(From Chronicle of Higher Education) Two years ago, Dartmouth College set a 2025 deadline for cutting greenhouse-gas emissions in half, and also for replacing the No. 6 fuel oil that fuels its steam plant — which burns some 3.5 million gallons a year — with renewable fuels. The proposed plan calls for replacing the steam system with a hot-water network, which is expected to be 20-percent more efficient. A hot-water system can also be set up so that it’s easier to control locally. The school will be able to put in thermal solar, heat pumps or geothermal. “We see the conversion to hot water as something that serves us for 100 years,” Joshua Keniston, Dartmouth’s vice president for institutional projects.
The proposed project, which includes replacing not just the college’s central steam plant but its entire campus-wide heating network, is estimated to cost $200 million. The school is looking for a business partner — one with ideas, expertise, and capital — with which to build a new central plant fueled largely by wood chips from local timber operations.
More at Chronicle of Higher Education
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