August 11, 2024:
On this episode, Kim, Carrigan interviews Larry Lessard, president of Achieve Renewable Energy. Larry explains all of the incredible benefits that geothermal energy offers to homeowners and businesses in the state of Massachusetts and how everyone move closer to achieving the states new emissions reduction goals.

Interview starts at 30 Minutes, 25 seconds:

Kim and Joe:
Happy to be joined this morning by Larry Lassard of Achieve Renewable Energy. It’s based in Salem, Massachusetts. Larry, it is so great  to have you with us today.

Larry:
Thank you for having me. It’s great that you’re interested in what we do.

Kim and Joe:
Oh, absolutely well. I think everybody needs to be really interested in renewable energy. At this stage of the game, let’s talk about your company. You work with geothermal energy, tell us what that is.

Larry:
Geothermal energy is a channel term that can be used to describe direct use hot water that you can get from the ground in places where the ground is hot, like in Iceland or electric power generation, as they do at several locations in the Western UAI. But we do geo exchange, which is a technique that exchanges heat from a building to the ground to cool it and extracts heat from the ground to heat the building. And our technology does not require you’d be near a volcano.

Kim and Joe:
Okay, very interesting, So obviously there must be technology that does require that.

Larry:
Well. Sure, the direct use to your thermal and the power generation are typically in areas where the ground is much hotter due to some type of volcanic activity. The geo exchange can be used pretty much anywhere and actually benefits tremendously from the ground temperatures we have in New England that are moderate and very conducive to having the equipment do either heating or cooling depending on the season.

Kim and Joe:
So Larry walk me through how does geo exchange heat and cool homes and businesses.

Larry:
Sure the geo exchange normally is designed to provide one hundred percent of the heating and cooling for a building, can also provide hot water or industrial process water that can be their hot or cold. There are three parts to a system. The first is a ground heat exchanger, and that’s typically installed outside, but in some cases can be installed under a building during construction, and in our area that’s most commonly a series of geothermal borings that are drilled two hundred to five hundred feet into the ground. And how deep we go and how many borings we need to do depends on how much heating and cooling the building requires. With that ground heat exchanger, we then inside have equipment called ground source heat pumps, which are specially designed heat pumps that can extract heat from the ground heat exchanger to heat the building and reject heat to the ground heating chander to cool it. And where we have a typical average temperature in Eastern Mass of maybe fifty three, fifty forty degrees fahrenheit, that’s right in the middle between our target heating and cooling temperatures, so that’s perfect. Then The third component of the system is a distribution system, and that’s usually duct in, but there are other possibilities depending on the building.

Kim and Joe:
Larry Lassard is our guest of Achieve Renewable Energy. It’s based in Salem, Massachusetts, so Larry, the Commonwealth has some really specific climate and greenhouse gas reduction goals over the next you know, fifteen to twenty thirty years. Tell me how your company and what you guys do can benefit reaching those goals.

Larry:
Sure, the Commonwealth has a goal to move buildings towards electrified heating and cooling, and move transportation towards in an electrified direction as well, and geo exchange, our ground source heat pumps operate on using electricity and they have no on site fossil fuel use, so there’s no on site greenhouse gas emissions. As the electric grid gets more green through use of more solar and wind and even renewable gas, which is something that’s being looked at now, the greenhouse gas emissions associated with heating the building go down and down as the electric grid becomes cleaner, to a point where once electric grid is fully renewable, there’ll be zero greenhouse gas emissions from heating and cooling. Now, there are two primary ways that people electrified building. One our ground source heat pumps or geo exchange, which is what we do, and the other are air source heat pumps. And groundsource heat pumps are more than twice as efficient as air source heat pumps and that has a benefit looking forward as electric grid is built out for the larger needs of electrified buildings and transportation. So geo exchange providing half the demand of air source heat pumps reduces the scope of that electric grid build out that will be ongoing.

Kim and Joe:
Give me a sense of what kind of workers are involved in these projects, what’s your labor force?

Larry:
Like, I’m personally a professional geologist and we work with mechanical engineers and civil engineers on our projects. The ground heat exchangers are normally installed by drilling contractors or excavation contractors. Electricians help wire the equipment, sheet metal installers installed deducting with HVAC installers and technicians on staff that the install the equipment, and then general construction laborers as well. So we touch on many of the building trades.

Kim and Joe:
And is there enough labor force here in the New England area to sustain you guys?

Larry:
No, we need more people. Right now in Massachusetts, the employment rate is somewhere near three percent. I think in our industry the unemployment rate is closed as zero percent. So we need to attract more people from trade schools and more geology and engineering types to what we do because we expect our business to expand substantially as the Commonwealth tries to electrify buildings.

Kim and Joe:
Yeah, we hope a lot of young people out there are listening to that. What’s the installation expense? Is it more or less to install than maybe just an average heating system or a cooling system.

Larry:
The top line installation cost is higher for geo exchange. It’s about forty or fifty percent more than a similar quality conventional system to be newly installed in the building. But they’re tremendous federal and Massachusetts incentives. We actually have here in mass some of the best incentives in the nation for commercial projects. The federal government provides a thirty percent federal tax credit, and there’s an option to add of two additional ten percent adders, so the tax credit in some cases can be as high as fifty percent, and then MassSave provides forty five hundred dollars per ton of cooling capacity and together those incentives eliminate the cost differential for the net installed cost after incentives, so they give geothermal cost parity with traditional installations and that allows people to make a sensible climate choice without having a financial penalty. They’re also good residential incentives here in Massachusetts.

Kim and Joe:
Larry, it’s fascinating and no doubt it is the way of the future. Larry Lassard, Achieve Renewable Energy. Thanks so much for being a part of the New England Business Report.