PERHAPS NOWHERE IN Massachusetts are the tensions associated with moving away from natural gas for heating our homes and buildings more pronounced than in the state’s 10 communities that have pledged to go “fossil fuel free.”
In Acton, Aquinnah, Arlington, Brookline, Cambridge, Concord, Lexington, Lincoln, Newton, and Northampton, after weathering “agita” on the part of former governor Charlie Baker and initial legal blows to the effort, municipal officials secured state approval to adopt policies that ban fossil fuel hookups in most new construction and major renovations. Those communities are now on the front lines of what is essentially an experiment to see if they can tangibly kickstart a complicated transition off natural gas and meet local climate targets, while not scaring away developers with higher costs and new burdensome red tape.
But as these municipalities are quickly finding out, 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 gas system by replacing pipes and ensuring the residents and businesses in those cities and towns currently served by gas stay on gas.
Eversource and National Grid, the two largest gas companies serving the state, have collectively spent about $100 million on the gas system in nine of those 10 communities, roughly since they adopted their fossil fuel-free ordinances. The bulk of the spending has been to replace leaky pipes, according to utility filings with state regulators analyzed by CommonWealth Beacon. Another $50 million is expected to be spent in those municipalities this year.
Regulators approved those costs, which are collected from ratepayers on an expedited basis, through the state’s Gas System Enhancement Plan, a program enacted in 2014 that is intended to incentivize gas companies to more quickly fix leaks in their gas pipes that emit methane, a potent greenhouse gas, in order to cut pollution and maintain the system’s safety.
The program has led to real leak reductions: At the end of 2024, the last year of available data, gas companies reported a total of 9,000 leaks across the state, compared with nearly 21,000 a decade earlier, according to DPU data.
But GSEP 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. The program accounts for 8 to 11 percent of gas customers’ charges, capital spending that is driving up residential gas bills despite a decline in the amount of gas actually being used. The gas companies spent a record $814 million through GSEP in 2024 – a nearly 40 percent increase from the year prior despite replacing slightly fewer miles of leak-prone pipe than 2023.
Beacon Hill, in its quest to slash energy bills, is now weighing a proposal advanced by the Senate to end the program altogether by 2030.
Nothing about the fossil fuel free policies adopted in the 10 communities precludes the gas companies from investing money in the current sprawling network of 21,000 miles of pipe across Massachusetts and obtaining approval from the Department of Public Utilities to recover costs associated with that work. But the contrast is generating tensions around how far and fast the state is willing to go to transition off natural gas for heating and cooking in buildings, which accounts for 36 percent of emissions in Massachusetts, as the state pushes to cut pollution 85 percent compared with 1990 levels by 2050.
David Morgan, Arlington’s environmental planner, said that there’s an “important role” for GSEP to play in fixing leaks and maintaining a safe gas system. But now, he said, it’s taken on a life of its own – raising costs for consumers and stifling the state’s clean energy transition.
“We want to see something that is effective and meets our climate action plan goals,” Morgan said.
The fossil fuel free ordinances in the 10 communities took effect between January 1, 2024, and early 2025, so there’s a somewhat narrow window for evaluating how the program has played out.
Morgan said that implementation of the initiative has been smooth in his town, with one exemption granted so far to a brewery. The state Department of Energy Resources issued its first report on the program last year and preliminarily found that the typical new construction or major renovation project completed in one of the fossil fuel free communities was more energy efficient than those in comparable communities.
Yet in Arlington alone, National Grid spent $10.5 million through GSEP last year after the town’s ordinance took effect in 2024 and proposed another $14.3 million in spending this year, likely locking in new gas pipes for years to come while saddling ratepayers with those costs in the future.
The data point to how policies in the 10 municipalities banning fossil fuels in new buildings, which signal a real commitment to transition away from gas, are colliding with the reality that most existing buildings in those communities still depend on gas. Changing that may not be any easier than in cities and towns without such ambitious policies in place.
