Western Washington outlines $51 million campus conversion and explores Port of Bellingham district-energy link

Brian Ross, director of capital budget and public works procurement at Western Washington University, told the committee the campus heating system is an aging steam plant with miles of underground piping and recurring failures that have required multimillion-dollar repairs. He said the system accounts for about 85% of the campusgreenhouse-gas inventory (roughly 11,000 metric tons per year) and that the university has spent approximately $3,000,000 in recent years repairing failing underground pipes.

Ross said the university has received $51,000,000 in Climate Commitment Account appropriations across recent biennia to support a conversion to a modern electric hot-water-based system using technologies such as geoexchange fields, heat-recovery chillers and air-source heat pumps. Ross said the current plan is to make a stand-alone improvement that reduces emissions and increases resiliency, with validation and design work scheduled and construction envisioned to begin in 2027 under a progressive design-build delivery model.

Diego Mandelbaum, chief development officer at Corix, described the Port of Bellingham district energy plant that currently uses industrial waste heat (including heat recovered from a nearby Ecogen plant) and discussed exploratory work to transmit low-carbon heat from the port to the university. Mandelbaum cited examples of sewer-heat projects and said Corix recently ran a plant at "7 to 800% efficiency" by pairing grid electricity with waste heat to deliver multiple units of useful heat or cooling to customers.

Committee members asked whether sewer-heat projects exist in the region; Mandelbaum pointed to a Vancouver project heating 3,000,000 square feet with about 80% sewer-heat and a Seattle project in development. Ross and Mandelbaum said reusing existing steam-plant infrastructure and tunnels could reduce cost and campus disruption, and they noted the potential for off-campus partners to expand the customer base and financial viability of a district-energy approach.