By Kevin Stickney
From the June 2025 Issue of Facility Executive
For both financial and environmental reasons, energy savings and efficiency have become top concerns for facilities owners, operators, and occupants. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, 30% of the energy used in U.S. commercial buildings is wasted, meaning facility operators are leaving money on the table.
On top of the direct business costs of energy inefficiency, facility executives increasingly have to answer for the underlying sustainability and environmental impact of their buildings. Regulations, mostly at the local level in the U.S., drive this trend. Municipalities across the country are updating building codes to require energy efficiency or decarbonization. For instance, New York City’s Local Law 97 mandates carbon caps for building over 25,000 square feet.
Heating and cooling represent more than 40% of commercial building energy consumption, making it the largest single source of energy demand. Fortunately, there is growing adoption of heat pumps as a solution to HVAC system energy inefficiency and carbon emissions. Financial incentives geared toward commercial heat pump use are helping to accelerate adoption, offsetting up-front costs that often serve as an obstacle for installation. But what facility executives should realize is that not all heat pumps are equally efficient, cost-effective, and sustainable.
Leveraging The Earth As A Battery
Heat pumps can play a role in reducing energy waste as well as being more sustainable, but there is under-utilization of a specific type of heat pump that can drastically improve energy efficiency: ground-source, also known as geothermal. These are heat pumps that use a “geo-exchange” system to capture and use the Earth’s thermal energy for heating and cooling via a system of boreholes and energy monitoring systems. Air-source heat pumps – the more common type – can perform two to three times more efficiently as fossil fuel HVAC systems, but geothermal heat pumps can perform four to six times as efficiently as fossils.
The market for geothermal heat pumps is ripe for expansion, with about 1% of buildings in the U.S. having a geothermal heat pump. As the sector grows, a crucial calculation for facilities managers is cost. After an initial investment, geothermal and other heat pumps have proven more cost-effective than other heating and cooling systems, saving dollars by cutting dependence on natural gas — a key area for savings, since gas accounts for about 34% of total energy use in U.S. commercial buildings and gas prices can be highly volatile – and using the earth’s stable temperature to store energy for later use.
Geothermal heat pump systems in operation today can deliver upwards of 80% energy savings, 67% lower carbon emissions, and 25% cost reductions compared with gas. In an average 100,000 square foot building, these systems can cut heating energy by 82% and cooling by 30%, achieving more than 50% total energy savings.
Efficiencies At The Core
Space can be a challenge for any facility upgrade project, especially in tight urban areas, as well as for new projects where the building footprint needs to be planned as efficiently as possible. Recent advances in geothermal heat pump technology have made it possible to create deep boreholes that originate at a single, small-footprint surface point and then radiate out underground, capturing far more of the earth’s energy than previously possible. And once a building is converted to geothermal heating and cooling, the inherent efficiencies sharply reduce energy use. This is because unlike air-source heat pumps, which depend on the air temperature, geothermal heat pumps rely on the typically stable and predictable temperature of the planet itself for heating and cooling. In other words, the Earth serves as a natural temperate source of energy: always staying at some point roughly between 40 and 70 degrees, warmer than the surrounding air in winter and cooler than the surrounding air in summer. The Earth, it turns out, is a natural all-purpose heating and cooling system.
This means that energy can be constantly generated and then captured through “geothermal networks,” which can be shared with other buildings to increase efficiency when the facility is not in use, or stored and used later. This is the reason for the massive efficiency gains of geothermal heat pumps over both their air-source equivalents and, to a greater extent, fossil fuel-powered systems. The ability to share energy and prevent peak times for heating and cooling that overload grids is also highly beneficial for multiple-building facilities, such as hospitals and universities.
Making An Impact From The Ground Up
Thanks to these efficiencies, facilities with geothermal heat pumps can both meet regulatory decarbonization requirements and satisfy the desires of employees, customers, and other stakeholders to address environmental issues in all aspects of their business. This means that facilities with geothermal heat pumps are that much more likely to achieve the premium that exists for “green-certified” commercial buildings, raising their appeal to potential occupants, investors, and buyers.
Facility executives can play a leading role in the transformation of U.S. commercial heating and cooling – and net significant financial and reputational benefits–by transitioning to geothermal heat pumps. By consistently delivering value through efficiency, cost savings and carbon emissions reductions, these systems prove that smarter energy starts underground.
Stickney is Managing Director at Erda Energy, a company that provides energy solutions, focusing on reducing energy consumption, utility costs, and carbon impact by harnessing the earth’s thermal stability and integrating heating and cooling energy needs.
Do you have a comment? Share your thoughts in an e-mail to the Editor at jen@groupc.com.