On Tuesday, Nov. 18 at 7 p.m., students and faculty gathered together in Rockefeller Hall 300 to hear the Vice President of Energy at Wendel Companies Jason Denue present Wendel’s work-in-progress climate action plan for Vassar College. Wendel is an engineering and architecture firm dedicated to creating customized solutions and energy projects for large organizations.Denue began his talk by explaining that Wendel has created over 50 energy plans with other well-known colleges, before turning to Wendel’s partnership with Vassar. Since around August 2025, he and 20 team members have been collaborating with both the Office of Sustainability and Vassar’s Climate Action and Sustainability Committee to structure a plan to decarbonize the College.
Before Denue described what the process of switching to an environmentally friendly energy system would look like at Vassar, he proposed that an alignment of “core values” is most crucial in making sustainable energy changes happen. He remarked that in order for decarbonization to begin, “The science, student demand, state and federal policy, business, and climate resilience must all work together.” With carbon dioxide emissions continuing to increase, and with climate change ranking as one of Generation Z’s highest concerns, Denue proclaimed the importance of making energy changes to improve energy efficiency, reduce carbon emissions on campus and build climate resiliency for the future.
Providing an overview of Vassar’s current energy system, Denue broke it down into three parts: load, plant and utility. A thermal load is the amount of energy needed to be added or removed from a room in order to heat or cool it. The loads are serviced by Vassar’s two different types of energy plants: a chilled water system, that removes energy from buildings to cool them, and a steam system that includes the radiators which warm the dorms. The campus’ steam systems are controlled by a central boiler plant that creates steam by consuming primarily natural gas, which contributes to carbon emissions.
Energy utilities are companies which provide energy to service the plants. The utilities Vassar relies on provide both natural gas and electricity. Electricity generates less emissions than natural gas. However, it is more expensive, which poses an “economic problem” to transition to sustainable energy, according to Denue.
Denue proposed that transitioning from a steam system to a more efficient geothermal system could be a possible, gradual solution to decarbonizing Vassar. Geothermal energy is renewable and emits 99 percent less CO2 than natural gas. Geothermal energy systems draw heat from wells dug deep into the ground, and heat pumps can warm and cool buildings by using the ground as a heat source to warm in the winter and a heat sink to cool in the summer.
Denue emphasized that Vassar’s old buildings, which rely on embedded energy infrastructure, and its current maximum utility grid capacity—the max amount of power that can be used—will be two challenges for Wendel to work around. Furthermore, building geothermal wells will cause surface drilling and disruption, and could affect natural landscapes on campus depending on where they are implemented. Because geothermal heating systems draw energy from the ground, load imbalances can also occur when more heat energy is extracted during the winter than injected during the summer to cool buildings. In order for geothermal energy to be implemented at Vassar, Denue explained, these issues would need to be addressed over time. He clarified that, “Energy efficiency continues to be a great opportunity.”
As Denue shared, Wendel was brought in to provide guidance for a cleaner campus energy infrastructure during the short, middle and long-term future, since decarbonization cannot happen overnight. He asserted of decarbonization, “It is a noble cause, and right now everyone is trying to attack the same problem.”
Denue was not able to provide an exact timeline for when implementation of projects would take place, however he estimated the climate action plan would occur in increments of five, 10, 15 and 20 years. Wendel is still in the process of mapping out what each step will look like, but Denue emphasized that Wendel plans to strategically attack locations on campus where old steam energy systems already need to be replaced first, due to aging or broken parts.
Director of Sustainability Ken Foster feels positively about the partnership between Vassar and Wendel. In a written comment to The Miscellany News, Foster stated, “As the session showed, Wendel is doing significant in-depth work to enable Vassar to chart a path to reducing carbon emissions by gradually transitioning the campus to geothermal heating and cooling.” He continued, “Once their study is finished early next year, we’ll be using their findings and recommendation to craft a new Vassar Climate Action Plan.”
Students who attended the presentation expressed both their concerns and excitement about Vassar and Wendel’s preliminary climate action plan. Vassar Student Association Sustainability Executive and member of Students for Equitable Environmental Decisions (SEED) Genevieve Roech ’27 said, “I think that one of the most important parts within our decarbonization process is transparency, which is why we wanted to host Wendel Companies to do an open student session.” She elaborated, “I think that Vassar is taking the just and equitable steps into the future by conducting this decarbonization study, but we are still extremely far from our sustainability end goals. Right now, we have the ball rolling, but as we move forward in this process, we [students] need to keep it going.”
Laszlo Lawless ’28 commented, “I overestimated how far along they were and I wanted to see more of the specifics in terms of what will happen to which buildings when, especially with the upcoming renovations to the Old Laundry Building.” He expanded, “I want that kind of transparency and I think we should be excited about this as a student population, but for this to work, the messaging has to be there and that’s where students can come in.”