The name Mike Richter is well-known among hockey fans. Richter spent 15 years in the National Hockey League as a goalie for the New York Rangers, including in 1994 when he was a fixture in the net during the team’s Stanley Cup winning season. Richter was also recognized as the most valuable player for the U.S.’s 1996 gold medal winning World Cup team, as well as a member of three U.S. Olympic teams, including in 2002 when the team won the silver medal. Richter was inducted into the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame in 2008.

But what is likely lesser known is that Richter is the current president of Brightcore Energy, a leading provider of integrated, end-to-end clean energy solutions to the commercial, institutional, and government markets. The Armonk, New York–headquartered company’s services include high-efficiency geothermal-based heating and cooling systems for both new construction and existing building retrofits, among other things. Brightcore’s turnkey, single-point solution encompasses all project development phases including preliminary modeling, feasibility and design, incentive and policy guidance, construction and implementation, and system performance monitoring.

As a guest on The POWER Podcast, Richter noted that heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems for commercial, industrial, and municipal buildings consume an enormous amount of energy in a place like New York City. Furthermore, the emissions associated with these systems can be significant. “If you can address that, you’re doing something important, and that’s really where our focus has been, particularly the last few years,” he said.

Geothermal Heating and Cooling Systems

Traditional geothermal often requires significant open space for the geothermal borefield and can have material time implications in project development. Brightcore says its exclusive UrbanGeo solution combines proprietary geothermal drilling technology and techniques that increase the feasibility of geothermal heating and cooling applicability while reducing construction development timelines.

“We typically go between 500 and 1,000 feet down,” Richter explained. “The ambient temperature of the ground about four feet down below our feet here in New York is 55 degrees [Fahrenheit] year-round.”

The constant and stable underground temperature is the key to geothermal heating and cooling systems. Even when the air above ground is extremely hot or freezing cold, the earth’s steady temperature provides a valuable heating or cooling resource.

A geothermal system has pipes buried underground that fluid is circulated through, and a heat pump inside the building. In winter, the fluid in the pipes absorbs warmth from the earth and brings it inside. There, the heat pump “compresses” this heat, raising its temperature so it can warm the building air comfortably—even when it’s icy cold outside.

In summer, the system works in reverse. The heat pump pulls heat out of the building’s air, sending it through the same underground pipes. Since the earth is cooler than the hot summer air, it acts like a giant heat sponge, soaking up unwanted heat from the building. This process cools the living space easily and efficiently, using a lot less energy than a regular air conditioner because the ground is always cooler than the hot outdoor air.

So, whether it’s heating or cooling, a geothermal system can keep buildings comfortable by moving heat between the building and the earth. “[It’s] pretty straightforward and very, very efficient and effective, particularly—and this is key—at the extremes,” said Richter. “Air source heat pumps are excellent and they continue to get better,” he added.

Working in Urban Areas

Geothermal heating and cooling schemes are often used at large universities and on other fairly spread-out campuses. Implementing the solution in those types of settings is fairly easy. Where it gets more complicated is in dense urban areas like New York City. Yet, while it’s a little more difficult, it’s still very doable.

“I’ve had sophisticated people—developers and what not—say, ‘Yeah, we’re building in New York. We would love geothermal. We used that out in a college somewhere with a lot of land and it was great. But we’re in the city and it’s densely populated. Can’t do it.’ That’s not true. They’ve been doing that in New York for decades now,” said Richter.

Richter noted that Brightcore has an office in Stockholm, Sweden, which has been instrumental in technology transfer across the Atlantic. “We’re in the early, early days—it’s about 1% market penetration here in the states. It’s, I think, 25% in Scandinavia. They’re 20 years ahead of us,” he said. “They’ve gone through a lot of these same questions and answered them with an exclamation point. This works well!”

The key in urban areas revolves around precision drilling techniques. “We’re borrowing from the fracking industry, and the oil and gas industry,” Richter explained. “They’ve been in the business for a long, long time, and that breakthrough in directional drilling for fracking was a material change for the industry.”

Richter said the ability to drill down, for example, at 7.5 degrees, and then move to a slightly different angle after 100 feet is crucial to success. “The more control and precision and certainty you have of where that drill head is, the more opportunities you have to put geothermal in, because navigating through water tunnels and fiber optic cable and foundations matter, obviously,” he said. “The sophistication of our equipment and our ability to monitor where and the precise guidance of that drill is absolutely paramount, and we’re really dialing that in as an industry, and we feel like we’re one of the leaders in that specific area as a company.”

Geothermal Cost-Benefit Analysis

Yet, it’s rare for a customer to install an HVAC system if the economics don’t make sense. Richter admitted that geothermal systems have a significant front-end cost, but if you look at the entire lifecycle, they often pay off. He said in a retrofit project there is usually between 30% and 60% savings, depending on the type of system being replaced.

Brightcore’s system is a forced air design, which requires a lot of duct work. That can be a significant expense in buildings originally constructed with baseboard heating, for example, so it’s not a no-brainer for everyone. “It just comes down to the cost-benefit analysis,” Richter said. “You really have to look in a slightly different way, and that’s a lifecycle analysis. What’s the capex [capital expenditure]? What’s the front-end cost? What does it cost to operate this thing over 20 years, compared to what the front-end costs of whatever the incumbent would be? And what does it cost to operate that?”

In the U.S., government incentives can help a lot. “The IRA [Inflation Reduction Act] effectively can cleave 40% to 50% off of the front-end cost,” said Richter. “What’s beautiful about it is putting the boreholes in the ground and having the whole thermal system in the ground, and then the mechanical system, both are subject to this tax treatment.”

Richter explained that the tax benefits really start with a 30% credit. Then, another 10% can be captured when American-made technologies are utilized, which he said is pretty easily hit. If the system is installed in an economic development zone, owners get another 10% credit, up to 50% off on the entire system including mechanical equipment. “So, it can be at par or even less,” Richter said. “But operationally, it’s almost always cheaper to run a geothermal system, just because the coefficients of the performance blow everything else away.”

And while the One Big Beautiful Bill Act has stripped some incentives from solar and wind technologies, incentives for geothermal systems were not cut. “The Trump administration is supporting this,” said Richter. “There will be a lot of bloodshed when it comes to other sustainable energy products, like solar and wind … Geothermal has been left slightly better because the incentives remain.”

To hear the full interview with Richter, which includes details about Brightcore’s mission, other efficiency and renewable work it’s involved in, the importance of educating the public about the benefits of geothermal systems, and more, listen to The POWER Podcast. Click on the SoundCloud player below to listen in your browser now or use the following links to reach the show page on your favorite podcast platform:

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—Aaron Larson is POWER’s executive editor (@AaronL_Power, @POWERmagazine).