KOTLIKOFF | Cornell’s Energy Transition

The Cornell Daily Sun Opinion Column January 29, 2025

2024 has now entered the history books as not only yet another “warmest year on record,” but also as the first year with an average annual temperature over the key climate threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre industrial levels. The impact of human-caused planetary warming is continuing to accelerate, and with it comes the urgency of decarbonizing our energy system. As we begin 2025, I would like to take the opportunity to share an update on our own energy transition at Cornell, and some of its unique complexities and opportunities.

Cornell is committed to eliminating carbon emissions from its energy usage. Achieving this goal in a rapidly changing energy landscape in a manner that truly eliminates emissions, rather than simply shifting responsibility for them, is a complex and challenging problem. For example, a seemingly obvious measure, like covering campus roofs with solar panels, would meet only one to two percent of our annual demand — and would be less efficient, more expensive and more difficult to maintain, than the large-scale solar farms that we help to develop through long-term contracts. Achieving our goal of net-zero campus operations requires a holistic approach within the context of our campus infrastructure and, particularly, our place in the New York power grid. 

Cornell’s energy consumption, broadly, falls into three categories: heat (by far the largest category), cooling and electricity. In the long term, the most promising way for us to meet our energy goals is Earth Source Heat: a game-changing technology with the potential to meet cold-climate heating needs with less electricity than other options and without the use of refrigerants (the most potent greenhouse gases). Combining Earth Source Heat with our existing, highly efficient Lake Source Cooling system (which uses no refrigeration equipment and only the power needed to move water through the pipes) would have the lowest electrical demand, the lowest carbon impact and would best support the successful and equitable transition of the state’s electric grid to clean energy. Data from our experimental borehole indicate that the temperature two miles below our campus is sufficient for our heating needs, but we now need to ensure our ability to pump the necessary quantity of water through the rock at that depth and return it to the surface at the necessary temperature. This project is especially significant because it would demonstrate the broader feasibility of this technology in our region — with, potentially, a much greater impact on climate change than we could achieve just by eliminating our own carbon emissions. For this reason, Cornell has made major investments to prove the feasibility of earth source heat in our region.

While we are optimistic about the future of Earth Source Heat, we are also realistic. This project is not a guaranteed solution, and it will take time — time that we are spending researching other possibilities, including shallow geoexchange, sewer heat recovery and other heat recovery technologies. From a carbon emissions standpoint, however, moving buildings from our existing highly efficient district energy system to individual, electricity-based alternatives will not reduce our reliance on carbon-emitting fuels. To understand why this is the case, it is important to understand the system we have in place now, particularly in the context of the state’s electrical grid, and what impact specific changes would have on net emissions.

Cornell’s highly efficient Combined Heating and Power Plant, built in 2010, has two gas-fired turbines that drive electric generators, and whose waste heat is captured and channeled, in the form of steam, throughout campus via miles of pipes. The net emissions of this district energy system — which combines the efficiencies of Lake Source Cooling with those of our combined heat and power plant — are comparable to those of a heat pump system connected to the New York state electric grid. Once the impact of the refrigerants used in heat pumps is factored in, our current system is actually more efficient. Until the entire grid is clean, the emissions from the fossil-fuel power plants that would ramp up to provide the electricity needed for single-building heat pump systems at Cornell would be higher than the emissions created through the use of our existing system, even without considering the carbon cost of manufacturing and shipping all of that new equipment. 

Any transition to zero-carbon emissions through electrifying heat must recognize the fact that the generation of electricity in New York state still relies substantially on fossil fuels to meet new loads, and will likely not transition to their elimination for well over a decade.

Cornell is actively building solar power to add to the electrical grid, with current agreements that equal about 20 percent of our annual campus load, and the remaining 80 percent under contract and expected to be online by 2030. But — and this is a crucial point — despite the move of our upstate grid to clean energy sources, our state’s overall demand for electricity is rising faster than clean power sources can be built and brought online. Thus, any additional demands to the grid now will result, for the foreseeable future, in grid-connected gas-fired plants increasing their electricity generation. To have a real impact on our state’s overall emissions, we need to find ways to heat and power our campus that don’t add to the burden on the state’s grid.

As we continue researching the best way to heat our campus, we are also investing in reductions to our power consumption (for example, through our retrofit of the Biotechnology Building) and upgrading our existing infrastructure for the coming transition from fossil fuels. In order to move away from gas to the lower-temperature heat generated by renewable sources, we will need to change our distribution and building systems from steam to hot water. This work is already well underway, and all of our new buildings and major renovations, including the North Campus Residential Expansion project that opened in 2021, incorporate hot water heating design as standard.

As Carl Becker once noted, “Fact-finding is more effective than fault-finding.” If we are ever to reach a sustainable future, we must remain laser focused on the facts: following science and the evidence, as we seek the best possible solutions on our rapidly warming planet.

Original article


Michael Kotlikoff is the interim president and former provost of Cornell University. His two year term as president began in July of 2024. His office be reached at president@cornell.edu