MASSACHUSETTS ENVIRONMENTAL OFFICIALS are wading into a wonky debate around the rules governing a state effort to limit the amount of methane that gas companies can emit from leaks in their pipes.
What’s at stake is whether the state can accurately calculate emissions in the state — and then lower them in line with its ambitious climate commitments.
The Department of Environmental Protection has launched a review of its program that requires the state’s six gas companies to meet annually declining limits on methane emissions, a powerful greenhouse gas estimated to warm the planet at more than 80 times the rate of carbon dioxide in the first 20 years after it’s released.
Yet since the program took effect in 2018, the gas companies have exceeded that methane limit every year through a legal process that allows them to petition the DEP to tap into a reserve, known as a set-aside, if they surge past the emissions cap. That set-aside, according to DEP, is designed to “address unexpected events affecting the natural gas distribution system,” and the utilities can be fined for noncompliance with the regulation.
The program review is opening up a clash between environmental groups, the state attorney general’s office, and the gas companies over the program’s future as the Bay State’s commitment to cut climate warming pollution in half by 2030 compared to 1990 levels appears increasingly in jeopardy.
DEP records show that the gas companies, mainly National Grid and Eversource, have consistently applied for and received approval from state regulators to exceed the methane limit and legally emit more through the set-aside each year since 2018.
For instance, the gas companies together emitted around 147,000 metric tons of pollution in 2024, above the limit of around 140,000 metric tons because DEP approved the utilities’ petition to emit 7,813 metric tons through the set-aside. Eversource’s EGMA subsidiary was responsible for a little more than half of the pollution authorized through the set-aside that year.
What’s more, the amount of methane that the gas companies are emitting beyond the annual cap is growing: The utilities have successfully petitioned to emit more methane through the reserve each year from 2021 to 2024. The 7,813 metric tons of pollution allowed through the set-aside in 2024 is the most since the program began in 2018.
Still, overall methane emissions have declined nearly 13 percent in that timeframe and the companies have never exceeded the state’s maximum annual emissions limit that combines both the standard cap and the set-aside amount — leaving the utilities fully in compliance with the program in spite of their increased use of the set-aside.
Now, as the state looks to accelerate its transition off gas, regulators are openly weighing in their program review what is the appropriate size of the set-aside, as well as where they should set the overall methane emissions caps for the coming years.
DEP’s program review is one slice of the central debate animating the dynamic between regulators and the gas companies: whether and how fast the utilities should shift away from delivering gas to customers — their current business model — and replace the pipes that transport it in favor of cleaner energy sources like geothermal networks and electrification. This question has taken on more urgency as the Trump administration has taken steps to stifle new offshore wind projects — a key piece of Massachusetts’s push to reach net-zero status by 2050.
Keeping to that timeline will, in part, depend on how fast the state can move homes off natural gas for heating.
“DEP has an important role here to better incentivize retirement of gas pipe,” Caitlin Peale Sloan, vice president for climate and energy at Conservation Law Foundation (CLF), said in an interview. “One step toward that is certainly reducing the ability of the utilities to dodge penalties.”
The pace of the transition continues to be a source of friction. Gov. Maura Healey, up for reelection this year, has expressed new openness to natural gas through her “all of the above” approach to energy issues in a bid to ease soaring energy prices. And now, a new pipeline proposal to bring more gas into New England is threatening to bring debate over the fuel source to center stage.
Lauren Moreschi, a spokesperson for DEP, said the agency is “expeditiously reviewing” stakeholder feedback and recent orders from the Department of Public Utilities.
“We will update methane limits as appropriate to continue to protect public health, reduce pollution and strengthen our climate resilience,” she said in a statement.
If the agency tightens the methane regulation, which was borne out of a landmark 2017 legal victory for CLF that required Massachusetts to implement stricter emissions reduction rules, advocates believe it could go a long way in cutting pollution and the state’s dependence on gas for heating.
And fixing gas leaks fast can have serious emissions implications: A 2016 Boston University-led study of gas leaks in Boston showed that the largest 7 percent of leaks from the pipes under streets in the city accounted for half the methane emissions. There are roughly 10,000 gas leaks identified across the state.
But it’s still something of a cat and mouse game. The gas companies filed public comments for the review process noting the DPU’s 2025 order that lowered the charges they can collect through the Gas System Enhancement Plan (GSEP) to replace leaky pipes will hamstring their efforts to rein in methane emissions.
Eversource, for instance, wrote that having less money at their fingertips through GSEP “will ultimately impact the amount of leak-prone infrastructure” it can fix and that future methane limits proposed by DEP “are significantly lower than what is achievable.”
Olessa Stepanova, a spokesperson for Eversource, said in a statement that the set-aside appropriately reflects the possibility for unforeseen events like a global pandemic or contractor shortages to prevent the utilities from completing their planned work in a given year. Plus, she pointed out that DEP has the authority to reject any requests to tap the set-aside or issue penalties for noncompliance, neither of which has happened.
Eversource, she added, has replaced more than 950 miles of leak-prone pipe and eliminated more than 4,000 leaks since GSEP’s inception in 2014, which has helped the gas companies cut their leaks in half.
Other utilities made a similar case — and potentially want a higher set-aside to continue to emit more methane than the annual cap allows while technically staying in compliance with the regulation.
“The set-aside is part of the regulation by design and helps account for variability as we continue replacing leak-prone pipe to reduce emissions across our system,” Brendan Moss, a spokesperson for National Grid, said in a statement. “Emissions have declined as that work has progressed. We remain focused on reducing emissions while maintaining the safety and reliability of our system and supporting the customers and communities we serve.”
A coalition of environmental groups including CLF, Acadia Center, and Environmental League of Massachusetts wrote in public comments to DEP that the agency should consider eliminating the set-aside altogether.
The additional wiggle room for gas companies to emit methane is being abused and is “functioning more as a compliance cushion than as an emergency measure,” they wrote. HEET, a nonprofit energy innovation hub that has been mapping the state’s leaks for 10 years, expressed a similar position in its public comment. (The comments are not listed publicly on DEP’s website and were obtained by CommonWealth Beacon via public records request.)
Emissions are estimated under the current regulation based on how much leak-prone pipe the utilities replace. The gas companies use an estimate that represents an average amount of methane leaked per mile of a given pipe material type.
Advocates and the attorney general’s office want to overhaul that accounting framework, instead pushing for DEP to require the utilities to use the actual number of leaks in their systems. This, they argue, would mean that costly pipe replacement through GSEP isn’t the only way for the gas companies to show methane emissions reductions.
That would bring it more in line with the Department of Public Utilities’ direction, which is looking to move away from pipe replacement altogether. The DPU now requires the gas companies to consider pipe repair instead of replacement and alternatives to natural gas, like geothermal networks and electrification, to drive down the state’s reliance on fossil fuels even further.
Meanwhile, Attorney General Andrea Campbell, the Healey administration, and environmental advocates took the gas companies to task last month for turning in “completely inadequate” climate plans, asserting that the utilities aren’t on track to meet climate goals.
Some of the utilities, however, appear to be projecting a future increase in demand for gas and therefore potential growth in the size of the gas system, despite the DPU’s order attempting to ratchet down natural gas use.
National Grid, for instance, said in its comments that, for the purposes of setting an appropriate emissions limit, the company would increase gas pipelines by 15 additional miles per year through 2029 in one possible scenario.
Peale Sloan, at CLF, said that with the gas companies spending more than ever through GSEP and still not cutting emissions in line with state goals, the whole system needs to be rethought.
“For the utilities,” she said, “fighting the gas transition is their battle royale.”
