GOING DEEP FOR CARBON FREE HEAT: OUTREACH ASSOCIATED WITH THE CORNELL UNIVERSITY BOREHOLE OBSERVATORY (CUBO)

Cornell University is exploring the use of geothermal heat from about 3000 m depth as a sustainable method to warm its Ithaca, New York campus. The project, called Earth Source Heat, is one of Cornell’s proposed means to achieve carbon neutrality by 2035. To test whether deep geothermal heat is viable, the Department of Energy funded a test well, the Cornell University Borehole Observatory (CUBO), drilled on the Cornell campus during summer 2022. CUBO is an outstanding opportunity for public education, on themes spanning geothermal energy, principles of Earth system science, engineering principles involved in generating energy resources, and trade-offs among energy choices. Outreach and transparency about CUBO also help alleviate potential community anxiety about the impacts of deep drilling.

The outreach team includes faculty in Cornell’s Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, science educators at Paleontological Research Institution (PRI), and the video production company PhotoSynthesis Productions. A wide range of Cornell faculty, staff, and students and contracted drilling professionals also support the outreach. In the years prior to drilling, Cornell ran community townhall meetings to explain the project goals and answer questions, and created a community advisory group. Two websites were expanded to keep pace with CUBO, one focused on Cornell University (earthsourceheat.cornell.edu) and one focused on the science and engineering of the project (deepgeothermalheat.engineering.cornell.edu, overseen by the authors).

The science and engineering outreach is designed to provide scientifically accessible content for the adult general public and for K-12 teachers and their students. The Deep Geothermal Heat website contains the videos of a series Going Deep to Solve a Big Problem. During drilling, the website provided daily updates on drilling depth, weekly text and image updates on basic geology and technology, and biweekly video news updates. Since drilling ended, outreach focuses on data gathered from the borehole. The website content is growing into a comprehensive set of introductory resources that could be useful both to those interested in deep geothermal energy or in the subsurface geology of Upstate New York. Teacher professional development began in 2021 and will expand as the science proceeds.