The Miami Student
Summary
Upon returning to campus this fall, students will see new construction outside Miami University’s Millett Hall. The flat dirt field lined with red fences south of the stadium will become home to 520 underground geothermal wells, reaching 850 feet in depth.
The project is an effort to transition north campus buildings – including Millett Hall – off steam energy towards heating and cooling through geothermal exchange. This comes as part of Miami’s climate action plan’s goal of reaching carbon neutrality by 2040 on the Oxford campus.
Miami’s Director of Sustainability Olivia Herron describes geothermal exchange as using the Earth as a battery to store heat. In the summer, air conditioning removes heat from the buildings and uses that energy to warm up the ground. In the winter, the heat stored in the ground will be used to warm up the buildings.
Herron said the project is expected to reduce carbon emissions by 5,810 metric tons annually – the equivalent of more than 360 individual human emissions yearly. The project is being carried out under Miami’s physical facilities department and led by Project Director Don Van Winkle
“It’s a big project towards President [Gregory Crawford]’s goal of getting towards climate [neutrality],” Van Winkle said. “It’s going to allow us to be much less dependent on fossil fuels.”
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