UMass Boston clean energy grant of 5.3 million dollars triples a plan for 3 electric chillers, targeting an 82% natural gas cut by 2029

UMass Boston clean energy grant funds 3 electric chillers, tripled from a planned 1

The UMass Boston clean energy grant is 5.3 million dollars from the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources, money the university is using to expand a heating upgrade at its Central Utility Plant, the building that burns natural gas to heat and cool the whole campus today. An electric heat shift chiller is a machine that uses electricity to move heat between water loops instead of burning fuel to make it, and the grant let UMass Boston expand its plan from 1 of these chillers to 3. Chancellor Marcelo Suarez Orozco said the extra funding tripled the projected cut in natural gas use the project can deliver.

Thanks to the Department of Energy Resources grant, we are expanding our plan from one electric heat shift chiller to three, tripling our projected reduction in natural gas use.

Marcelo Suarez Orozco, UMass Boston chancellor. Source 1.

82% describes the plant, more than 50% describes the whole campus

The same grant announcement gives 2 different percentages, and they describe 2 different things, not 2 competing counts of the same number. More than 50% is how much natural gas use and the greenhouse gas emissions it causes, gases that trap heat and warm the planet, are expected to fall across the whole campus over the full, multi phase decarbonization plan. 82% is a narrower number, the cut in natural gas use the 3 chillers alone are expected to deliver at the Central Utility Plant, once construction finishes and reductions begin in 2029. Reading the full announcement rather than a single headline number is what shows the larger, later figure is not a mistake sitting beside the smaller one, it is a different scope on a shorter timeline.

A seawater pump house running since 1974 takes on a new job

The chillers draw on a seawater pump house that has cooled the Columbia Point campus since 1974, pulling seawater from Savin Hill Cove at rates up to 20,000 gallons an hour. Until now, the university says, that pump house has only been used for heat rejection, sending unwanted heat back out into the cove. UMass Boston own Energy and Carbon Master Plan describes expanding the same structure to also pull heat out of the cove, feeding a waste heat loop that supplies new high temperature heat pumps instead of only discharging heat into the water. Making room for the new chillers also means retiring most of the old equipment. 3 of the 4 natural gas boilers at the Central Utility Plant will be decommissioned, with the fourth kept as backup.

Our goal is to connect these facilities investments with science and climate resilience work.

Janna Cohen Rosenthal, UMass Boston sustainability and resiliency planner. Source 2.

UMass Boston clean energy grant is 1 of 9 projects in a 23 million dollar state program

The 5.3 million dollar award to UMass Boston is 1 piece of a larger 23 million dollar round of state grants, which the Healey Driscoll Administration says supports 9 large scale projects replacing fossil fuel heating and cooling systems with electric alternatives at public universities and state facilities. The other projects in the same round range from a 7.5 million dollar geothermal award covering work at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy and Salem State University together, down to a 428,754 dollar boiler swap at an ice rink in Hyde Park.