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GEOFF BENNETT: Now the
story of an unlikely
partnership between a

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utility company and climate
activists and how they
worked together to help

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one community switch its heating
and cooling to a cleaner source.

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Science correspondent Miles
O'Brien has the story,

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part of our Tipping Point
coverage on energy and climate.

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MILES O'BRIEN: Retired
schoolteacher Carol Canova
has lived in this tiny
little house in Framingham,

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Massachusetts for 30 years.
From this humble perch, she has
experienced firsthand a historic

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energy transition. She
started with an oil-burning
furnace, then switched to gas,

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and now heats and cools
with an electric heat pump
attached to a geothermal well.

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CAROL CANOVA, Framingham,
Massachusetts, Resident: I was
told it would be even heat.

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I was told it would be
efficient and so forth. But
seeing is believing. I'd

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never been in a house that
every place in the house
was the same temperature.

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MILES O'BRIEN: Canova is
part of a first-in-the-nation
pilot by utility

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giant Eversource. It's a
one-mile network of underground
pipes connecting three dozen

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homes and municipal buildings
to a shared geothermal well.

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It's called
networked geothermal,

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and if it works here, it
could be a blueprint for
utilities nationwide.

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CAROL CANOVA: So I thought, oh,
electricity is expensive. So I'm

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expecting it's going to be
more expensive. What I find
out is, it's overall cheaper.

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MILES O'BRIEN: Heat pumps
live up to their name. They
move heat. In the summer,

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they pump heat out of your
home. In the winter, they
bring it in. How hard they

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have to work and how
much electricity they use
depends on the temperature

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difference between inside and
outside. The greater the gap,
the more energy they need.

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Shallow geothermal wells
tap into the earth's steady
underground temperature,

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about 55 degrees year-round.
Water with antifreeze
circulates through buried pipes,

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absorbing or releasing
heat at that consistent
temperature. A heat pump
paired with a geothermal

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well has less work to do
and is far more efficient
no matter the weather above.

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The catch? Drilling a geothermal
well is very expensive, but none

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of the volunteers in this
project paid a dime for either
the well or the heat pump.

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CAROL CANOVA: When
Eversource offered it,

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I thought, you know what, this
is like winning the lottery.

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NIKKI BRUNO, Vice President,
Eversource: Everything else
is buried in underground,

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except for the heat pumps.

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MILES O'BRIEN: Nikki Bruno
is an Eversource V.P.

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NIKKI BRUNO: So, right outside
this building is what we
call the main bore field.

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MILES O'BRIEN: She showed
me the pump house, which
controls the entire system.

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It's the only visible sign
of the geothermal network.

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NIKKI BRUNO: Those bores
are 600 to 700 pipes that

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allow the water-based fluid
to circulate and exchange
energy with the underground.

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MILES O'BRIEN: Besides
many homes like Carol's,
heat pumps attached to
the geothermal network

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are in use at a school
administration building,
a fire station, and a
public housing development.

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It's an $18.6 million
project that comes amid
significant changes in
regulations. Massachusetts

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and the other states in
the Eversource territory
have aggressive climate
goals and mandates.

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NIKKI BRUNO: How do we
start offering something
different? How can we produce

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a decarbonized product for our
customers, while keeping safe,

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reliable and I will say
as affordable as possible
service to customers?

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MILES O'BRIEN: The idea was
born of an unlikely partnership
between utility executives and

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climate activists, among them,
Zeyneb Magavi, the executive
director of the nonprofit HEET,

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the Home Energy Efficiency
Team. It's a grassroots
group that started out by

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banding together to insulate
their homes. They were looking
for a way to make a bigger dent.

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ZEYNEB MAGAVI, Executive
Director, HEET: We really
became aware of kind

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of a rock-and-a-hard place
problem, where we have a gas
system that actually we have

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pipes in the ground from
President Lincoln's time.

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MILES O'BRIEN: Their
focus on creaky,

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leaky gas pipes led
them to a moment of
insight and inspiration.

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ZEYNEB MAGAVI: The ground,
the bedrock, the water all
around us is thermal energy,

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which we can tap. And
that's kind of an exciting
awakening thing to realize.

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We could potentially build a
utility street by street that
was pipes filled with water,

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maintained and managed by
the gas utility, who --
becomes a thermal utility.

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This infrastructure would be
in a way like the roots of
our new energy system, right?

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MILES O'BRIEN: Even federal
researchers are bullish. A
study by the Oak Ridge National

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Laboratory found that mass
adoption of geothermal
heat pumps could reduce the

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demand for electricity by
13 percent in the next 25
years. But the idea isn't new.

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Let's go down in the boiler
room. Here we go. You got people
down here shoveling coal, right?

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JEFF TESTER, Engineering
Professor, Cornell University:
This is our living laboratory.

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MILES O'BRIEN: Cornell
University engineering
professor Jeff Tester
built his home in Ithaca,

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New York, as a living lab of
efficiency, solar thermal,

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photovoltaics, and a heat pump
that taps into a geothermal
well buried in his backyard.

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He's been advocating for
ways to tap the heat beneath
our feet since the 1970s,

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when he helped pioneer a novel
geothermal energy concept at the
Los Alamos National Laboratory.

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JEFF TESTER: One method
of extracting heat or

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mining heat from under
the surface of the earth
is to create a reservoir.

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MILES O'BRIEN: He looks back
on those days with nostalgia.

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JEFF TESTER: They
were very supportive

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of trying new things in
those days. We weren't
afraid to try something.

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MILES O'BRIEN: For about
25 years, Cornell has
harnessed a natural

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thermal engine to keep its
campus cool. A district-chilling
system taps 39-degree

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water from the depths
of Cayuga Lake to cool
more than 100 buildings.

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Now the university is
looking to go deeper and
warmer. Jeff Tester is
the principal investigator

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on a groundbreaking project to
introduce geothermal heating
to the campus. In 2022, his

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team drilled a nearly
two-mile-deep test borehole
to assess the available
heat resources here.

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JEFF TESTER: I feel like
I have been training
all my life for the

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day when we actually
would see this happen on
a campus like Cornell.

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MILES O'BRIEN: But
he's still waiting,

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looking for money to build
a geothermal network of
pipes filled with hot water

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to heat the campus. He says
society places great value on
fossil fuels and electricity.

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JEFF TESTER: But heat is not
viewed that way in the same way,

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and I think we need a fairer
system of what I refer to as
an equivalent way to actually

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look at the benefits from
clean heating versus clean
electricity versus clean

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fuels. And we're not doing
that right now. So we need a
new value system for energy.

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MILES O'BRIEN: The Trump
administration apparently
does value geothermal. Energy

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Secretary Chris Wright
consistently emphasizes
it as a priority,

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making it the only
renewable energy source
currently in favor.

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ZEYNEB MAGAVI: It's
something we can agree on.

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It's the ground beneath
our feet. Turns out
we have common ground.

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MILES O'BRIEN: And it
appears to be growing.
Plans are now in place

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to double the size of
the Framingham geothermal
network starting next year.

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Common ground may be
hard to find these days,
but perhaps it's not
far beneath the surface.

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For the "PBS News Hour,"
I'm Miles O'Brien in
Framingham, Massachusetts.