New Brooklyn High-Rise Powered by Geothermal Energy
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A new 34-storey building in NYC sits atop a multitude of geothermal boreholes - and it could be a blueprint for decarbonizing the North American skyline.
On a stretch of Brooklyn’s East River, The Riverie looks similar to other high-rise buildings in New York City, but this one is different and environmentally rather special. Beneath its foundation, an invisible network of boreholes extends hundreds of feet into the ground to tap Earth’s natural reservoir of warmth. Instead of burning fossil fuels, The Riverie relies on geothermal energy; it uses the steady temperature underground to warm apartments in winter and cool them in summer. The building is part of a small but growing wave of urban geothermal projects revamping how heating and cooling work in dense cities.
There are 320 boreholes underneath The Riverie’s 2.6 acre building site, and Australia-based developer Lendlease says this makes it the largest geothermal residential building in New York State and the largest high-rise geoexchange system in the country, reports Scientific American.
“The boreholes were drilled 499 feet into the ground, deeper than the building is tall,” says Meg Spriggs, managing director of development at Lendlease. The holes are about 4.5 inches in diameter and spaced 15 feet apart. The length of all the piping adds up to around 65 miles. Those pipes ultimately connect to 1,100 heat pumps throughout the building.
Because it simply moves heat rather than generating it, The Riverie is expected to reduce annual carbon emissions from heating and cooling by 53 percent compared with traditional residential buildings.
People started moving into the building last month.
