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Design team highlights geothermal, mass timber and LEED goals for new county building
Summary
Designers said the proposed Center of Government would be all‑electric, use geothermal heating/cooling and heavy timber to cut embodied carbon, with energy modeling forecasting significant operational savings and a LEED Gold target.
Designers presented sustainability measures for the proposed Center of Government building and explained technical constraints and tradeoffs.
Lead presenter (speaker 3) described the project target as an all‑electric building with “the opportunity to entirely eliminate on‑site fossil fuels by designing an all electric building,” and said the team is focusing on geothermal for heating and cooling to reduce long‑term carbon and operational cost. The presentation stated that current energy modeling is “projecting a 44 reduction from the baseline in terms of energy use for the building, which we believe will equate to about 34,000 a year in savings.”
On embodied carbon, the team said the building will use heavy timber rather than structural steel and that concrete will be limited primarily to foundation work. “This building uses almost no, will use almost no structural steel,” presenter (speaker 3) said, and the team said exposed timber will be used as both structure and finish.
The presenters also described water‑use reductions (an approximate 30% reduction from a typical office building) and bird‑friendly glazing across the project’s exterior. The team said they are tracking design elements relative to LEED Gold criteria.
When asked whether a geothermal district serving adjacent buildings would be feasible, project staff and engineers said tests found a higher‑than‑expected water table in some locations, which increases the number of wells required and limits district scale. The team said they will pursue geothermal for the new building where possible and continue county efforts to evaluate broader district solutions, but that a campus‑wide system remains contingent on geotechnical results and available land.
