Building Decarbonization Coalition (BDC) - Accelerating Adoption of Thermal Energy Networks (TENs) for Building Decarbonization
United States · 2020 · Building Decarbonization Coalition (BDC) — a U.S.-based coalition accelerating building electrification.
Thermal Energy Networks represent a change in how cities approach building decarbonization: from replacing individual heating equipment toward creating shared urban thermal infrastructure. Through policy work and stakeholder coordination, the Building Decarbonization Coalition has helped advance TENs as an emerging pathway in the United States. Its work has supported conversations around utility regulation, thermal infrastructure ownership, and new models for delivering heating and cooling services. Early utility deployments and demonstrations in locations such as Massachusetts, New York, and Colorado show the potential of TENs to reduce emissions while improving grid flexibility and resilience. Their broader significance is institutional: they create a new category of infrastructure where thermal energy is managed collectively, similar to how cities manage electricity, water, and transportation networks.
Highlight
Moving building decarbonization from individual heat-pump installations toward shared thermal infrastructure at neighborhood scale.
Extended description
Building decarbonization is often approached one building at a time: replacing fossil-fuel boilers or furnaces with electric heat pumps and upgrading individual buildings. Thermal energy networks (TENs) offer a different model by treating heating and cooling as shared neighborhood infrastructure.
TENs connect multiple buildings through underground water-filled loops that circulate thermal energy at relatively low temperatures. Heat pumps at individual buildings use this thermal energy to provide heating or cooling. Depending on the system design, the network can draw energy from geothermal resources, wastewater, bodies of water, industrial processes, data centres, or excess heat produced by other buildings. Thermal energy can therefore move between different users and sources rather than being generated independently in every building.
This creates a fundamentally different infrastructure model. Buildings remain responsible for their own heating and cooling equipment, but they become interconnected through a shared thermal system. A building rejecting heat during cooling, for example, can potentially provide a useful thermal resource for another building that requires heating. Networked systems can also incorporate thermal storage and other sources of flexibility.
TENs are not a new technology: BDC reports that they are already operating in more than 20 U.S. states and multiple countries. The challenge is therefore less about inventing the technology than about making neighborhood-scale deployment feasible within existing energy, regulatory, and utility systems.
This is where BDC's role is particularly relevant. BDC is not a TEN manufacturer or project developer. It works across policy, research, market development, public engagement, and stakeholder coordination to create conditions for wider adoption. Its TEN work includes supporting legislation, engaging utilities and regulators, developing technical and financial guidance, documenting projects, and building connections between communities, building owners, utilities, labor organizations, and technology providers.
New York illustrates this system-level role. BDC has worked with partners to advance utility and campus TEN projects and has advocated for funding and regulatory frameworks supporting neighborhood-scale deployment. In parallel, its work in other states is examining project feasibility, utility models, financing, and approaches for transitioning away from fossil-fuel gas infrastructure.
The significance of TENs is therefore not simply that they provide another type of heat pump system. They introduce a new scale of planning for building energy: one in which heating, cooling, thermal storage, waste heat, geothermal resources, buildings, utilities, and communities can be considered as components of a shared system.
Demonstrated metrics
BDC's 2025 neighborhood-scale project map recorded 103 projects, including 55 operational projects and 42 thermal energy or geothermal networks (a subset of thermal energy networks). BDC reports that TENs already function in more than 20 U.S. states and multiple countries, while its current state legislation tracker identifies TEN-related legislation in 14 states.
An operational example is West Union, Iowa, where a city-owned geothermal network uses 132 boreholes, each 300 feet deep, to provide 264 tons of heating and cooling capacity to 12 downtown buildings. The geothermal network cost $2.2 million and began connecting buildings in 2014. User network fees fell from $14/ton in 2021 to $9/ton in 2024 as system management improved and the user base expanded.
Real impact
BDC's principal impact is in building the political, social, legal, and institutional foundation from which real-world TENs projects can begin to break ground. Its work is helping move TENs into the policy, regulatory, utility, financing, and planning systems that determine whether neighborhood-scale deployment can expand. In New York, for example, BDC played a key role in the passage of the Utility Thermal Energy Networks and Jobs Act (UTENJA), and continues to work with the state’s Department of Public Service, Office of the Governor, and municipal governments to influence TENs regulation, funding, and implementation. BDC has also initiated or supported TENs legislation in Minnesota, Maryland, and Illinois. Nationally, the organization documents projects and develops guidance on deployment, costs, financing, and utility models.
BDC’s research, including its Thermal Energy Networks Legislative Guidebook and Financing Thermal Energy Networks guide, its policy briefs on TENs and water savings and TENs and data centers, and its analysis of state legislation continue to influence TENs development nationwide.
Implementation location & date
United States. TEN pilots and utility-led projects are under development in states including New York, Massachusetts, Colorado, and Minnesota, with demonstrations spanning neighbourhoods, campuses, and new developments during the 2020s.
Similar cases elsewhere
Similar approaches include ambient-loop heat networks in the UK and shared geothermal/waste-heat networks in Canada and Northern Europe.