Can UC Berkeley Go Geothermal?

UC Berkeley (Audio)

UC Berkeley drills a 400-foot borehole to explore geothermal heating on campus. UC Berkeley plans to decommission its 40-year-old cogeneration plant and replace its current steam heating system with a new system that uses water pipes to heat and cool buildings on campus. While the cogeneration plant burns natural gas to produce electricity and steam heat for the campus, the new system will use electricity for both power and thermal needs. By using clean energy sources, such as wind and solar, to produce this electricity, the campus’s future power, heating and cooling needs would be entirely carbon-free. (Video: Roxanne Makasdjian, Alan Toth, Adam Lau) Series: "UC Berkeley News" [Public Affairs] [Science] [Show ID: 39224]