Energy center to capture and redistribute waste energy is the first of its kind in Washington — and puts Western ahead in fossil-fuel replacement timeline for state universities.
By the end of the month, Washington’s 12 public universities must submit a plan to replace fossil fuel energy systems to the Department of Commerce. Western Washington University, thanks to a unique partnership among the Port of Bellingham, Puget Sound Energy and Corix Utilities, Inc., not only already has a plan, but it’s in motion — putting the university about two years ahead of the others and possibly creating a model forward.
“When we do amazing things in Bellingham, the rest of Washington takes note,” said Rep. Alex Ramel (D-Bellingham) at last month’s Bellingham District Energy Utility Energy Center ribbon cutting.
The pastel mountainscape by spanning the length of two football fields on the side of the Encogen Generating Station on Cornwall Avenue and West Laurel Street makes the largest mural in Washington — one of several state records the power plant breaks.
The energy center, which captures waste energy from the plant and redistributes it to facilities on the waterfront, is the first of its kind in the state, said Corix president Lisa Sparrow. It’s the first system to not just meet but exceed the new Washington state energy code, which came into effect last year and updates energy efficiency standards.
The center operates at 600% efficiency, she said, meaning for every unit of electrical energy consumed by the system, it delivers six units of heat to the buildings it serves.
Since last year, the system has been providing heat to Phase I of The Millworks Project, an affordable housing development on the waterfront, and is now heating the first of three Harcourt luxury condominium buildings nearby.
Over the last decade, Ramel’s pitch for the project went something like this, he said:
“You know that big plume of steam rising above the waterfront? That’s waste energy from PSE’s power plant, and if we could capture that energy the way the power plant was originally designed, that would be enough heat for every building we could ever build on the waterfront on the coldest day of the year, with a lot leftover. In fact, enough leftover that if we ran a pipe just up to Western, it’d be enough energy to heat the whole campus and still have more leftover to heat other parts of downtown in the future.”
It took a lot of effort. Despite Ramel’s excitement, most people’s eyes glazed over, he said.
In 1963, Georgia-Pacific owned the Cornwall Avenue building, said Aaron August, Puget Sound Energy’s chief customer and transformation officer. When commercial operation began in July 1993, the plant supplied up to 130,000 pounds per hour of steam and 3,600 gallons per minute of hot water to the paper mill. It was taken over by PSE in 1999.
Today, it has the power to generate 165 megawatts of electricity, enough for 120,000 homes.
The new energy center captures heat expelling from natural gas turbines, runs it through a cooling tower and heat exchanger for Corix to harness and use throughout the waterfront.
“As this project and as this site grows, the capability of what this will bring will only continue to grow with it,” August said.
Commerce requires an energy management plan and an operations and maintenance program from state universities by 2028, and a full decarbonization completion report by 2040. That’s 15 years to replace fossil fuel heating — in just two, Westsern plans to secure enough funding to construct the entire system.
Ahead of the June 2025 deadline to submit a plan, Western received $10 million in funds from the Climate Commitment Act in the 2023–25 capital budget to start designing the new heating system, a significant step ahead of other universities in early design phases.
A total of $41 million in Climate Commitment Act funding pays for the design and the construction of the first node of what will be a four-node, campuswide heating system connecting to the powerplant on the waterfront, said university president Sabah Randhawa.
According to Randhawa, the project will “keep Bellingham on the map as one of the most forward-thinking and environmentally conscious municipalities in the Pacific Northwest.”
Western’s 80-year-old steam-powered system is to blame for 86% of the greenhouse gas emissions from the entire university — that’s more than 11,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere each year.
Despite securing a spot as a state leader in energy efficiency, Bellingham, the Port and Western have no plans of slowing down. In the coming years, the partnership has eyes on sustainable energy not just for the waterfront and the university, but for downtown too.
“We will make it happen,” Randhawa said.
— By Sam Fletcher