Complicating matters is a combination of mixed signals around demand for gas, debate about whether the utilities must provide gas to customers in existing homes not covered by the new policy, and a lack of clarity about how municipalities should go about convincing homeowners to electrify to avoid pipe replacement in the first place.
William Hinkle, a spokesperson for Eversource, said in a statement that the ability for customers to choose gas service “is a fundamental right in Massachusetts.”
“For that reason, we cannot force customers off the system – particularly when substitutes for the company’s service do not yet reasonably, feasibly or affordably exist for many, or even most, customers,” Hinkle said. “Customer choice remains a core principle in the Commonwealth as we navigate the challenges of an affordable clean energy transition.”
The communities that have set out to move away from natural gas, however, are reckoning with GSEP and what it takes to keep the current gas system functioning. In Newton, for instance, National Grid spent $27 million through GSEP last year alone, the city’s first with its fossil fuel free ordinance in effect.
“We find the pace of the shift to be far too slow to prevent the problems caused by fossil fuels,” members of Newton’s public facilities committee wrote to regulators in December 2025 in response to National Grid’s GSEP proposal for the city. “We need the DPU to require National Grid to partner eagerly with Newton to electrify the buildings on our streets. The GSEP program needs to be drastically reoriented to that end, or alternatively, phased out as soon as possible.”
The pathway toward widespread adoption of gas alternatives, meanwhile, is fraught with legal disputes and minefields.
The DPU required in a landmark order in 2023 that the utilities consider non-pipeline alternatives like electrification or geothermal energy instead of reflexively replacing gas pipes that lock in fossil fuel infrastructure and can be costly over the long term.
And the DPU tried to give the gas companies the financial tools to do so: Regulators allowed them to recover more costs for projects that move toward gas alternatives and reduced what they can make by replacing aging and leaky gas pipes with new ones. The gas companies, however, are appealing the new lower cost recovery cap for gas pipe replacements to the Supreme Judicial Court.
The 2023 DPU order requiring them to consider non-pipeline alternatives before mounting a gas pipe replacement also gave utilities the final say over whether to execute the alternative plan.
The result: 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, according to the DPU. All of them were rejected either because they would adversely impact the rest of the interconnected gas system or they were considered “cost prohibitive.”
Jamie Van Nostrand, the DPU chair at the time of the 2023 order that required the gas companies to submit climate plans that show decarbonization, said regulators need to send a “stronger message” to the gas companies — and that a new framework that the companies proposed to use to evaluate non-pipeline alternatives that’s now before the DPU for approval was “grossly inadequate.”
“You’ve got to start showing where you’re going to start decommissioning parts of your service territory on a pace necessary to achieve the target greenhouse gas reductions,” he said. “None of that was done. Start with those 10 communities, for God’s sake, because they’re engaged, they want to make this happen, but the utilities need to be working with them.”
Brendan Moss, a spokesperson for National Grid, defended the company’s approach, saying that implementation of the pipeline alternative projects will be “supported by clearer guidance on how these projects can be advanced and funded” once the DPU weighs in on its framework for non-pipeline alternatives.
“We routinely assess non-pipeline alternatives through detailed technical and cost-effectiveness reviews to determine where they may be appropriate and feasible for customers,” Moss said.
The regulators, though, are growing frustrated with the consistent lack of movement toward alternatives to gas.
“The DPU set a clear expectation that the utilities need to rein in spending on GSEP projects, which have well outpaced inflation and are driving up customer bills,” Alanna Kelly, a DPU spokesperson, said in a statement. “The utilities need to consider targeted energy efficiency, electrification, and geothermal projects, which can be affordable alternatives to replacing pipes and help lower costs in the long term.”
One particularly edifying example of how this is playing out is in Wellesley, a wealthy town that isn’t one of the fossil fuel free communities.
