New York state and New York City are partnering on a\u00a0feasibility study to develop what officials say would be a first of its kind in the U.S. transit thermal energy network for two lower Manhattan subway stations.<\/p>\n
The proposed network\u00a0would capture, store and redirect excess heat from\u202fthe Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall and Chambers Street stations to nearby municipal buildings, cooling the stations in the summer and warming the buildings in the winter. The $800,000 feasibility study\u00a0announced on Aug. 10\u00a0will help determine how much cooling can be\u202fachieved and what energy costs might be for the city. But officials did not release any cost estimate for system implementation.<\/p>\n
“Bringing down the temperature is a real challenge in a century-old system with open entrances and vents everywhere,”\u202fsaid\u00a0Metropolitan Transportation Authority\u00a0Chair and CEO Janno Lieber in a statement. “Together with Gov. Hochul and Mayor Mamdani,\u202fwe’re\u202fexploring solutions\u2014previously untested in transit\u2014to make stations more comfortable while helping to reduce energy costs.”\u202f<\/p>\n
The study is being funded by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority. with a contractor to be selected in the fall.<\/p>\n
Radiant cooling\u202ftechnology, which can be 25% to 35% more energy efficient than traditional air conditioning,\u202fwould absorb heat by circulating chilled water through panels on walls and ceilings or through tubing embedded in the floors. Heat would be transferred through pipes to geothermal boreholes drilled beneath the abandoned center platform at Chambers Street, and distributed during the winter. MTA can test this technology at the Chambers Street station without disrupting passenger areas because of an abandoned center platform.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a similar system that has been employed in the London metro system, where they [are] capturing heat from the subway tunnels and distributing it to communities in nearby areas,\u201d said Bryan Simpson, chief decarbonization officer for the Dept. of Citywide Administrative Services asset and property management team. \u201cWhile [the agency] has looked at various types of geothermal energies, it’s always been a bit difficult just because of our unique building types. But MTA approached us because they’ve been looking at ways to do thermal energy networks and heat recovery while also providing air conditioning to their subway stations.\u201d<\/p>\n
Buildings that would be part of the thermal energy network include the David N. Dinkins Manhattan Municipal Building at One Center Street and three adjacent buildings: Surrogate\u2019s Courthouse, Tweed Courthouse and City Hall.<\/p>\n
\u201cSomething that makes it work so well is that the [Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall] subway station is actually directly underneath the building that we’re interested in,\u201d said Simpson. \u201cWe actually have this opportunity for this mini thermal network already built in.\u201d<\/p>\n
The system would involve installation of multiple heat pumps in the municipal buildings to transfer heat from that geothermal ground loop into water loops that would supply heating, and potentially cooling, to the building, he said, also pointing out that One Center Street is transitioning to a hot water heating system. \u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cBeing able to use those heat pumps to transfer the water or the energy from the geothermal loop to our hot water heating loop in the building allows a pretty seamless way for us to make use of that energy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Simpson noted that it is difficult to decarbonize historic buildings. At City Hall, it\u2019s a challenge to site new equipment outside, but an underground system gets around that.<\/p>\n
\u201cThinking outside the box a little bit allows us to actually do this \u2026 intelligent heating system that allows us to maintain the historic nature of the buildings,\u201d he said. \u201cThis won’t cover the whole load of those buildings, and we don’t know yet until you get done with the study just how much heat we’ll be able to generate for the buildings. But even offsetting some meaningful percentage with this would really go a long way towards that effort.\u201d<\/p>\n
The feasibility study contract is expected to be awarded this fall, with work to be conducted\u202f for the Dept. of City Administrative Services, Mayor’s Office of Climate and Environmental Justice,\u202f Office of the Deputy Mayor for Operations and MTA. If feasibility is confirmed, design work would begin in early 2027. Sources of funding for the system have not yet been determined.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New York state and New York City are partnering on a\u00a0feasibility study to develop what officials say would…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":329530,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[17516,141,9,24,55,54,56],"class_list":["post-329529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-geothermal-energy","tag-mta","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=329529"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329529\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/329530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=329529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=329529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=329529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}