The Boston Greenbelt Commission has taken an important step exploring the use of Boston Harbor and other local waterways as sources of affordable, clean and reliable thermal energy by selecting Salas O’Brien, a decarbonization and energy master planning firm, to lead the $500,000 analysis.
Support the company are five sub-consultants (Sherwood Design Engineers, Synapse Energy Economics, Sasaki, GeoSource and VHB) to analyze the feasibility of the project, which includes the creation of a thermal network to distribute the energy. “With this robust team of technical experts led by Salas O’Brien, we can move forward on a revolutionary plan to decarbonize large buildings with a clean, renewable and fully local energy source,” commission executive director Lindsey Butler said in a statement.
O’Brien Halls has 5,000 employees, is working on more than 500 geothermal projects in the US and Canada, and has about a dozen thermal energy grid projects in the design phase or fully implemented, according to Brian Urlaub, the company’s principal and director of geothermal operations.
“We’re one of the few companies that has our own hydrogeologists on staff, so we dive deep into the underground geothermal aspects of projects without having to outsource that work,” Urlaub said.
The technology, intended to capture thermal energy from the Charles and Mystic Rivers, Boston Harbor, the Fort Point Channel and the bedrock below, would be a closed system that circulates heat through sealed infrastructure without drawing water from waterways. One aspect of the study will be to determine if the bedrock can be turned into a thermal storage battery “to increase the capacity of these resources compared to trying to take [the energy] at the time it is needed, which would be very reduced”.
Thermal energy networks are a “multi-level problem-solving technology that can help a multitude of problems in the city of Boston,” Urlaub said. “If you look at the port of Boston and the studies that have been done [related to] how the lobsters have gone north because the water temperatures are not favorable for their habitat… we need to remove the thermal heat that is being put into these bodies of water. It’s readily available, useful heat.”
Urlaub anticipates that the project’s challenges will be similar to others the company has worked on, such as those related to building stock. “How can the building stock be adapted to clean thermal technology? Also… is the cost really associated with it and how is it financed.”
Beyond technical considerations and cost, there is the question of who will own the power supply system, whether it be a public-private partnership, a utility, or a municipality. “There are a lot of different nuances to an energy transition that aren’t just about technical feasibility, and that’s what we’re diving into as well.”
