Colorado Mesa University has a secret weapon fueling its growth in enrollment and infrastructure.
As Inside Climate News reported, the university's visionary geothermal system has enabled it to save over $15 million in energy costs since 2008. That money has been redirected to benefit students, as the school continually refines its geothermal system, keeping energy costs in check and cutting water usage by 10 million gallons annually.
"It's been the best-kept secret in all of western Colorado for a long time," Kent Marsh, vice president of capital planning, sustainability, and campus operations for Colorado Mesa, said, per ICN. "We just have never really done a good job of tooting our horn."
The system utilizes hundreds of boreholes, each about 500 feet deep, to help maintain stable temperatures in 20 campus buildings year-round. With the region's temperatures ranging from the 90s in the summer to the 20s in the winter, ground-source heat pumps' ability to tap stable subsurface temperatures in the 60s is invaluable.
The system's versatility in meeting the needs of disparate buildings is a major asset. In 2008, the more modest buildout included just one building. Cary Smith, the architect of the system, realized that expanding the thermal network would increase efficiency.
Excess heat from academic buildings could be directed to dorms that needed heating, and so on. That system and creative storage of heat during the hotter summer months pay off. It enables the school to generate efficiencies two to three times those of air-source heat pumps, which already easily outperform gas boilers.
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"That is nothing less than remarkable," declared Bryce Carter, the Colorado Energy Office's geothermal program manager, per ICN. "It really has become not just a national but really an international example of the latest generation of the energy network that really shows what's possible."
Unsurprisingly, the success of Colorado Mesa's geothermal network has become a model for other communities. One major selling point is that the Trump administration's One Big Beautiful Bill Act mostly left geothermal tax credits alone, unlike wind and solar tax credits.
To wit, 80 Colorado communities are exploring geothermal's viability in their system. Marsh noted the payback period is somewhere between six and 10 years, and after that, the upgrade cuts down on operating costs.
"It also greatly reduces our carbon footprint," Marsh told Inside Climate News. "It is just the right thing to do."
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