Chuck Darwin<p>Networked geothermal power could change cities:</p><p>‘Every building sits on a thermal asset’</p><p>While temperatures above ground fluctuate throughout the year, the ground stays a stable temperature, <br>meaning that it is humming with <a href="https://c.im/tags/geothermal" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>geothermal</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/energy" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>energy</span></a> that engineers can exploit. </p><p>“Every building sits on a thermal asset,” said Cameron Best, director of business development at Brightcore Energy in New York, which deploys geothermal systems. <br>⭐️“I really don’t think there’s any more efficient or better way to heat and cool our homes.”⭐️</p><p>And now the big utilities are beginning to take a good hard look at that system. <br>A couple of months ago <a href="https://c.im/tags/Eversource" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Eversource</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Energy" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Energy</span></a> commissioned the US’s first 🔸networked geothermal neighbourhood 🔸operated by a utility, in Framingham, Massachusetts.</p><p>Pipes run down boreholes 600-700ft (about 180-215 metres) deep, <br>where the temperature of the rock is consistently 55F (13C). <br>A mixture of water and propylene glycol (a food additive that works here as an antifreeze) pumps through the piping, <br>absorbing that geothermal energy, <br>then flows to 31 residential and five commercial buildings, where fully electric <a href="https://c.im/tags/heat" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>heat</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/pumps" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>pumps</span></a> use the liquid to either heat or cool a space.</p><p>If deployed across the country, these geothermal systems could go a long way in helping decarbonise buildings, which are responsible for about a third of total greenhouse gas emissions in the US.</p><p>Once a system is in place, buildings can draw heat from water pumped from below their foundations, <br>instead of burning natural gas piped in from afar. <br>🔹Utilities use the same equipment to deploy networked geothermal as they do for gas lines, <br>and even the same kind of pipes <br>– they are just circulating fluid instead of gas. </p><p>♦️The networks don’t need special geology to operate, so they can be set up almost anywhere. <br>The project in Framingham, then, could be the start of something big.</p><p>To scale up, a geothermal loop such as Framingham’s might connect to an adjacent neighbourhood, and that one to another. <br>“In the end, what we would like is if the gas utilities become <a href="https://c.im/tags/thermal" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>thermal</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/utilities" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>utilities</span></a>,” said Audrey Schulman, executive director of the nonprofit climate-solutions incubator <a href="https://c.im/tags/HEETlabs" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>HEETlabs</span></a> <br>(a spin-off of the climate nonprofit HEET, which began pitching the idea to Eversource and other utilities in 2017). <br>“Each individual, shared loop can be interconnected, like Lego blocks, to grow bigger and bigger</p><p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/aug/09/every-building-sits-on-a-thermal-asset-how-networked-geothermal-power-could-change-cities?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">theguardian.com/environment/ar</span><span class="invisible">ticle/2024/aug/09/every-building-sits-on-a-thermal-asset-how-networked-geothermal-power-could-change-cities?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other</span></a></p>