Green facility helps heat many iconic Boston buildings

BOSTON — You hear the term green energy a lot.

It may surprise you to know it’s being used right now, to heat our skyline.

Boston 25 News got a tour of the Vicinity facility that’s helping to warm up many of the iconic buildings in the city.

“We’re talking about heat, heating our big buildings to make sure, and cooling in some buildings as well,” said Matt O’Malley, Chief Sustainability Officer at Vicinity. “Three out of every four buildings in the Boston skyline are likely our customers, as well as right here in Kendall Square in Cambridge. So, we have 26 miles of pipe that run underneath the two cities.”

An old system of pipes will soon be ushering in even greener technology. Already, it’s using renewable energy to make steam.

“So we take renewable energy, right, either come from wind power or hydro, and we convert it into steam,” said Don Silvia, VP of Operations at Vicinity.

It will soon involve the Charles River in the next 3 to 4 years.

“We take water from the Charles River, and we clean it up, right, and we put it into that boiler, what it does is actually has jets that will go across two charged electrodes, and once the water hits those electrodes, it actually flashes into steam and it’ll make steam up to 300 pounds,” said Silvia.

Aside from the new electric boiler, a heat pump and thermal storage will also be installed here. In other words, greener energy is not only being produced here but will also be stored.

“We’re going to have a city-scale heat pump, we’re going to generate steam and we’re going to put it into those buildings across the river and behind me, you know, using the same steam lines, serving the same customers,” said Silvia.

The goal is to phase out nearly all natural gas generation.

The e-boiler is now up and running.

The goal is to have the heat pump and thermal storage in place and online by the end of the decade.

It’s also helping our hospital systems too, by providing the energy-powering humidification and sterilization that occurs in hospitals and labs.

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