Cornell faculty and students deploy a network of 15 seismometers for a year-long assessment of background-level seismicity near campus.

Cornell faculty and students deploy a network of 15 seismometers for a year-long assessment of background-level seismicity near campus.

The long-term goals of ESH are to create a new regional energy supply and to heat Cornell’s Ithaca campus using only natural, renewable resources including heat energy from the earth.

Cornell University has a longstanding tradition of utilizing its campuses as ‘living laboratories’ where faculty, students and staff innovate, design and demonstrate energy technologies.

We are exploring ways to utilize the Ithaca campus as a test bed for a new sustainable and renewable source of heat. Our version of an enhanced geothermal system (EGS), Earth Source Heat (ESH) would use the internal heat of the earth to warm our campus and a bioenergy system to meet supplemental heating needs during sustained or extreme cold spells.

If we are successful, we will all but eliminate fossil fuel use on our campus. And, we can share a new
energy solution with partners across the globe.

ESH could enable us to greatly reduce Cornell’s dependence on fossil fuels and, if successful, would serve as an exciting demonstration project for other communities seeking renewable, sustainable forms of energy.