Campus Biomass Energy Systems

Biomass district energy (See also Community District Energy) can be especially attractive for college campuses, both for the cost-effectiveness of serving many close-together buildings with renewable energy, and for the substantial impact that a district biomass system can have on reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

For more on this see the summary of BERC's Report to Middlebury College.

Campus heating systems that use fossil fuel (oil, gas or coal) are usually a college's largest creator of carbon dioxide emissions, the major contributors to global climate change. Middlebury's goal was to substantially reduce these emissions - and the BERC study found that it could cost-effectively do so by changing from a fossil-fuel to a new biomass heating system.

Unlike communities, almost all colleges already have the infrastructure needed for district energy: they already have a central heating system that is connected to various campus buildings. Converting to biomass often means the relatively simple installation of a wood boiler and wood fuel storage capacity at the central heating facility.