Maintaining Permafrost
Using Ground Energy for Sustainable Heating
Permafrost is an extremely important part of the earth's environmental stability, but it is melting.
At the same time, many of the communities that live on this frozen ground face challenges of reliably and efficiently heating their homes.
Both of these challenges can be solved with the same solution.
With new research in earth conditioning (E/C) technology, we’ve found a way to move the heat that threatens the permafrost out of the ground and into usable heating energy for buildings.
Using climate change as a renewable energy resource.
Thawing Mitigation System (TMS)
This site explains the science behind the novel permafrost Thawing Mitigation System (TMS), so that others can build on it to have the widespread impact that’s needed to stop the global thaw.
We are science communicators, and do this work for free. The Maintaining Permafrost project simply aims to create public knowledge about the challenges and solutions. You can download the full text of this research online, or you can order physical copies.
How to Heat Your House with Climate Change:
This system uses equipment that is already available and in use in these regions, including the pipes already installed as the foundation of buildings, and utility equipment.
Then using ground-source heat pumps (GSHPs) – renewable technology that is rapidly becoming more popular across the world – to draw this heat from the foundation and into the building/water to heat it. The novel innovation here comes from combining the shallow pipes with GSHPs, and moving from a balanced load of heating and cooling to an intentionally imbalanced load of year-long heating.
Benefits of this system:
Space and/or water heating without combustion
Reduced energy use
Keep permafrost frozen without waste heat
New application for common equipment and industry expertise
Energy independence, reduction of fuel reliance
Builds climate change resilience
Potential to also provide structural support
At the rate we're going, half of Canada's permafrost will be melted in 40 years.
This will have severe consequences for the people living on it – but also for the rest of the world. Melting of permafrost is an urgent problem that requires everyone, from all backgrounds and cultures, to collaborate to solve. This project aims to communicate the scientific background, research, and details to empower others to build their own solutions or collaborate with us to develop this further.
We have hope that we can Save the Frost!
