Air-source heat pumps are impressive, delivering two to four units of heat for every unit of electricity used.
But there’s an even more efficient option: ground source, or “geothermal,” heat pumps. These systems can reach a 6.0 coefficient of performance. Instead of drawing heat from the air, they pull it from underground using a network of fluid-filled pipes. These pipes can range from 20 feet deep to the length of three football fields, depending on the system design.
In this recorded roundtable hosted by New Buildings Institute and sponsored by CEDA, experts explore this powerful technology. You’ll learn about the efficiency, cold climate reliability, and load reduction benefits of ground source systems for commercial buildings. Presenters also discuss challenges like upfront costs and space requirements, and how those barriers are being addressed. The roundtable examines building-level and district-scale applications, including thermal energy networks and system comparisons.
Watch the recording to explore how ground source heat pumps are shaping the future of commercial decarbonization.
View the presentation slides here: Ground-Source-Heat-Pumps-Full-Slide-Presentation_compressed-1.pdf
Panelists
Joselyn Lai, Co-founder & CEO, Bedrock Energy
Joselyn Lai is co-founder and CEO of Bedrock Energy, a technology start-up helping real estate tap into clean heat from the ground right underneath their properties. With subsurface analytics and autonomous drilling innovations, Bedrock is dramatically reducing the cost, space, and time requirements of constructing geothermal HVAC systems, with a vision to unlock distributed geothermal as a scalable, investment-grade clean energy asset class. Prior to Bedrock, Joselyn spent a decade in start-ups across sustainable agriculture, urban mobility, and other mission-oriented categories, and started her career at Bain & Company.
Matt Rash P.E., Sr. Product Manager, Hydronics, Mitsubishi Electric Trane HVAC US LLC
Matt Rash is a manager for the commercial air to water hydronics business segment. He has been with Mitsubishi & Mitsubishi Electric Trane HVAC since 2010. Matt comes from a consulting background in the architectural and engineering community where he worked for 8 years as a mechanical Engineer. During that time he was responsible for designing HVAC systems for commercial, healthcare, and institutional facilities. Prior to arriving at Mitsubishi, Matt worked for Trane in the turnkey contracting group with experience in auditing facilities, then quantifying and designing energy improvement measures. He has extensive background over the past 15 years with commercial VRF system design and application support (both air and water) including development of detailed pre-sale application guides & tools, conducting pre-sale application training, and in-depth field / post sale support of the Mitsubishi & Mitsubishi Trane VRF product line and more recently air to product line. With his extensive application background in commercial VRF systems, Matt is excited about applying this experience to help others utilize the full benefits of the Mitsubishi inverter driven air to water and VRF technologies.
Andrew Iliff, Director of National Networks, HEET
Andrew works with the HEET team to bring together communities, workforce, utilities, regulators, policymakers and other stakeholders to accelerate the transition from gas to geothermal energy across the United States. Before joining HEET, Andrew worked closely with Dr Ashish Jha, the former White House Covid Response Coordinator, on public communications and the connections between climate change and health.
Will Lange, Director of Utility Engagement, WaterFurnace International of Fort Wayne, Indiana
Engaging with utilities, advocates, and policy makers, Will provides information and tools needed to succeed with heat pumps. Will is a graduate of the US Coast Guard Academy with several tours of active duty. He has over 30 years’ experience in advanced product design, development, and marketing in the heating and cooling sector.
Stuart Yanow, President, Geotility Geothermal Systems
Stuart is a Certified Geothermal Designer who has dedicated much of his time as an engineer to the advancement of Geothermal systems. He is responsible for the design of some of the largest Geothermal systems in Canada and the United States. Having been the project manager on numerous institutional, commercial and residential Geothermal systems, he has a vast amount of experience in the implementation of the technology. He is currently the President at Geotility and Orca Energy. Mr. Yanow currently oversees operations and engineering of Geotility’s branches in Canada and the United States. Mr. Yanow was recently awarded the Top25 Newsmakers for 2024 by ENR.
Moderator
Noah Gabriel, Senior Project Analyst, New Buildings Institute
Noah Gabriel is a Senior Project Analyst at New Buildings Institute working within the Building Innovation team. Before joining NBI, Noah worked at Atlas Public Policy where he wrote about green building technology.
This webinar was put on in partnership with New Buildings Institute.
