What types of energy support Boston and the New England Grid?

Date Published: October 3, 2022

Like every major American city, Boston runs on fossil fuels. More than 70% of the energy used in the city is in the form of natural gas and fuels refined from oil. Natural gas is the dominant fuel used in to heat space and water in residential, commercial, and industrial buildings, while the bulk of transportation services provided by commercial and private vehicles are powered by gasoline and diesel fuel. The public transportation system operated by the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (MBTA) relies on a combination of electricity, diesel fuel, and compressed natural gas.

About 25% of energy use in Boston is electricity from the ISO New England power grid. The types and amounts of energy used to generate that electricity is a major factor in the city’s plan to be carbon neutral by 2050. Nearly half of the region’s electric generating capacity uses natural gas as its primary fuel, and GHG emissions from that gas combustion are a large entry in the city’s emission inventory. The two largest low carbon sources of electricity are nuclear energy and hydropower. The region’s two nuclear facilities, Millstone and Seabrook, supply a quarter of the electricity New England consumes in a year. Electricity imported from Canada is generated largely by hydropower. Wind and solar power are growing quickly, but they still represent a small fraction of total generation.

Electricity

About Us

Connect

Topics

MA Energy Explorer

Our Values

Team

FAQ

Contact Us

Subscribe

Collaborate

Donate

Well-Being

Fossil Fuels

Renewable Energy

Nuclear Energy

Climate & Environment

Electricity

End Use

Economy & Society

History of Energy

Energy Storage

Overview

Infrastructure

Energy Burden

Transportation

License: Unless otherwise noted, all visualizations, data, and stories produced by Visualizing Energy are open access under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). This means that you have permission to copy, transform, and redistribute the material in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

A project of the Boston University Institute for Global Sustainability