Mill Talk: Birth of a New Utility, with Audrey Schulman
This MILL TALK is FREE and open to the public.
Registration required. Register HERE.
It's been over a century since a new utility was created. Hear the story of how a small local nonprofit, HEET, has innovated a pathway for gas utilities to become a "thermal utilities," delivering you heating and cooling without combustion. Eversource and National Grid are already selecting sites for the first installations, and over 15 other utilities across the country are following along. Hear the story of innovation and how to create social change across boundaries.
Audrey Schulman co-founded HEET in 2008. Featured in the Washington Post as a Climate Hero, she created the first-in-the-nation statewide zoomable public map of utility-reported gas leaks.
She started the Large Volume Leak Study, which discovered a way for gas utilities to identify super-emitting gas leaks and repair them. She has helped develop HEET’s innovative solution to transition gas utilities from gas to networked geothermal, or systems of networked ground source heat pumps. Schulman is also the author of six novels, which have been translated into 12 languages and reviewed by The New Yorker, The Economist and CNN.
This MILL TALK is the first of a series we will be presenting in 2023 curated by Boston University Professor Nathan Phillips. More talks in this series will be announced in the coming weeks:
Climate, Energy, Infrastructure, & Justice
Infrastructure & Climate : The past, present and future of mill towns
Francis Cabot Lowell’s vision made manifest in Waltham of mechanically transforming bales of cotton into bolts of fabric under one roof was certainly a revolutionary business concept. Yet the story’s transformative influence extends so much farther, along process chains that involve land and water, materials, energy, infrastructure, topography, people, and social (in)justice.
This ongoing, world-changing story matters more than ever today, as we seek to revolutionize afresh humanity's relationships with one another, improve how we affect our shared climate, and restore essential balance in relationships among all life on planet Earth. What can we learn from and use – or leave behind – as we fully apprehend the complex legacies of industrialization and build an ecologically sound economic future for all in New England mill towns and cities, and the world beyond?
This series of Mill Talks, underwritten by the Lowell Institute, widens the lens on the two-century old Francis Cabot Lowell Mill legacy, weaving together topics and speakers working in the messy nexus of climate, energy, infrastructure, and justice disciplines. We will hear from historians, geographers, engineers, futurists, business innovators, civic leaders, activists and more, who leverage their understanding of history and the power of their platforms to actively build energy, infrastructure, and inclusive enterprises that promote a healthy climate and economic vitality for all.
The Mill Talks at the Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation are free and open to the public and are made possible by the generous support of the Lowell Institute.