In 2024, the Boston suburb opened a brand new net-zero and all-electric elementary school to replace a 100-year-old school that used gas. The street that the school sits on, Hardy Road, is home to just three houses, all of which are served by gas, making it, in theory, one of the most attractive locations to move off gas and decommission a pipe now that the street’s biggest gas user by far is electrified.
But National Grid has reported a Grade 2 leak right near Hardy Road — a leak considered non-hazardous but that could soon become dangerous and must be repaired within a year.
The company determined that installing a non-pipeline alternative like electrifying the homes with heat pumps wasn’t viable despite it costing about 20 percent less than a gas pipe replacement, according to its own calculations, because the alternative “cannot be implemented before the gas investment is needed.” So the company will now need to dig up a newly paved road to fix the leaky pipe underneath.
“It’s hard to contain my frustration,” said Lise Olney, chair of Wellesley’s climate action committee, who has met with National Grid over the leaks in her town and elsewhere over the past seven years.
Jeremy Koo, assistant director of clean energy at the Metropolitan Area Planning Council, a regional planning organization for cities and towns in Greater Boston, including eight of the fossil fuel free communities, shared Olney’s frustrations about missed opportunities and the lack of coordination between the gas utilities and communities motivated to explore non-pipeline alternatives, often referred to as NPAs.
“These are some of the lowest of the low-hanging fruit—cost-effective NPA opportunities with municipalities and local advocates willing to do the legwork to conduct outreach and education to affected residents,” Koo said. “If these projects aren’t getting past utility screening, then what are we doing here? Where can we actually implement NPAs in the Commonwealth?”
Hinkle, the Eversource spokesperson, said that addressing affordability while maintaining safety and reliability and working toward decarbonization goals is a “delicate balancing act” in “accomplishing those sometimes-disparate goals.” He pointed to the company’s geothermal pilot project in Framingham and electrification projects in Springfield and Carver as signs of real progress.
But ultimately, the company says it is constrained by its obligation to serve customers who want gas — a crucial point of contention in the utilities’ climate compliance plans that the DPU is expected to address this year.
The clash has real consequences. By the utilities’ interpretation of the law, if not all customers on a segment of pipe agree to fully convert to electricity, for instance, or if any customer who previously agreed to convert changes their mind, the company may be forced to modify or cancel the electrification project altogether. The risk of that happening may make the companies less inclined to invest the money necessary into making those projects a reality.
Even in the fossil fuel free communities, it isn’t always simple or feasible to opt out of gas, leaving openings for continued gas use even in new construction. Cambridge, Lexington, and Brookline, for instance, exempt research and medical facilities from the ban. And Northampton, which exempts commercial kitchens from its ordinance, has as recently as last year petitioned Eversource for more gas supply, according to letters viewed by CommonWealth Beacon, something that doesn’t “mesh” with the spirit of the city’s fossil fuel free ordinance, conceded Ben Weil, Northampton’s director of climate action.
As the clean energy transition collides with spiking energy costs for Massachusetts residents, there are some signs of better cooperation between municipalities and utilities.
Newton signed a memorandum of understanding in May with both National Grid and Eversource to develop a joint community energy plan that will “provide a roadmap for a potential orderly transition toward a lower-carbon future.” Ann Berwick, Newton’s co-director of climate and sustainability and a former state DPU chair, said the city has had a collaborative relationship with the utilities.
But she also sympathizes with their predicament: Currently, only costs related to actual removal of gas distribution lines are allowed to be recovered through the accelerated GSEP process — not those incurred to “explore” removal, the DPU wrote last year.
“We need to be serious about taking the money initially anticipated to be spent for gas system upgrades and putting it into electrification,” she said.
Van Nostrand, who now serves as policy director at the Future of Heat Initiative, a national nonprofit providing assistance to state policymakers on energy issues, is less forgiving.
“They just want to keep doing what they’re doing,” he said of the state’s gas companies. That may work well for them, but if the state is serious about moving off fossil fuels, he said, “it’s irrational.”
