Massachusetts residents pay tens of millions of dollars a year for natural gas thatnever reaches their homes. Natural gas leaks contribute up to 4 percent of our state greenhouse gas emissions and are a public safety hazard. The city of Boston is ground zero for this problem, with thousands of leaks spread across every neighborhood. How did Boston, often seen as a national model on climate change initiatives, become a leader in leaky pipes and “fugitive emissions?”
According to the Conservation Law Foundation, there are a few key reasons. Monitoring the gas network is extremely time- and labor-intensive; there is no real financial incentive for utility companies to invest in this type of infrastructure; and, finally, Boston’s natural gas pipes are some of the oldest in the country. In fact, some of our pipes are as many as 157 years old; only Maryland has an older system. Luckily, there are some emerging solutions to this crisis.
Through a partnership with Google, the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) recently released interactive maps of Boston, Indianapolis and Staten Island that show the locations of thousands of natural gas leaks. The maps are astonishing. Boston had thousands of leaks through out the city. Indianapolis had five. According to the map, at the time of the survey, there were more than five leaks within a block or two of my apartment in Jamaica Plain.
These maps were able to show the location of leaks because they pioneered a new technology to monitor fugitive emissions. By using Google Street View cars that were specially equipped with an air quality sensor, they were able to collect data faster and more inexpensively than current monitoring methods. This new technology, together with the algorithm they developed to make sense of the data will help lower the costs of monitoring our natural gas infrastructure in the coming years.
Learning From Indianapolis
The EDF specifically chose Indianapolis as a comparison market because the city’s gas company – Citizens Energy Group – runs as a nonprofit public trust that continually invests in infrastructure improvements. For example, after a fatal gas leak in a residential neighborhood during the early 1980s, Citizens began an aggressive pipeline replacement program. Over the last three decades, Citizens has replaced corrosive pipe materials using modern plastics and cathodically protected steel materials. The reason Citizens has been so successful at keeping leaks down is that their financial model incentivizes infrastructure improvements.
In Massachusetts, where a majority of natural gas pipes are at least 50 years old and 42 percent are made from leak-prone materials, a new state law will help correct leaks more quickly. This law creates a uniform system to classify the severity of leaks and prioritize repairs so the most severe are fixed first. In addition, it allows utilities to recover the costs of improvements more quickly by passing along a share of the expenses to consumers.
Armed with new technology from EDF and Google and stronger legislation to ensure quicker repairs of leaks, Massachusetts has an opportunity to serve as a national leader in addressing gas leaks. We believe these solutions will help make our communities safer, while controlling consumer costs and better protecting the environment.
Rebecca Herst is a 2014 MBA graduate from Boston University’s Public and Non-Profit Management program. She has served as the ULI Boston/New England Fellow since January 2014 providing support to the ULI Sustainability Council.
