Gov. Ned Lamont’s administration plans to invest in a new gas heating system for state office buildings in downtown Hartford, but the decision has fueled backlash from state and local activists who say it will spew pollution into surrounding neighborhoods and undermine the governor’s own climate goals. The administration’s plan would upgrade a facility that supplies heating and cooling to an underground network of pipes connected to 15 buildings in downtown Hartford known as the Capitol Area System. The system — also called the “loop” — includes several government buildings including the Armory, the Supreme Court Building and the Legislative Office Building, as well as private ones like the Bushnell Theater. (The Capitol itself relies on a separate system to heat and cool the 146-year-old building.) Environmental and climate activists seized upon the project, arguing that it offered the Lamont administration an opportunity to de-carbonize more than a dozen buildings at once through the installation of electric boilers or a geothermal heating and cooling system. But earlier this year the Department of Administrative Services announced that it was opting to move forward with a “hybrid” approach, utilizing both heat pumps and newer natural gas boilers to power the system. The upgrade is estimated to cost roughly $42 million and take several years to complete.
Plan to heat CT state buildings with natural gas system riles advocates