Supporting efficient electric and hybrid-electric heating options for customers

Heat pumps, both air-sourced and ground-sourced (or geothermal), have a critical role to play in helping the U.S. Northeast meet our climate goals. Currently, we offer incentives to our customers in Massachusetts and New York for installing heat pumps to reduce reliance on oil, propane, inefficient electric baseboard, or natural gas heating equipment.

For cold climates like ours, we are also exploring how electric heat pumps can supplement efficient gas heating to create a hybrid system that combines deep emission reductions while ensuring necessary peak winter performance and reliability for our customers.

Targets

By 2024, our Massachusetts’ electric efficiency programs aim to enable almost 28,000 households and over 30 million square feet of commercial and industrial (C&I) buildings to fully or partially convert to electric heat pumps.
From 2020 to 2025, our upstate New York electric efficiency programs aim to enable more than 18,000 heat pump installations, with additional installations in the downstate New York region supported by our gas operating companies in collaboration with the local electric utilities.
Starting in 2022, we will begin evaluation of at least 5 segments of gas distribution network as candidate sites for ‘non-pipeline alternative’ projects in each of our New York operating companies, testing the potential to convert customers to electric heat pumps and geothermal district heating in lieu of replacing gas infrastructure.

Achievements to date

In 2020, our Massachusetts electric energy efficiency programs supported 6,575 heat pump installations, including 125 fully-electrified heating installations.
In 2020, our upstate New York energy efficiency programs supported 1,967 heat pump installations.
Building on our successful 2019 demonstration of a shared residential geothermal network in Long Island, we proposed a geothermal district energy demonstration in Massachusetts to continue testing the potential of this low-carbon heating solution for our gas business.