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Hadley Levenson, Gabriel Dubin, and Max Graham
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Ilsa Bergman/The Williams Record
The College has abandoned the decarbonization targets it established in the 2021 Energy and Carbon Master Plan (ECMP) after testing for a plan involving geothermal wells failed. New plans focus on increasing energy efficiency rather than implementing geothermal pumps. In order to continue to transition away from fossil fuels, upgrades to the College and Town electrical systems are required, with work across campus underway.
Carbon master plan
The College first announced its ambitious decarbonization goals, which called for an 80 percent reduction in direct and indirect carbon emissions from a 1991 baseline by 2050, in its 2021 Strategic Plan, which also outlined the ECMP.
The ECMP planned to combat exclusively “stationary,” scope one emissions, which are direct carbon emissions, such as those generated from buildings with their own heating systems.
Zilkha Center for the Environment Director Tanja Srebotnjak said that many of the old sustainability goals were lofty, and will require measurable steps from the College. “These goals are aspirational and need to be operationalized into concrete, measurable goals and actions for reaching them,” she wrote in a statement to the Record.
Work on the ECMP began in fall 2021, as the College investigated the feasibility of using geothermal pumps for energy efficiency. The ECMP aimed to install thermal pumps that would support the College’s transition from steam to low-temperature hot water (LTHW), which is a safer, more energy efficient way to heat buildings. The thermal pumps would have captured energy from the ground and transferred it to help buildings run more efficiently, and distributed LTHW through a network of pipes across campus.
In 2023, the College began testing geothermal conditions with the construction company Consigli. Consigli employees drilled vertical test wells in several locations, including near Cole Field and the new Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA) site, to test for geothermal conditions that would be conducive to the pumps. According to Srebotnjak, the test drills were unsuccessful. “Local geology is challenging and further constrained by the large groundwater aquifer that the Town depends on for the majority of its freshwater supplies,” Srebotnjak wrote.
In June 2024, the Board of Trustees voted that the ECMP should pivot from installing geothermal pumps to focus on improving the energy efficiency of existing buildings and implementing campus-wide energy conservation measures. According to Srebotnjak, this means downsizing electrical systems as the College prepares for future electrification projects.
The following November, the College announced that it would incur $106 million in debt over the next decade to finance the master plan.
The ECMP also considered how to improve energy efficiency in numerous improvement projects on campus, such as the new WCMA building, a renovation of athletics facilities, and dining hall updates in Greylock and Mission. The College has already made progress on these goals, including by installing solar panels on the new Multipurpose Recreation Center (MRC) that opened last spring.
Even if the College had followed through on its original plan to install geothermal pumps, the process to replace fossil fuels with electrical heat pumps would have taken years to achieve, Srebotnjak said. “The need to upgrade and connect the many buildings on campus would have stretched to more than a decade,” Srebotnjak wrote. The new “efficiency first” pathway does not have a concrete timeline, according to Srebotnjak. However, she anticipates that, like the original plan, it will take several years, or even more than a decade, to complete.
The plan faced a second hurdle in the Town grid, which needed substantial upgrades before the College could begin any large-scale infrastructure projects. “The local electric utility informed the College that substantial and costly infrastructure upgrades, estimated to take 5-10 years, are needed to be able to support this scale of electrification,” Srebotnjak wrote.
Town grid limitations
Before equipment can be replaced, substantial upgrades to the local electrical grid are required, according to Stephanie Boyd, a member of the Select Board. “Williamstown’s gas pipeline is at capacity … [and] the electric grid in our region is also reaching capacity,” she wrote in an email to the Record. “[The gas pipeline] being at capacity does not necessarily prevent new homes and businesses from being established… But if someone was planning on building a home or business that would use natural gas for heating or cooking they would have to change their plans to incorporate electric heat pumps, geothermal or solar heating systems.”
However, since the electrical grid is also nearing capacity, new sources of electricity generation would be unable to transmit electricity. “A major solar electric generating facility or large industrial user could face a challenging situation,” Boyd wrote.
These developments are complicating environmental goals for the Town, according to Boyd. “Williamstown is committed to becoming a carbon neutral community so our long-term goal is to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels but we aren’t quite ready for that scenario,” she wrote. “In the ideal world, we wouldn’t need the gas pipeline but we would need a more robust electric infrastructure than we currently have. This might involve improvements to our grid capacity, along with incorporating battery storage and microgrid technologies.”
College electrical upgrade
Though upgrades to the local electrical grid will also be needed for the College to replace fossil-fuel burning equipment with electrical equipment, construction to upgrade the College’s electrical system continues to move forward. Jason Moran, manager of the project and associate director of energy and utilities, explained that construction is taking place across campus. “Currently we are working near the MRC, the future Greylock Dining Hall, Hoxsey Street, Spring Street and the Heating Plant,” he wrote in an email to the Record. “Most of the areas directly south and parallel to Main Street [will later be affected].”
Local roads, including Hoxsey Street and Spring Street, are affected by the construction, much of which is underground. “There are no overhead wires throughout the campus except on Town-owned roads,” Moran wrote. “Our distribution system is underground and those conduits and feeder cables need to be upgraded.”
The construction includes installing concrete duct banks housing PVC conduits for electrical wires and new electrical switching stations that distribute electricity across campus, according to Moran. “[The switching stations] will provide redundancy and resilience for our campus electrical system to maintain operational continuity,” he wrote.
Students noticed that walking around campus has been made more difficult by the construction. “I do think that the construction has been quite an inconvenience, not because it is an annoyance volume-wise, but [because] it has definitely impacted walking to class and the traffic on the roads,” Vanna Xiao ’29 said in an interview with the Record. “I personally haven’t been going back to my room as much because the roads are much narrower, and I imagine that if the construction continues in the winter, it will really be a hassle to walk.”
According to Moran, currently affected areas will soon reopen. “The majority of the work should be completed this winter with some small areas being impacted in the springtime,” he wrote.
The College attempts to order the timeline of the project to minimize inconvenience to students on campus, according to Moran. “We closely monitor the academic schedule to make sure that we recognize dates that could impact campus activities (reading period, exams, homecoming, family weekend) and adjust our work accordingly,” he wrote.
Although it is unclear which campus buildings will be shut down and for how long, the College is trying to ensure these shutdowns will affect students as little as possible. “The goal [is] to focus much of this work during the summer months, after classes finish and before they start back up in the fall,” Moran said.