Barrett said the money he earmarked for Walsh to study the consumer impact of transitioning to heat pumps goes hand in hand with the $5 million he secured for the Clean Energy Center to hire a research team to analyze the design and operation of networked geothermal demonstration projects approved by the Department of Public Utilities.
He said he worried that if he had just proposed putting the study out to bid it could get lost in the upheaval of a Cabinet “exodus” if Baker decided, which he did on Wednesday, not to seek a third term.
“I had never understood the money to be intended for something intimately related to the pandemic itself,” Barrett said. “This is the sort of initiative that you imagine being undertaken in the middle of a crisis like the one we’re experiencing with the climate.”
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