GSEP) – a program enacted in 2014 that is intended to incentivize gas companies to more quickly fix leaks in their gas pipes — which is now under heavy scrutiny for ballooning spending that has delivered few additional benefits at a time when Massachusetts residents are confronting soaring gas and electric bills. Yet regulators have signed off on that spending.
In 2023, the Department of Public Utilities required that the utilities consider non-pipeline alternatives like electrification or geothermal energy instead of replacing gas pipes that lock in fossil fuel infrastructure for years to come.
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Yet, as Wolman pointed out, out of 500 gas alternative projects considered by the state’s six gas companies for 2026 — 31 of which were located in the 10 fossil fuel free communities — none were deemed by the companies viable to pursue.
“We’re at an inflection point for the regulators,” Wolman said. “What’s the enforcement like? That is what we will find out this year in their response to these climate compliance plans that the companies filed.”
Gas companies say they are constrained by their obligation to serve customers who want gas. By their interpretation of the law, if not all customers on a segment of pipe agree to fully convert to electricity, or if any customer who previously agreed to convert changes their mind, the company may be forced to modify or cancel an electrification project altogether.
“How much can the gas companies recover from ratepayers for GSEP? Does this obligation to serve that the utilities claim exists actually exist?” Wolman said. “These are the key things that the regulators are going to be deciding that are going to set us on this path forward as to whether we can reach the 2050 goals.”
On this episode, Claflin and Wolman discuss how these “fossil fuel free” communities came to be (1:41), why the state’s Gas System Enhancement Plan is under scrutiny (7:04), and what the Department of Public Utilities will or won’t do when it comes to enforcing the adoption of gas alternatives (24:37).