Case Study #1:
Self-execute the conventional plant, or Work with Fifty under.
A hypothetical 40-acre greenhouse faces the decision every developer faces on a new facility: build and run your own conventional heating-and-cooling plant, or take ground-source heat pumps from Fifty Under as a service under a Geothermal Energy Service Agreement. Here is what each choice looks like, with the numbers.
The developer's decision
One facility, one decision
Picture a new 40-acre glasshouse going up in the Southeast. It will need steady heat through winter and heavy dehumidification through a humid summer — a large, non-negotiable energy load that runs for the next twenty-five years. The developer has to choose how to meet it. Either technology is sound. The real difference is who puts up the capital, who carries the risk, and who is exposed to the energy market.
The two ways to pay for it
Your own plant, or a fee
Build it, and own everything that comes with it
Writing a check for a conventional gas-boiler-plus-chiller system means about $13 million of your capital, up front. Then the risks are all yours: you run the project, you operate the plant for decades, and every year you are exposed to the energy market. You keep venting humidity — and dumping the heat you paid for — because conventional kit gives you no better option.
Illustrative energy cost: month-to-month noise, winter seasonality, a rising trend, and cold snaps that push past the level where heating stops penciling. Look at the spacing — two in consecutive winters, then nothing for the better part of a decade. Spikes do not arrive on a schedule you can plan around. That is what makes them dangerous.
Sign up, and hand us the risk
Fifty Under puts up the capital, builds the full ground-source system, and owns and operates it — delivered to you as a service under a Geothermal Energy Service Agreement. You put in zero and pay a fixed Renewable Energy Fee instead of a fuel bill, with a known escalator, set at or below today's cost.
The same market in grey, against your Renewable Energy Fee in green: fixed, gently escalating, and never near the threshold. None of the spikes are yours — including the ones nobody saw coming.
Side by side
| Self-execute conventional | GSHP under a GESA | |
|---|---|---|
| Upfront capital | ~$13M, out of your pocket | $0 — Fifty Under funds the system |
| Execution & operation risk | Yours, for 25 years | Fifty Under's |
| Energy price | Market gas — volatile & rising | Fixed Renewable Energy Fee, known escalation |
| Heat-and-vent waste | Built in — you reheat what you vent | Eliminated — heating separated from dehumidification |
| VPD / climate control | You manage it | Actively managed for yield & quality |
| GHG footprint | Baseline | ~22% lower, and growing |
| 25-year energy value | — | ~$4M better (after-tax NPV) |
The bottom line
What the numbers said
Run over 25 years at the developer's own cost of capital, on an after-tax basis, the GESA path comes out about $4 million ahead — while freeing the $13 million of capital and moving all the execution and operation risk to us.
Lower is better. The GESA path also frees ~$13M of upfront capital and moves all execution and operation risk to Fifty Under.
Why developers sign
The energy saving is not the only point
Five things move on the day you sign a GESA rather than build your own plant. Three are about cost and risk. The other two are about what the facility earns and what your brand can stand behind — and one of those is the largest number on this page.
No capital up front
Fifty Under funds the entire system. Your ~$13M stays in glass, automation and working capital.
Lower all-in energy cost
Over 25 years, after tax, the fee comes in about $4M below running your own plant on market gas.
No volatility, no viability risk
The cold snaps that can shut an operation down stop being your problem — including the ones that arrive with no warning and no precedent.
Better production
Tighter climate control lets the facility run at the top of its range rather than the middle. On a site this size, small percentages are large numbers — see below.
A lower-carbon product
Emissions drop ~22% on day one and keep falling as the grid cleans up, with no combustion on site. For a grower selling into retailers carrying Scope 3 targets, that is a commercial asset — something the brand can put its name to and the buyer can count.
And the fourth one is the prize
Climate control is a production input, not just an overhead line. Holding tighter VPD, and never venting away heat to shed humidity, is what lets a facility run at the top of its range instead of the middle.
Every 5% of production = $2.0M a yearOn a facility turning over $40 million a year, a 5% lift is $2 million of incremental revenue — every year, at close to full margin, because the growing area, the labour and the climate system are already paid for. Discounted over the same 25 years at the same cost of capital, that is roughly $21 million — more than five times the energy saving.
Illustrative. $40M of annual revenue is an assumed input; substitute your own. A 5% lift is the arithmetic being demonstrated, not a guaranteed outcome — actual yield response depends on your site, your setpoints and how tightly the system is managed. Production upside is stated separately from the ~$4M energy figure and is not included in it.
Figures describe a hypothetical project and are rounded. Illustrative only — your economics depend on your site, loads, and energy prices.