Homebuilder, energy company launch geothermal project in metro Denver ...0

Homebuilder Lennar is partnering with Dandelion Energy in metro Denver on what the companies say will be one of the country’s largest residential deployments of geothermal heating and cooling.

Representatives of the companies as well as Gov. Jared Polis, Xcel Energy-Colorado President Robert Kenney and Colorado Energy Office Executive Director Will Toor turned out Wednesday to officially kick off work on a new housing development on the far western reaches of metro Denver. The development in the Ken Caryl neighborhood near Littleton is one of 14 Denver-area communities where Lennar and Dandelion Energy will install geothermal heat pumps in roughly 1,500 homes over the next two years.

For both Lennar and Dandelion Energy, their collaboration marks the companies’ largest installations of what are called ground-source heat pumps. Holes are bored in the ground to tap the stable subsurface temperatures to warm indoor air in the winter and cool it in the summer.

The goal is to reduce the expense of installing heat pumps through efficiencies produced by spreading the costs across hundreds of homes. Homeowners will benefit from heating and cooling that could cut by half the energy consumption of traditional systems, according to the companies.

And Colorado and Xcel Energy officials said increasing the number of homes using geothermal heat pumps will help meet their goals for cutting greenhouse gas emissions and boosting the use of renewable energy.

Dan Yates, CEO of Virginia-based Dandelion, said the launch of the Colorado housing developments marked a turning point for the company and the industry. While geothermal heat pumps are a proven technology, are reliable and cost less to operate than conventional systems, Yates said only about 1% of the nation’s homes use them for heating and cooling.

“While geothermal has been far and away the cheapest solution to operate, it has not been the cheapest solution to install. And that’s changing with this project,” Yates said.

Kathy Hannun, Dandelion’s chief technology officer and co-founder, said in an interview with The Denver Post that the upfront costs of putting in geothermal heat pumps has been a hurdle.

“We’re going to be able to show with this project that if you can install them at (a wide) scale, you can actually dramatically bring that upfront cost down,” Hannun said.

A handful of other large developments across the country, including one in the Louisville, Ky., area, are building homes with geothermal heat pumps, Greg Kurtz of the International Ground Source Heat Pump Association said in an email. He said the Lennar-Dandelion collaboration would be considered a big project if it “reaches a build out of 1,500 homes.”

Lennar also plans to build new heat-pump-equipped homes in Aurora, Brighton, Parker, Lafayette, Erie, Commerce City and Centennial.

Hannun said Lennar and Dandelion chose to roll out their plans in Colorado in part due to the tax incentives and rebates offered by the state and utilities. Xcel Energy said the project qualifies for its new construction rebates, which pays $20,000 to $25,000 per house for installation and other costs if certain requirements are met.

“We ran the numbers with  them in Colorado and it just became really clear that there’s a lot of economic value to doing geothermal in this particular market,” Hannun said.

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Federal legislation approved by the Biden administration includes tax incentives for geothermal heat pumps. Analysts have said the Trump administration hasn’t targeted geothermal incentives as it has federal incentives for solar and wind power and electric vehicles.

“I think Colorado has done an incredible job of welcoming geothermal and correctly identifying it as a very pragmatic and cost-effective solution for energy,” Hannun said.

Polis was elected as chairman of the Western Governors’ Association in 2024. His top initiative was advancing the development of geothermal energy in the West.  The association produced a report on geothermal energy called “The Heat Beneath our Feet.”

The speakers said increasing geothermal energy sources will help make Colorado’s electric grid more resilient, help ease demand during high-peak use times and cut heat-trapping emissions.

“Building heating is one of the top five sources of greenhouse gas pollution in the state of Colorado,” said Toor of the Colorado Energy office. “Reducing those emissions is essential to meeting our climate goals.”

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