NORTHAMPTON — A more than $4 million grant from the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center will support the installation of a new geothermal heat pump system at Northampton High School, a project expected to reduce the city’s annual utility costs by more than $39,000.
MassCEC announced earlier this month that Northampton Public Schools will receive a chunk of the approximately $19 million in grant funding allocated to school building energy modernization projects across the state.
The support will consist of roughly $3.5 million in recoverable grant funds for short-term borrowing, along with an additional $500,000 in direct funds. The funds are expected to save Northampton an estimated $300,000 in interest payments from short-term borrowing, according to Ben Weil, director of the city’s Climate Action and Project Administration.
Weil added that since the funding reduces the amount the city has to borrow for the approximately $11.16 million project, the grant will make it easier for the project to qualify for a federal tax rebate. If that happens, the federal money would cover about 40% of the cost, and that the state grant is recoverable, meaning the city would repay that portion after receiving the federal tax rebate.
“This creates a revolving fund to help bridge the time between when you do a project and then when the project is fully complete … you can think of it really as a 0% interest loan,” Weil said.
The City Council approved funding for the project in December.
A geothermal system works by installing pipes that run deep underground, where temperature remains at a constant level around 50 degrees Fahrenheit. Water sent through the pipes either absorbs or discharges heat as it adjusts to the constant temperature at that depth, with heat pumps extracting either the cooling or the heat from the liquid and distributing it throughout the building.
Weil explained that the geothermal pump is expected to save the school approximately 4.7 billion British Thermal Units (BTU) a year, or 68% of its energy use. He estimated that the total energy savings will amount to $39,000 each year.
“We have a high school building that, despite the fact that the original part was built in 1940, is well maintained and had a bunch of features that we could work with to test it against what it was capable of, so that we could be confident that it would work with geothermal,” Weil said. “That means that, for the most part, we don’t have to make any changes to the inside of the building, we just need a ground loop and new heat pumps.”
Weil said crews are now completing bore tests throughout the parking lot in an effort to complete the project’s planning and design phase in July, with drilling expected to start shortly thereafter. He added that the bore holes should be completely filled and the parking lot returned to full functionality by January 2027.
School Committee Vice Chair Alena Bartoli explained that the geothermal boiler project addresses a challenge the city faces with some of its older school buildings being unfit for instances of extreme weather brought about by climate change.
“One of the challenges that we’re facing right now in the district are buildings that are not prepared for climate change,” Bartoli said. “With this heat wave in particular, we’re really thinking about both short and long-term solutions to keeping the building temperatures manageable and creating an environment that really allows our students to thrive.
