Transcripts

"Going Green"-Geothermal Power

SUSIE GHARIB: As America moves to address our growing energy needs, we might want look right under our feet. Geothermal power is created by naturally occurring heat below the earth's surface. Now, the U.S. gets about 5 percent of its power from geo-thermal energy, but that could change. As we continue our ongoing series Diane Eastabrook takes us to a hospital being built outside Chicago that's building a geothermal power system.

DIANE EASTABROOK, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT CORRESPONDENT: It isn't the spacious lobby or state of the art patients' rooms or the cancer center that will make the new Sherman Hospital in Elgin, Illinois unique. It's this 15-acre lake next to the facility. The lake is part of a geothermal power system that will help heat and cool the hospital. The system works like this. In the summer, heat pumps draw warmth out of the building and through 150 miles of pipes in the lake's bottom. Fluid within the pipes is cooled by the lake and then returned to the building. In the winter, cold is drawn from the building the same way and warmth from the lake's floor creates heat for the facility. KJWW engineering consultants designed Sherman's system. Vice President Warren Lloyd says the lake is a perfect heating and cooling source.

WARREN LLOYD, VICE PRES., KJWW ENGINEERING CONSULTANTS: The heat actually comes from the earth. The earth is approximately 55 degrees down at the bottom of the lake and so in the winter time, we are actually getting heat. The heat comes from the earth. The heat comes from the earth into the water. The cooling effect comes somewhat from the earth, but the biggest part of the cooling effect of the lake is that the evaporation of the lake and also the wind blowing across the lake.

EASTABROOK: For nearly a century utilities have been harnessing naturally-occurring energy from below the earth's surface to create electricity. More recently homes and businesses have begun tapping geothermal energy for heating and cooling. Some experts call geothermal more reliable than wind or solar power because it is a constant form of energy. Ron Kolpa, an environmental compliance engineer at Argonne National Laboratory says geothermal systems are more expensive to install than conventional heating and cooling systems, but he says they can pay for themselves in a few years.

RON KOLPA, ENVIRONMENTAL COMPLIANCE ENGINEER, ARGONNE NATIONAL LABORATORY: Once you pay that capital cost, there is no fuel cost from that point on. The underground portions of that facility have expected lifetimes greater than 50 years. The portions above ground have an expected lifetime of 25 years.

EASTABROOK: Sherman Hospital's new system will cost about $45 million. That's about a 10 percent premium over a conventional one. But the hospital thinks it can save about $1 million a year on fuel costs. Still Charles Burnidge, a hospital board member who helped plan the new facility, says saving money is only one reason Sherman is going geothermal.

CHARLES BURNIDGE, BOARD MEMBER, SHERMAN HOSPITAL: The opportunity to build a brand new hospital comes so seldom, once in a lifetime and we wanted to do the best job we could and so we considered how green can we make our hospital and geothermal was one of the ways that we could do that.

EASTABROOK: Sherman Hospital says it could take a couple of years after this new facility opens to determine the cost saving generated by the new geothermal system, but the hospital hopes it can become a model for other hospitals or businesses hoping to go green. Diane Eastabrook, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT, Elgin, Illinois.