When Salisbury University reopens the renovated Blackwell Hall later this year, much of what makes the building notable will be out of sight.
Below the lawn and parking lots surrounding the building, a network of wells and pipes will quietly help heat and cool the structure. The system is designed to make Blackwell Hall carbon net-zero ready and, university officials say, completely off the energy grid.
And on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, where sandy soil makes drilling faster and easier than in rockier parts of the state, advocates say the technology has a practical advantage.
Blackwell Hall is not the first building on campus to use geothermal energy. Nor is Salisbury University alone in turning to the technology. Other major projects in the region include Wor-Wic Community College and the Shore Regional Medical Center in Easton, where a new facility under construction is expected to use more than 1,700 geothermal wells.
For supporters of renewable energy, the new projects point to a technology that has long existed but is drawing new attention: geothermal heating and cooling, which uses the earth’s relatively stable underground temperatures to regulate buildings above the surface.
Matt Groves, Salisbury University’s director of architectural and engineering services, said the Blackwell Hall renovation relies entirely on geothermal systems for heating, ventilation and air conditioning.
“The project being net zero ready, all of the HVAC systems in the building are geothermal,” Groves said. “We have 100 wells for that project that go down over 450 feet. It’s a closed loop system, so the pipes go from the fluid transfers just continually. So it’s 200 miles of piping that run from Blackwell Hall out to the 100 wells in the well field.”
Groves said the Eastern Shore’s sandy geology makes fertile ground for geothermal energy. In places west of the Chesapeake Bay, drilling can mean cutting through layers of stone and rock, which drives up costs and slows installation.
“We had some initial pushback with the Blackwell project because it’s from consultants from across the bridge,” Groves said. “With their stone, a rock that layers you have to drill through and can drive the cost up. But for us on the Eastern Shore, it’s sand that we’re driving wells through.”
The Blackwell Hall wells, he said, were installed in roughly two and a half to three weeks.
“We have no real issues with getting the wells in and down to the proper depth,” Groves said. “So their production rates were just astronomical. They were just flying.”
That speed matters because geothermal projects can carry higher upfront costs than conventional heating and cooling systems. But Groves said the long-term economics are favorable. The lifecycle cost is substantially lower, he said, and the payback period can be short — in some cases, one to two years.
That combination of engineering simplicity, lower operating costs and reduced emissions is part of what is making geothermal more attractive to institutions with large buildings and long planning horizons.
The policy landscape is changing, too. In Congress, the bipartisan Geothermal Tax Parity Act of 2025 extends long-standing oil and gas tax provisions to geothermal projects, including treatment for geological and geophysical exploration costs and passive loss rules for investors.
Maryland has also created incentives for geothermal adoption. The Maryland Energy Administration says geothermal systems use the earth’s relatively constant subsurface temperatures to provide efficient, low-carbon heating and cooling, and the state has supported geothermal through rebates, clean-building programs and renewable energy credits.
Daniel Sadik, with Carbon Solutions, a nationwide renewable energy service company based in Chicago, said Maryland has been especially active in encouraging geothermal development.
“I would say Maryland really was the leader in this,” Sadik said, “and it was actually one of the politicians, [Del. Lorig] Charkoudian, in Maryland that really pushed geothermal…. So we see Maryland as the next frontier.”
For proponents of alternatives to fossil fuels, geothermal has another advantage: it tends to avoid the political fights that follow more visible energy projects.
Solar installations can raise land-use questions, especially when farmland is involved. Offshore wind has drawn opposition in places like Ocean City, where critics have objected to the possible visual impact of turbines off the Atlantic coast. Geothermal, by contrast, disappears underground once the wells are drilled and the pipes are connected.
Len Foxwell, an Easton-based political consultant, said that low profile has helped geothermal maintain broader political support.
“I think it’s worth noting that this is at a time when everything, particularly in the energy space, is politically polarized,” Foxwell said. “This is a renewable energy source that enjoys true bipartisan appeal.”
That may explain why geothermal rarely makes headlines, even as large institutions across the Eastern Shore begin to build it into their long-term energy plans.
At Blackwell Hall, the visible signs of renovation will be above ground: a renewed campus building, new spaces and a public reopening. But much of the story will remain buried beneath the pavement and grass — 100 wells, hundreds of feet deep, connected by miles of piping, using the steady temperature of the earth to help power a cleaner future.
