The greenest building in Connecticut isn’t what you’d expect. It’s not some high tech, high-rise office using experimental materials or a super-insulated home fitted into a south facing hillside with solar
panels perched on the roof. It’s the Woodchip Central Heating Facility at the Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, according to the Connecticut Green Building Council which gave it the 2013 Alexion Award of Excellence. Long before Kermit the Frog learned that being green isn’t easy, power plants often struggled with environmental compliance and a public image associated with smoke, soot, noise and water pollution. Providing heat to over a million square feet of space in tens of buildings by burning sustainably harvested woodchips to produce steam and hot water, the Hotchkiss facility leaves typical power plant stereotypes in shambles.
Unlike most school central heating facilities, this one stands in the heart of campus, not hidden in some far corner where it can’t be seen. Though close to State Route 41, it’s built down slope and covered with a living roof of sedum plants causing it to blend into the landscape and change color with the season. It’s easy to miss if you’re not looking carefully. But even an astute observer unaware of its purpose might be forgiven for mistaking its function. With its undulating serpentine roof and bands of windows, it could be envisioned as an art gallery, library or performance space.
The facility’s conservation credentials are impressive. The roof captures more than half the precipitation that falls on it, reducing runoff which can pollute and erode adjacent wetlands. Locally
obtained woodchip fuel displaces 250,000 gallons of oil and reduces sulfur dioxide by 90% and overall campus CO2 by 30% to 50%. The chips are from the bole of the tree—the trunk as high as the first set of limbs—leaving the remainder of the branches, containing 80% of the nutrients, to decompose and enhance forest soils. A state-of-the-art electrostatic precipitator removes fine particulate matter. Waste ash is used as fertilizer.
Most power plants are forbidding. Conventional facilities are fortress-like with smokestacks looming like battlements and austere industrial
interiors. Security obsessed nuclear plants are bunkers of concrete, often with unusual, alienating structures like containment domes and cooling towers. The Hotchkiss plant, however, is remarkably inviting with an exterior that intrigues the eye and an interior of understated grandeur informed by natural light and wooden surfaces. The slat-like metal ceiling is supported by a grid of knotty laminated timbers, some walls are constructed of particleboard, and there are railings that use wooden slats. Pendant lights provide a kind of industrial chic. It is clean, well lit, and the use of wood provides enticing warmth.
Perhaps most unusual about the facility is the way in which visitors are not merely tolerated, but feel welcomed. A mezzanine walkway fabricated of metal grates and concrete winds through an ersatz cat’s
cradle of white pipes and past large twin boilers reminiscent of old-time locomotives. There are views of wood chip bunkers, augers and conveyors, pollution control systems and computer monitors. Exhibits along the walls explain how the facility works, and poster-sized photos of the old brick plant with its heavy machinery and gritty workers provide a sense of history and change. All this is not just to invite spectators, but to provide practical lessons to students in economics, forestry, ecology, and social systems via a real-world example that makes a difference.
The Hotchkiss power plant defies conventional thinking in many ways, and perhaps that is its most valuable innovation and lasting beauty. Like many of the most intriguing aspects of our landscape, it’s counterintuitive, startling us with juxtapositions between expectations and reality. While most power plants stand out for their size, we tend not to really see them because we make sweeping assumptions about their nature and function. Here’s one, hidden in plain sight, that’s really worth looking at.
