One of the World’s Largest Geothermal Networks Is Buried Beneath a Corporate Campus in Rural Wisconsin

VERONA, Wis.—You only need a glance at the “Intergalactic Headquarters” of Epic Systems to realize the corporate campus of this medical records software company is not a typical office park.

Buildings resemble Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, the Emerald City of Oz and Hogwarts Castle. There’s a treehouse conference room, a “Deep Space” auditorium and a stairway in “Heaven.”

However, what’s buried beneath the fantasy-themed campus of one of the nation’s largest privately held tech companies is arguably more unusual and, from a climate perspective, potentially far more significant.

Roughly 6,100 boreholes, each drilled hundreds of feet into the earth, comprise one of the largest geothermal heating and cooling networks in the world. Electricity from a nearby wind farm and a field of solar