This article was written by Joel Ceausu and published by The Canadian Jewish News July 10, 2025
Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom invests in a geothermal climate control system to heat and cool its building.
Drilling begins at Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom, Montreal: Rabbi Lisa Grushcow, executive director Chad Lubelsky. Source: CJN
A warm refuge from the most frigid winters, and cooling relief from stifling summer days: the notions of comfort and sustainability in a place of prayer and gathering, fueled by heat extracted from far beneath the earth’s surface, may be a trite observation, but it’s bold and literally grounded in both nature and technology.
Montreal’s Reform Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom is set to become a pioneer with a project to shed its outdated and failing gas-powered heating and cooling system in favour of a geothermal climate control system and becoming one of the greenest buildings on the island of Montreal.
Geothermal is the most cost-effective solution to replace the temple’s aging gas-powered HVAC system. The new system will draw heat from the ground—a stable and renewable source that is not subject to market inflation—offering long-term predictability and minimal maintenance. Heated water circulates through long tubes and is passed through pumps extracting heat in summer to cool and maintaining and circulating heat in winter to warm.
Crews began drilling a test well on June 7 to probe how deep the tubes that will pull the water will go. “It can go up to half a kilometre,” temple member and volunteer project manager Len Smofsky told The CJN.
Expected to be completed within 18 months, the transition to a clean energy source is expected to save the congregation more than $40,000 annually, but it does come with a hefty price tag. While these are current estimates, says Chad Lubelsky, executive director at the temple, which will be further refined over time as they advance in the work, the total cost is around $1.5 million for the new geothermal HVAC system, “which includes changing the entire guts of the distribution system to bypass what was there before.”
The temple received a 5-year, US$100,000 interest-free loan from the Adamah Climate Action Fund which was matched by a member of the congregation. The project will also pick up additional subsidies from Quebec’s environment ministry as well as Hydro-Québec.
“Care for the planet is a Jewish value,” said Senior Rabbi Lisa Grushcow. “As a synagogue, we are committed to reducing our footprint and increasing our impact when it comes to the environment. Another strong Jewish value is our commitment to future generations. By taking these steps, we are ensuring that our building and community will continue to thrive and be a welcoming spiritual home for many years to come.”
Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom contracted local firm Marmott Énergies to transition the 50,000-square-foot building by employing standing column well technology, which plunges deeper and is more efficient than traditional closed-loop systems. “It’s also the only way we could use geothermal for the entire building” said Smofsky, “because like many urban buildings we don’t have a lot of land relative to the size of our building, so traditional geothermal would be problematic.” The kind of well they are digging goes down fairly deep, and how far they go will be dependent on the nature of the water flow underground.
In essence, wells pull water from deep below the surface, while closed loop systems bring it up from shallower depths and require more tubes in closer proximity, thereby requiring a larger footprint. The deeper system is not quite as widely used in the region, says Smofsky, “a little bit more in the States. But even in our cold environment, it works quite well if you go down far enough and there’s good, consistent heat underground.” That lends extra excitement in the quest to prove that projects like this can be done in Montreal’s urban core. “I think Hydro is very interested in that, because they want to reduce their peak consumption in the winter when their grid is pressed.”
Generally, most religious institutional buildings are older, and inefficient from a heating and insulation perspective. Dealing with larger buildings with high ceilings and large open spaces presents challenges, as they were not designed when energy efficiency was a main consideration. (St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City, whose construction began in the late 1850s, used the same technology to transition in 2018, for a building that’s even larger, and more challenging to dig.)
Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom was rebuilt in 1960, following a fire to its original structure that was built in 1918. The late ‘50s rebuild left a patchwork of old water-based radiators and other systems, all which has rusted, says Smofsky. “It’s problematic as the gas burners are being degraded quickly by rust in the pipes, which can’t be efficiently removed or accessed. So we needed to do a new system.”
The change is projected to reduce the temple’s CO2 footprint by 100 tons annually, equivalent to that produced by driving 22 gas-powered cars for a year. “Any time a building of that size converts from something like gas or oil, there’s also a big savings there in terms of pollution in the city,” says Smofsky. “I look at our weather maps to see what problem we have with pollutants, especially in the winter pollution in the city.”
As reported by The CJN in 2023, the temple joined ten other sites across Canada in a post-Covid sustainability challenge under Adamah (formerly Hazon), that included a transition to non-disposable dishes, silverware, cups and mugs for all activities, and planting a pollinator garden. The last large infrastructure project it embarked on was to update its accessibility.
Mark Gibson, co-founder of the Zero Emissions Churches Project, has worked with the temple since the fall of 2023 to get their project going, beginning with a presentation “essentially about what we in North America could do, in practical terms, to respond to the climate crisis that western culture had created,” he told The CJN. “One clear thing we could do as faith groups is to change our heating and cooling systems to be electricity-based rather than fossil fuels, as soon as it was financially feasible or when the system was at its end of life.”
Founded in 1882 and situated in the city of Westmount, adjacent to downtown Montreal, the congregation counts some 650 member families. “There are many reasons for temple to do this,” said Lubelsky, “ecological, financial, and we couldn’t be more excited. But when we say temple is doing this, it means the temple community is doing it. This would not happen without the work of volunteers.” Fortune favours the well prepared he says, “and we’re extremely fortunate that we have a very long history of being a place where people come and contribute, and turn it into the institution that it is, of having a very engaged and engaging community.”
From left: Forage FTE drilling team, Rabbi Lisa Grushcow, past-president David Moll, project lead Len Smofsky , executive director Chad Lubelsky, and geothermal project researcher Desmond McReynolds at Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom, Montreal. Source: CJN
Gibson’s organization also has a corps of volunteers providing free assistance to faith groups to make the transition most effectively in their own region. He says he’s proud of the work that he saw the Montreal temple’s committee do, particularly “in exploring new territory; we were able to provide reassurance based on having watched a number of communities explore these same questions and having analyzed a number of successful and less-successful projects. Because they allowed me to walk with them, I gained valuable insights which I could share with the rest of our network.”
The organization is partnered with several communities around Montreal including four Anglican churches and others that are still in assessment. They have also worked with a French Catholic diocese and individual churches and have work going on in seven other Anglican dioceses, a Lutheran synod and a variety of independent churches.
“People of faith have been reflecting together on the climate crisis over the past years,” says Gibson, “and this puts them slightly ahead of most of the Canadian population in deciding to take action.” The change is slower than many would like, he agrees, “but it is starting to pick up speed… our well-being depends on our being able to learn how to restore balance to the ecosystems we depend on.”
Since its launch in 2023, the Adamah Climate Action Fund has awarded US$1.3 million to 50 projects across North America, comprised of $996,593 in interest-free loans and $309,016 in matching grants, allowing Jewish organizations to immediately cut energy costs, freeing up resources to invest in their core missions, said Adamah CEO Jakir Manela in a statement. “Our community has the tools—and now the funds—to lead on climate action… Adamah’s Coalition represents an unprecedented mobilization of the Jewish world toward meaningful climate action—at pace and at scale. With expert support and financing available, there’s no reason Jewish leaders can’t be at the forefront of creating a livable future for our children.”