Paul Bass File Photo
Steve Winter: "Neighborhood-scale platform for decarbonization."
The city hopes to draw clean energy directly from the earth to heat and cool a train station, a thousand or so apartments, and maybe one day an entire neighborhood.
As Yale University begins construction on New Haven’s first-ever geothermal heating and cooling system on Science Hill, the city is seeking funding for a second such project by Union Station — aiming to reduce fossil fuel emissions from affected buildings by 76 percent, while lowering air pollution and energy bills.
On Monday, the Board of Alders approved the city’s submission of a $9.42 million application for the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)‘s Climate Pollution Reduction Grant, which would fund over half of the proposed geothermal project. The EPA will decide whether to allocate the grant to New Haven in July.
“This is an exciting grant and opportunity for us here in New Haven,” said East Rock Alder Anna Festa at the meeting, noting that the project would be among the earliest geothermal systems in the country (one of which is currently underway in Wallingford). She called the proposal a “generational investment” in clean energy infrastructure.
“It can provide a neighborhood-scale platform for decarbonization,” said city Climate & Sustainability Director Steve Winter in a later interview.
The energy system is currently envisioned as a source of temperature control and potentially hot water for both Union Station and the Housing Authority/Elm City Communities’ forthcoming “Union Square” project of up to a thousand apartments where the Church Street South housing complex once stood.
The network could someday be expanded to power the police headquarters at 1 Union Ave., according to Winter. “Businesses and residents could tap into the system. … In the long run, you could see this extend to Trowbridge Square and the Hill neighborhood, and help that whole neighborhood transition off of fossil fuels.”
The Climate Pollution Reduction Grant “is kind of a once-in-a-generation funding opportunity and that’s why we’re excited about making this once-in-a-generation investment in clean energy,” he added.
US Department of Energy
Geothermal bores leverage the relatively stable temperature below ground to heat and cool buildings aboveground.
In order to tap into geothermal power, the city would dig 285 bores in the ground, reaching 800 to 900 feet in depth, according to Winter. A tubing system would cycle fluid in and out of those bore holes, leveraging the difference in temperature above and deep below ground to power a heating and cooling system.
The bores are slated to be located in parts of the Housing Authority’s Union Square development that do not have anything built atop them, while a connected heat pump would be located where Union Station’s adjacent HVAC system currently operates.
Construction is projected to cost $16.5 million in total. If the $9.42 million from the EPA comes through, Winter said the city anticipates contributing $6.3 million of municipal funds to the project, which would be eligible for both a state rebate and federal reimbursement under the Inflation Reduction Act. “The aim is to have the city fully reimbursed.”
Meanwhile, if the city does not receive the Climate Pollution Reduction Grant, Winter said his team would search for other funding sources.
The Office of Climate and Sustainability produced models of the proposed project to gauge its potential impact on climate change contributors, air pollution, and utility costs.
According to Winter, a geothermal plant would reduce greenhouse gas emissions from Union Station and the envisioned Church Street South redevelopment by 76 percent between 2025 and 2050.
It would also save approximately 60,000 pounds of air pollutants covered by the Clean Air Act (such as carbon monoxide and nitrogen dioxide), and approximately roughly 1000 pounds “hazardous particles,” the model found.
As for residents of the future Union Square development, the geothermal network would lower their heating bills by half, according to Winter’s model. Air conditioning in the summer would also be more efficient, Winter said, but tenants’ cooling bills would likely remain static due to a monthly fee to use the system.
He framed the proposal as a systemic improvement that would speed up the city’s collective shift away from climate-destroying fossil fuels. “Instead of property by property each having to decarbonize in a one-off way, individually, this can allow block-by-block decarbonization to advance,” he said.