Early next year, the Carbondale Aquatic Center will open, fully powered by renewable energy. 

The new aquatic center will replace the town of Carbondale’s 40-year-old pool with three new pools, a bathhouse and community gathering spaces. The new pools — a lap pool, an entertainment pool and a spa — will be the first pool in the region powered by 100% renewable energy. 

“We had to really do some pretty serious research into how do we do it,” said Carbondale Parks and Recreation Director Eric Brendlinger. “That’s an outdoor pool in Colorado, in the mountains, on the Western Slope. How is there technology that exists that will allow us to live up to our own standards?”

The pool water will be heated entirely by electric air-source heat pumps instead of gas boilers. The facility also will feature rooftop solar panels. 

No natural gas will be used in the aquatic center, Brendlinger said. 

“We trust this technology, we’ve done our research, we’ve talked to the experts, we’ve talked to the manufacturers and we have confidence in the systems that we have designed for the pool,” he said. “We’re all in. We’re making an all-electric, outdoor municipal pool and we’re pretty psyched about that.”

The project will cost approximately $13.4 million. The town is paying for it using reserve funds, bonds and grant funding.

Carbondale received funding for the project from the Community Office for Resource Efficiency, the Colorado Energy Office, Pitkin County and the Garfield County Federal Mineral Lease District. 

The town worked with local architecture firm Land+Shelter and land planner Lionheart Places to design the building with sustainability in mind. 

The aquatic center’s environmentally friendly systems will eliminate 3.2 million kBTUs of fossil fuel annually and save 2.7 million kBTUs in energy annually. That’s equivalent to taking 148 gasoline-powered vehicles off the road for one year, according to a news release about the center.

The excitement for the new facility is palpable in the community, Brendlinger said. The town received $1 million in donations to the project from local individuals and businesses. 

“It’s taken an entire village, really, to build this thing,” he said. “On one first Friday during a table pop-up we were doing to let people know about the capital campaign, this one kid comes up to us, reaches deep into his pocket, pulls out a $5 bill and says, ‘I want a diving board, put this toward a diving board.’”

In the spring of 2026, the aquatic center — diving board and all — will officially open to the public.