Last spring, College President Sian Leah Beilock announced the Dartmouth Climate Collaborative — a $500 million campus-wide decarbonization project which aims to reduce carbon emissions by 60% by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. Related construction projects are now sweeping Dartmouth’s campus.
Senior vice president for capital planning and campus operations Josh Keniston said the College has been “transitioning from the design and planning phase [of the Dartmouth Climate Collaborative] to the construction phase.” Decarbonization projects — such as the installment of a new hot water heating system in front of New Hampshire Hall and Topliff Hall — were underway this summer and some projects will continue to impact campus this fall.
The south end of campus — which includes the athletics district and the East Wheelock residence halls — is undergoing construction, Keniston said. The Fayerweather Halls are also under construction. While the two-year Fayerweather Halls renovation has several goals — such as adding more beds — it will also “minimize” the building’s environmental impact, according to the College website. Dartmouth ultimately hopes to install distribution piping — pipes carrying water — across large areas of campus to heat and cool its buildings.
“The type of construction that’s needed for this project is not contained to just one individual building — it’s distribution piping that covers large areas,” project management services senior director Patrick O’Hern said. “One of the things we’re trying to be really thoughtful about is how [to] sequence [and] manage that construction.”
O’Hern said a 2021 infrastructure renewal fund from the Board of Trustees — amounting to $31 million — gave the College a “financial vehicle” to “unlock” the ability to decarbonize campus and “renew” residence halls.
The infrastructure renewal fund is a supplemental endowment established to address decades of deferred maintenance and critical infrastructure improvements at Dartmouth — such as modernizing the energy plant and renovating aging facilities — without compromising the institution’s financial stability or future budgets, according to Dartmouth News.
According to vice president for facilities and energy Roger Wakeman, the project represents “the largest investment in infrastructure” in College history. Because the old heating and distribution system is “at the end of its life cycle,” the Energy Steering Committee at Dartmouth — a broad group responsible for implementing and communicating the energy transition project — decided to replace the system rather than renew it.
“Reducing emissions and changing our energy source to geo-exchange will ultimately dramatically reduce, if not eventually eliminate, heating oil deliveries to campus,” O’Hern said.
Instead of distributing steam heated through fossil fuel combustion, geo-exchange uses hot water for heating and chilled water for cooling, according to O’hern. To switch to this energy source, the College must build a central plant equipped with heat pumps that convert hot or chilled water into energy, he said. The energy is then distributed across campus through the new piping.
“We estimate that it’s roughly 20% more efficient than steam, so that’s another added benefit of the switchover,” Keniston said.
While the central plant is not yet built, the College has nonetheless started its energy transition, O’Hern said. In the “interim,” the College is using its steam plant to “generate hot water,” he explained, adding that the “temporary … energy transfer station” is located by Sudikoff Hall.
Eventually, there will be a plant located in the athletics district, according to the College website.
According to Wakeman, the geo-exchange system also involves drilling a borefield — an array of wells dug 800 to 850 feet deep, depending on soil and rock composition — to facilitate heat exchange. A loop of pipe is placed in each well, circulating a refrigerant-like substance that absorbs or discharges heat into the ground, Wakeman explained.
Wakeman said the first borefield at Dartmouth will be located on Chase Athletic Field, which provides space for around 190 holes to be drilled. Wakeman explained that large open areas like athletic fields are feasible locations for borefields, which require space to accommodate multiple wells. According to Dartmouth News, drilling on the Athletic Field is planned to begin in late October and will continue for around six months.
Construction is also required to convert College buildings that run on a steam-powered system to be compatible with the new geo-exchange system, Wakeman said. While some campus buildings were constructed with the new project in mind — for example, the Irving Institute for Energy and Society, the Engineering and Computer Science Center and the Class of 1982 building — others require renovations, O’Hern explained.
In recent years, Dartmouth Hall, Reed Hall and Thornton Hall were all converted to hot water heating systems, O’Hern said. The Alpha Phi and Alpha Xi Delta sorority buildings, the Ledyard apartments and McCulloch Hall also underwent renovations over the summer to help them transition to the hot water heating system.
New buildings will be constructed with sustainability in mind, Keniston added.
“As we build new, we’re also building to really high standards and making sure that anything new that we build is ultra efficient and is as close to net zero carbon as possible,” Keniston said.
The project has taken student and Town perspectives into consideration, Keniston added. The Town of Hanover is a “key partner,” since “campus is very integrated into the town,” he explained. At the same time, student engineering projects have helped “prioritize” technologies, according to Keniston.
In the face of climate change, many other institutions have achieved carbon neutrality, including Colby College, Bates College and Bowdoin College, according to Second Nature — a non-profit focusing on climate action in higher education. Others, including Stanford University and Princeton University, are well on their way to achieving sustainability goals, according to O’Hern. Both Stanford and Princeton have already made significant strides in reducing carbon emissions, investing in renewable energy sources and adopting innovative technologies to create greener campuses, O’Hern said.
“We took a team down to Princeton and looked at how they were implementing their geo-exchange borefields … how they mitigated noise and how they integrated carbon neutral measures into new facilities,” he said.
While Dartmouth has drawn insights from peer institutions, the scale of Dartmouth’s decarbonization efforts and the challenge of executing such a project in a cold-weather climate — which can freeze pipes — set Dartmouth’s efforts apart, Keniston said.
