NORTHWESTERN MICHIGAN COLLEGE

WHITE PINE PRESS
January 30, 2025
Combatting Cost: The Path to NMC’s Bold Sustainable Energy Initiative
Anna Wildman & Minnie Bardenhagen
Staff Writers
NMC’s ambitions for the future include revamping the energy systems of several major buildings. Over the next several years, Scholars Hall, the Osterlin Building, the Tanis Building, the Biderman Building, and the Health & Science building will all join the Innovation Center in being powered by geothermal energy. The geothermal energy project will change the source of heating, ventilation, and air conditioning, or HVAC, to heat energy from deep within the earth.
Troy Kierczynski, the Vice President of Finance and Administration, gave insight into the opportunity NMC has gotten to make this ambition come to life.
“Natural gas and boilers are kind of the status quo”, says Kierczynski. “The reason why you don’t hear about [geothermal energy] very often is because it needs more exposure, but I think cost is the typical barrier that kind of forces people to keep thinking the same way.”
Cost is the main downside to implementing geothermal energy systems. The price tag for NMC’s current project is upwards of 12 million dollars, but the system saves a lot of money in the long run.
The lifespan of the geothermal system is also much longer than any other energy source. While Kierczynski says that it is “a matter of opinion”, he explains that there are “certain elements of the system that we should never have to replace in our lifetime.”
As for when the project will begin, the answer is not exactly certain. “Pretty soon, in fact, probably in the next couple of weeks, we’ll be issuing a ‘request for proposal’ for the project. We’ll try to solicit an engineer, a project manager, to design and implement the system”, says Kierczynski.
The project will be a multi-step process and involve a lot of waiting and planning before construction begins. Luckily, the project is able to begin before NMC requires all the necessary funding. Right now, the college only has $2.7 of the approximated $12 million dollar cost, but the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 could help reduce the price. The act provides tax credits to public and private organizations implementing clean energy systems, helping to reduce the cost. Kierczynski estimates that the tax credit from the Inflation Reduction act could cover up to “30 or 40% of the cost”.
Freshly inaugurated president Trump has denounced the Inflation Reduction act on numerous occasions. He has already begun his attempt to fight back against the law by freezing funding through an executive order, which will affect sustainable energy initiatives.
The Innovation Center is the first building on campus to be built with a geothermal energy system. The building opened in 2020, and the implementation process of the sustainable energy option was smooth.
However, when asked if there were any setbacks in the process. Kierczynski admitted there was a roadbump after the building was finished.
“We had to do some work because of the water table,” he explained, “We had to install a system to pull water away from the building… it actually pumps out to a well around Eastern Avenue.”
“When we were installing that dewatering system, I think that the contractors had accidentally hit one of the wells, which caused a problem for the building.” Kierczynski said the issue was resolved quickly, but that the real setback was a communication mishap.
The NMC masterplan states that the geothermal energy system will reduce HVAC emissions by 95%. While Kierczynski says he is not an expert on the technology, he explained why the system will not reduce carbon emissions from every source.
“There’s a difference between ‘source emissions’ and ‘site emissions,’” he described, “Our electrical usage will go up, because our natural gas usage will go down.” He said that the source of their electricity outside of NMC is not completely clean energy, but that “Our site emissions, so like the pollution that comes out of our buildings, will go down, in those buildings, by 96 percent.”
Despite the funding process taking longer than anticipated, Kierczynski says that they are staying ambitious in terms of completion time, “We want to stay aggressive, we want to get it done, and as soon as we implement it… we’ll be saving money from an energy usage standpoint and be better stewards of the environment.”
