Saturday
Feb072009
Ball State University approves $66 million geothermal project
Saturday, February 7, 2009 at 9:07AM
The day after commencement on May 9, Ball State University hopes to start drilling the first of 3,750 wells, each to be 400 feet deep, for a geothermal energy project that will meet the university's heating and cooling needs.
The $66 million project, approved on Friday by the university's board of trustees, will eliminate four air-polluting, coal-fired boilers built in the 1940s and 1950s, and greatly enhance Ball State's reputation as a role model for green campuses.
The state Legislature appropriated more than $40 million several years ago for the university to replace the obsolete boilers with a circulating fluidized bed boiler to burn coal cleaner and more efficiently. However, not a single boiler manufacturer anywhere in the world submitted a bid for that project, the estimated cost of which has now risen to more than $60 million.
For a variety of reasons, the university will ask the state budget committee to authorize it to abandon the boiler replacement plan and to earmark the $40 million for the conversion to geothermal energy.
While numerous schools, nursing homes, hospitals, prisons and other buildings throughout the country use geothernal energy, Ball State's will be perhaps the largest geothermal project in the country, said President Jo Ann Gora, a signer of the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment.
The university's coal-fired boilers produce 85,000 tons of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, annually.
According to Tom Kinghorn, vice president of business affairs and treasurer of the university, the geothermal conversion will eliminate the boilers, reduce operating costs, eliminate the volatility in the cost of coal and natural gas, reduce the university's carbon footprint, eliminate other air pollutants, advance the university's sustainability agenda, and allow the university to sell carbon credits.
The project also will create an estimated 870 jobs.
"We think we are positioned to take advantage of economic stimulus money," Kinghorn said. If that happens, the project could be completed in five years. Without federal aid, completion could take 10 to 12 years.
Professor Robert Koester, director of BSU's Center for Energy Research, Education and Service, called the trustees' decision "ground breaking."
source: Muncie Star Press
The $66 million project, approved on Friday by the university's board of trustees, will eliminate four air-polluting, coal-fired boilers built in the 1940s and 1950s, and greatly enhance Ball State's reputation as a role model for green campuses.
The state Legislature appropriated more than $40 million several years ago for the university to replace the obsolete boilers with a circulating fluidized bed boiler to burn coal cleaner and more efficiently. However, not a single boiler manufacturer anywhere in the world submitted a bid for that project, the estimated cost of which has now risen to more than $60 million.
For a variety of reasons, the university will ask the state budget committee to authorize it to abandon the boiler replacement plan and to earmark the $40 million for the conversion to geothermal energy.
While numerous schools, nursing homes, hospitals, prisons and other buildings throughout the country use geothernal energy, Ball State's will be perhaps the largest geothermal project in the country, said President Jo Ann Gora, a signer of the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment.
The university's coal-fired boilers produce 85,000 tons of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, annually.
According to Tom Kinghorn, vice president of business affairs and treasurer of the university, the geothermal conversion will eliminate the boilers, reduce operating costs, eliminate the volatility in the cost of coal and natural gas, reduce the university's carbon footprint, eliminate other air pollutants, advance the university's sustainability agenda, and allow the university to sell carbon credits.
The project also will create an estimated 870 jobs.
"We think we are positioned to take advantage of economic stimulus money," Kinghorn said. If that happens, the project could be completed in five years. Without federal aid, completion could take 10 to 12 years.
Professor Robert Koester, director of BSU's Center for Energy Research, Education and Service, called the trustees' decision "ground breaking."
source: Muncie Star Press
tagged News in Buildings & Cities, Energy, Environment
News in Buildings & Cities, Energy, Environment
Reader Comments