For nearly 70 years, Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, relied on coal to heat its campus during winter. The campus heating plant had four coal-fired boilers that burned, according to later estimates, about 36,000 tons of coal a year to keep classrooms and residence halls warm. But as the equipment aged and the cost of installing a new fossil fuel boiler increased, university leaders began to look at renewable options instead. The university has installed a campus-wide geothermal network that now supplies heating and cooling across much of the campus.
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