By Rob Thornton, President & CEO, International District Energy Association (IDEA)��

Over the last two decades, colleges and universities have done serious work on climate. Many have cut emissions, purchased renewable electricity, upgraded lighting and controls, and improved building performance. They have also set bold targets to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030, 2035 or 2040. Higher education understands its role as a laboratory for innovation and leadership.��

And yet, in facilities meetings across the country, a familiar moment is playing out. Someone puts the original decarbonization roadmap on the table and says, “We need to revisit this.”��

That’s��not a failure of ambition.��It’s��a reflection of campus reality. Colleges and universities are complex “mini-cities,” balancing aging infrastructure, deferred maintenance, new construction, enrollment shifts, research growth, tight capital��budgets��and a changing climate that is driving higher cooling loads and more demanding resiliency expectations. Add grid constraints and volatile energy markets, and even well-built plans can drift off schedule.

The question��isn’t��whether campuses can decarbonize.��It’s��whether they can do it at scale, reliably, and at a cost they can live with, while keeping students,��faculty��and patients comfortable on the hottest day of the year and the coldest night of the winter.��

That’s��where district energy comes into��the conversation.����

District energy is a shared thermal infrastructure for heating and cooling. Instead of each building owning its own boiler, chiller, cooling tower��and control strategy, a campus can serve multiple buildings from a central facility that distributes steam, hot��water��or chilled water through an underground piping network. Aggregating thermal loads is the foundation that makes decarbonization,��resilience��and campus growth easier to deliver in practice.��

District Energy’s Advantages and Opportunities��

Most campuses manage dozens, sometimes hundreds, of buildings with different vintages and uses. If each building must solve heating and cooling on its own, the result is predictable: redundant equipment, oversized capacity, scattered maintenance��risk��and replacement cycles that rarely align with the institution’s long-term carbon strategy.����

On the cooling side, building-level chiller plants are commonly sized with 30% to 100% more capacity than a comparable district cooling solution, because each building must plan for its own peak. When you aggregate loads, peaks diversify. The system can be sized and��operated��for overall performance, not individual buildings. That translates into higher efficiency, lower peak electric��demand��and lower lifecycle cost.��

On the heating side, district energy creates optionality. A central facility can integrate multiple heat sources over time, including combined heat and power (CHP), high-efficiency boilers, electric boilers, industrial heat pumps, geothermal exchange, wastewater��heat��and waste-heat recovery from data centers. The “right” technology can evolve as markets and policies evolve, without forcing every building to undergo a complete mechanical reinvention at the same time.��

There’s��also a campus construction benefit: district energy is a real estate strategy.��

When you reduce rooftop chillers and cooling towers and shrink basement mechanical rooms, you give the institution valuable space back. That space becomes labs, classrooms, patient care, storage, amenities��or simply less congestion for maintenance staff. It also reduces noise and vibration, improves architectural��flexibility��and makes it easier to renovate historic buildings without fighting the constraints of modern HVAC equipment.��

Resilience is another differentiator. District energy systems can be designed with N+1 redundancy, multiple fuel��pathways��and thermal energy storage (chilled water,��ice��or hot water) that decouples production from use. For a campus, this strengthens the ability to ride through grid disturbances, extreme��weather��and peak pricing events while prioritizing mission-critical loads.��

Just as important, district energy can be built in phases, which aligns with how campuses are built—one project at a time, one renewal cycle at a time, guided by a master plan. Instead of treating HVAC replacements as disconnected emergencies, district energy turns them into a coordinated capital program: plant modernization, distribution��expansion��and standardized building energy transfer stations. When planned early, this reduces rework, simplifies future tie-ins��and keeps projects moving even when a building schedule slips.��

Where District Energy Is Driving Impact��

Across the country, universities are��demonstrating��what modern district energy can achieve.��

Cornell University built a global reference project with Lake Source Cooling, using cold deep lake water to meet a large share of campus cooling needs, reducing electricity��consumption��and avoiding traditional refrigerants. Cornell is now advancing Earth Source Heat, a deep geothermal initiative designed to meet most annual heating demand and sharply reduce reliance on fossil fuels. The lesson is clear: start with an innovative anchor project, then build the next layer.��

