UW‑Madison students recommend solar plus heat‑pump package, estimate multi‑hundred‑thousand-dollar cost to cut pool and community center emissions

Students from the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Energy and Analysis and Policy Center told the Monona Sustainability Committee on May 8 that a mix of rooftop/parking‑canopy solar and heat‑pump systems could sharply reduce emissions from the city’s pool and community center, but would require substantial upfront capital.

The students said Monona’s municipal sustainability goals—"to reach net 0 carbon emissions by 2040 and also to reduce energy by 50% also by 2040"—are more aggressive than state and utility targets and that reaching them will require both equipment upgrades and operational changes. Their analysis focused on the pool and the adjacent community center because those two facilities together account for a large share of the city’s municipal building emissions.

Their measurements and modeling showed the pool and community center produced roughly similar emissions in the most recent full‑year dataset (2023): the pool about 53% and the community center about 47% of the two‑site total. They reported 61% of the combined site emissions are from natural‑gas combustion (principally heating the pool and the community‑center building) and about 39% from electricity (largely summer cooling and pool electrical loads).

Based on four high‑level scenarios the students modeled (business‑as‑usual; solar only; solar plus ground‑source heat pump for the community center; and solar plus ground‑source heat pump for the community…