About 40% of the campus is heated and cooled with geothermal energy. The Arthur Zankel Music Center, Filene Music Building, Saisselin Art Center, Northwoods and Sussman Village Apartments, the Murray-Aikins Dining Hall, Wiecking Hall, the Tang Teaching Museum, and the Dance Center utilize geothermal heating and cooling systems. These systems provide 100% of the cooling needs and about 70% of the heating needs of the apartments and Music Center and about 95% of the heating needs of the dining hall.
In 2012, Skidmore College won the Best Campus Sustainability Case Study Award from AASHE for our innovative district geothermal system. A district field is one that supplies heating and cooling energy to multiple buildings, unlike stand-alone systems that provide energy to a single building. Two district geothermal systems are operational, and a third district system was built to support an additional 10% of campus square footage. The College has 23 stand-alone systems supporting the buildings in the Northwoods and Sussman Apartment Villages and the Murray-Aikins Dining Hall.
The Arts Quad district system is an 84-bore geothermal field designed to heat and cool Zankel Music Theatre, Filene Hall, Saisselin Art Building, and the Janet Kinghorn Bernhard Theater (178,300 square feet). Skidmore’s district design reduced the number of geothermal bores and total field loop size by 25% when compared to a stand-alone system. The buildings in the Arts Quad can also communicate to distribute surplus energy between buildings rather than pulling energy from the bore field.
In 2014, Skidmore installed its second district field under Wiecking Green. This 64-bore field supplies heating and cooling energy to Wiecking Hall, the Tang Teaching Museum, and our Dance Center. In 2016, the College completed the construction of our third district field. This 240-bore system is designed to support the heating and cooling needs of the Tisch Learning Center, Bolton Hall, Palamountain Hall, the Dana Science Center, and Skidmore's new Center for Integrated Sciences.
The Murray-Aikins Dining Hall and all 22 campus apartment buildings (over 200 individual apartments) are heated and cooled with stand-alone geothermal systems.