A climate activist and a gas executive walk into a bar

April 1, 2026·33 min·2 clips

When Zainab said she had three kids and wanted to act on climate, Bill Akeley paused, then said he had three kids too — and that moment built the trust that led to the first utility-owned geothermal network in the US.

1. Outside/In reports on the collaboration between Cambridge climate activist Zainab Mugavi and Eversource gas division president Bill Akeley that produced the first utility-owned geothermal network in the United States. 2. Producer Felix Poon narrates; Zainab Mugavi, Bill Akeley, and Purdue engineering professor Kevin Kirscher are the main voices. 3. The episode explores whether gas utilities can be trusted to drive decarbonization, or whether their profit structure creates an incentive to extend fossil infrastructure. 4. Mugavi began trying to install geothermal heating in her own Cambridge home after buying a fixer-upper with an ancient gas furnace in 2007, motivated by research linking natural gas combustion to childhood asthma. 5. A contractor offered her a discount on geothermal borehole installation if she could recruit neighbors to share the rig setup cost; none agreed, but the episode returned two decades later to show she achieved her goal at neighborhood scale. 6. Mothers Out Front, the grassroots group Mugavi joined in the 2010s, mapped more than 3,000 methane leaks in Boston alone using yellow flags stuck into soil at documented leak sites; some pipes in the ground dated to Lincoln's presidency. 7. A 2012 Boston University study published on the front page of the Boston Globe mapped the leaks for the first time, and the flags triggered 911 calls from members of the public who encountered the flyers. 8. Bill Akeley grew up on Long Island where his father delivered heating oil, went to engineering school, and became president of Eversource's gas business in 2014 — the largest utility in New England, serving 4.4 million homes across multiple states. 9. At their first meeting, Akeley had requested the option for guards and a lawyer; he declined both, and when Mugavi opened by describing her three kids and her climate concerns, his response — that he also had three kids — immediately shifted the tone from adversarial to collaborative. 10. The super-leaker finding emerged from that meeting: just 7% of leaks in Massachusetts account for 50% of all leaked methane, and targeting those specifically is both climate-effective and economically rational. 11. A Harvard paper estimated Boston's pipes were leaking approximately $90 million worth of natural gas per year — a cost typically passed on to ratepayers, giving gas companies a financial incentive to fix the leaks. 12. Mugavi went out with gas workers on field inspections, following the gas trucks on her bike in Cambridge to test new methods for identifying the largest leaks — an experience she says gave her a new appreciation for utility workers. 13. Working together, Mugavi and Akeley developed a new state regulation requiring gas companies to identify and fix super leakers within a set timeline; the state regulator called it one of the easiest days of his job. 14. Mugavi pitched geothermal as a transition path for gas utilities: Massachusetts law requires fossil fuels to be phased out by 2050, so companies that want to keep workers employed and customers connected should replace gas pipes with geothermal pipes. 15. Eversource agreed to a pilot project; the groundbreaking ceremony was held in 2023, seven years after the first boardroom meeting, for a system that now heats and cools dozens of single-family homes, a public housing complex, a fire department, and a school just outside Boston. 16. Bill Akeley retired from Eversource after the pilot was built and now serves on the board of Mugavi's organization, HEET, which stands for Home Energy Efficiency Team. 17. Kevin Kirscher of Purdue explains the structural risk: gas utilities make money not from gas sales but from building and maintaining infrastructure — approximately 10% of infrastructure value annually — meaning a dual gas-and-geothermal system generates twice the profit and potentially 1.5 times the customer bills. 18. Kirscher's proposed safeguard is a regulation requiring gas utilities to decommission gas pipes for every neighborhood where they install geothermal — so far not required in Massachusetts. 19. Listeners interested in clean energy policy, utility regulation, unlikely political partnerships, or the practical path to residential decarbonization will find this episode detailed and balanced. 20. Those expecting either an unqualified success story or a straightforward villain narrative will find the episode more nuanced — it ends with the geothermal pilot intact, the gas pipes still in place, and the structural conflict unresolved.

As heard by us

A home-repair story that opens into the climate fight over heat, methane, and who gets to decide.

A Cambridge fixer-upper with an ancient furnace turns into a clear-eyed story about how a home can be heated without combustion. Zainab traces the old system, connects natural gas to asthma risk for kids, and arrives at geothermal as a climate-minded replacement that still feels…

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A furnace story that opens into geothermal, methane, and the cleaner-heat choice one family made

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