For Church, A Miracle From Below

Geothermal System to Save Money and Help the Earth

Leaders at St. Mark's Lutheran Church in Springfield discovered two years ago that their building's heating and cooling system was on its last tottering legs and that replacing it would require borrowing a half-million dollars.

Then they received an unbelievable proposal from Zach Fettig, who grew up attending St. Mark's and had recently graduated from James Madison University. He would install a new, state-of-the-art, good-for-the-environment system free, with a promise that monthly utility bills would not rise significantly for 25 years.

"It sounded too good to be true," said the Rev. Michael Taylor, senior pastor for the congregation of about 1,100. "But the more we learned about it, the more we were convinced that not only could we do this, but we should do this."

What sounds like a free lunch is, in fact, creative financing coupled with an ultra-efficient geothermal system that uses the constant temperature of the earth underground for heating and cooling. It's a green technology that sips energy and contributes relatively few emissions -- an attractive benefit in a time of increasing concern about global climate change, Taylor said.

"We're called upon, we believe, by God to be caretakers of the Earth," he said. "That's the bottom line."

Church leaders were skeptical at first, and discussions about whether to accept Fettig's proposal or choose a more traditional technology lasted nearly a year.

"Extracting energy from a rock -- that's not intuitive to most people," said Dan Ancona, a member of the congregation who has worked in the renewable energy field for more than 30 years and helped push for Fettig's geothermal system.

The financial arrangement Fettig offered helped diminish some of the skepticism.

He is installing the system at an up-front cost of about $400,000 to himself, and under the long-term utility services contract he signed with St. Mark's, he will be responsible for the system's maintenance and its energy costs for 25 years.

Those energy costs are relatively small, however, because the system is so efficient. Fettig will make back his initial investment, plus a profit, as the church pays him about $3,900 a month, its current maintenance and utility bill, for 25 years.

"Not only did we not have to go out and borrow," church treasurer Ed Barnes said, "but we've capped future expenditures."

Also instrumental in persuading church members to accept Fettig's proposal was the chance to visit Freedom House, a 5,000-square-foot home in Harrisonburg, Va., that he built after graduating from college in 2006 to model green technologies -- such as photovoltaic solar panels, geothermal heating and cooling and rainwater catchment -- and launch his green-building business, Shenandoah Sustainable Technologies.