Boston, let's count to TEN!
Thermal energy network toolkit for Bostonians to advocate for energy democracy
Energy planning studio project in Boston, MA
Team member: Ariella Amit
From 09/2025 to 10/2025
What would it look like for communities to shape and govern the energy transition themselves? This project is a toolkit to help Bostonians understand, advocate for, and mobilize around thermal energy networks, or TENs. Grounded in histories of environmental and infrastructural injustice, the toolkit explains how the clean energy transition risks reproducing existing inequities, while highlighting the potential of TENs as a more community-centered energy system that responds to Bostonians’ concerns.
This serves as a resource for organizers, residents, and local groups working toward energy democracy in Boston, offering actionable strategies to organize with neighbors and get connected to the larger energy democracy movement. Rather than presenting infrastructure as a technical issue, this project hopes to position coalition-building and community stewardship as essential parts of creating a just energy future.