Building Heating
Cornell’s Central Energy Plant (CEP) is a combined heat and power (CHP) plant. It supplies campus heating needs using waste heat from combusting natural gas for on-site electric generation. The CEP also uses natural gas boilers and duct burners to provide supplemental heating and for reliability. Heat is distributed across campus in the form of steam or hot water via buried pipes to the buildings. Building systems convert the steam to hot water or use the steam directly.