Princeton University is converting its campus from steam to hot water, improving distribution��efficiency��and supporting lower-temperature��operation. Its TIGER and CUB projects are designed to integrate heat pumps and geo-exchange, paired with renewable power resources and microgrid capability.��Converting��an entire campus is not quick, but Princeton shows how a multi-year program stays coherent when each phase ties back to a long-term thermal strategy.��

The University of Virginia highlights a complementary truth: efficiency and district energy are partners, not competitors. UVA has delivered significant reductions through sustained building-efficiency efforts (controls, retro-commissioning, targeted retrofits) and upgrades to central facilities. The result is��smaller,��smarter loads served more efficiently and cost-effectively.��

Read four key lessons for campus leaders and project teams in the Higher Education Edition of ���سԹ�.

Rob Thornton has served as President & CEO of the International District Energy Association (IDEA) since 2000. With��nearly four��decades��in��district energy, he works with campus and city leaders to advance efficient, resilient, low-carbon thermal infrastructure.��

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PRINCETON, N.J. — The Princeton University Art Museum announced that it will open a new 146,000-square-foot art museum on Oct. 31, 2025. ��

Located in the heart of the university’s campus, the new three-story space doubles that of the current museum building, encompassing space for exhibitions, education, dining, programming and more.��

“This project represents the coming to fruition of dreams that date back thirty years for a museum building that would be worthy of this beautiful campus and our collections and that will serve as a launchpad for exciting future installations and program,” said James Steward, director of the Princeton Art Museum, in a statement.��

A Look Inside��

Designed by New York-based architecture firms Adjaye Associates and Cooper Robertson, the building will include nine interlocking pavilions, with 80,000 square feet specifically dedicated to gallery spaces that allow museum curators to merge and integrate collections, rather than pursuing the more traditional linear, thematic or chronological methods of display. Offering greater stylistic choice also honors the museum’s cultural exchange effort. ��

The new Museum features large-scale commissions by artists Nick Cave, Diana Al-Hadid, Tuấn Andrew Nguyễn and Jane Irish, and site-specific sculptural acquisitions by artists Jun Kaneko and Rose B. Simpson.��On the “artwalks”, the name for the ground area’s walkways, visitors will encounter works of art, including site-specific sculpture and large-scale paintings. A wood-lined Museum Store sits at its intersection, while inviting outdoor terraces and amphitheaters surround the building.

“We have curated the museum in ways that will welcome visitors not only to experience beauty but also to analyze it; to admire creativity and to contextualize it; to marvel at materials and to complicate their origins,” said Juliana Ochs Dweck, chief curator of the Princeton University Art Museum, in a statement. “Our new museum offers many ways to have intimate encounters with art, to pursue curiosity, engage in meaningful dialogue and to find solace or belonging.”��

Educational spaces will comprise approximately 12,000 square feet of the museum, including two creativity labs focused on hands-on art creation. An auditorium, two seminar rooms and six object study rooms will also be reserved for��teaching and research. The facility’s multi-use Grand Hall will provide space for up to 265 people, making it the ideal destination for events, performances and gatherings. ��

Conservation studios for artwork and sculpture protection will be located on the second and third floors alongside their own studio-devoted classroom spaces. The top level will house a full-service restaurant. ��

Grand Opening��

A 24-hour open house is planned for the museum’s opening day, with public events to cement the facility as a community space.

Two initial exhibitions honoring the generosity of donors will feature donated works by Mark Rothko, Joan Mitchell and Gerhard Richter, with ceramic work on display from Toshiko Takaezu, a Princeton professor and abstract artist. Continuing into spring 2026, photographic collections and abstract expressionist paintings will be on display, with an exhibition of work from American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat planned for fall 2026.��

“The exhibitions we’ve chosen to inaugurate our new building celebrate collecting, legacy, and the future, and speak to our commitment to reimagine how we curate and present art in this new space,” said Steward in a statement. “As a teaching museum, we have a responsibility to not merely present works by monumental artists of our age or of any age, but to go deeper and grapple with how they arrived at the legacies for which we know them today.”��

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