Commercial, Demand Management, Distributed Energy Resources, Energy Efficiency, Commercial, Distributed Generation, Solar  -  May 20, 2016

Small Ohio town boasts country's 1st hotel to be heated, cooled with geothermal energy

Proof that big ideas can come from small places, a new hotel in Oberlin, Ohio, has been named the first hotel in the U.S. to be heated and cooled with geothermal energy. 

According to a recent blog post from environmental design site Inhabit.com, the LEED-certified Hotel at Oberlin opened this month in the small city southwest of Cleveland with a broad focus on sustainability. The energy piece of that includes its radiant heating and cooling that relies on geothermal energy and its rooftop solar installation; the hotel is reportedly aiming to be net zero energy, according to Inhabit.com. 

The hotel was designed by Chicago-based architecture firm SCB, and is one of just five in the U.S. designed to achieve LEED Platinum status. The hotel, which was a collaboration between the city and Oberlin College, also  has broader sustainability features that include its use of reclaimed building materials and locally-sourced foods in its restaurant. 

In the private sector, The New York Times recently profiled a number of U.S. hotels that have adopted energy efficiency technologies, including wall-mounted devices into which guests must place their key card to activate their room's lighting and temperate controls.  

According to the Times: 

In 2014, the latest year for which figures are available, 29 percent of hotels surveyed by the American Hotel and Lodging Association had a sensor system in guest rooms to control the temperature, compared with less than 20 percent in 2004; and more than 75 percent had switched to LED lighting, up from less than 20 percent. Other energy-saving measures had also been more widely adopted.

Image source: SCB.com 

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