A groundbreaking geothermal heating and cooling project shows that these super-efficient heat pumps are gaining traction.

Construction of the largest ground-source geothermal heating and cooling system in the United States is now underway and half complete.

The project, located on the Muncie, Indiana campus of Ball State University, will be large enough to heat and cool 47 buildings, replace four coal-fired boilers, and save the campus roughly $2 million a year over the 30-year life of the system.

The project will also help create 2,300 direct and indirect jobs throughout the construction period.

This is great news for a technology that has been available, efficient and economical since the 1940′s. In 1993, the EPA called it “the most efficient, environmentally clean, and cost effective space conditioning system today.” While the technology has been known for decades, the size of the Ball State project proves that geothermal installers and designers are gaining confidence to implement the technology on a massive scale and are winning the trust of risk-averse property owners.

via Construction of the Largest U.S. Geothermal Heat Pump System Underway | ThinkProgress.