Climate change may be controversial in the political realm, but for three Blavatnik Awards Scholars, all leading experts in environmental studies, there is no debate. The Earth’s ice sheets, glaciers, forests, and animals have all been altered by high levels of CO2 and increasing global temperatures. But are these changes permanent? This podcast examines the latest ecological, geological, and biogeographic research related to climate change.
This podcast was produced as part of the 2017 Blavatnik Science Symposium, co-presented by the Blavatnik Family Foundation and The New York Academy of Sciences.
Together with The New York Academy of Sciences, NYSERDA is supporting visionary early-stage startups through proof-of-concept centers that foster the growth and development of clean tech businesses. The two centers, PowerBridgeNY and Nexus-NY, have provided critical financial support, mentorship, and guidance for dozens of startups that are shaping the future of clean energy. Two companies, Allied Microbiota and Dimensional Energy, are tackling waste remediation and reuse with novel techniques that are being tested and proven today.
Tackling Toxic Waste with Nature’s Warriors
Amid some of the most expensive real estate in the world, on the waterfronts of Manhattan and Brooklyn, lay the remnants of disaster.
Epifluorescent photomicrograph of bacteria (green rods) on soil (orange-red particles). Particles were stained with a fluorescent dye.
The waters of the East River, Newtown Creek and the Gowanus Canal are among the local sites where benzene and oil residues mingle with persistent pollutants, such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), to form a stubbornly toxic soup that resists remediation. For environmental microbiologist Ray Sambrotto, Lamont Associate Professor at the Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, the solution for cleaning up such sites may be as simple as a common soil bacterium isolated from a compost pile in the 1990s.
Allied Microbiota, the company Sambrotto and a cohort of Columbia colleagues founded in 2017, is commercializing the use of this bacterial strain, aiming to reclaim polluted areas by simply allowing the microbes to do what they do best: break down environmental contaminants. The scientific community has long been aware that common microbes can degrade some pollutants — indeed, dozens of bacterial species are credited with dispatching of much of the oil dumped into the Gulf of Mexico during the Deepwater Horizon explosion.
The class of contaminants that includes PCBs, polyaromatic hydrocarbons and dioxins are less susceptible to natural attenuation, however, and these so-called recalcitrant pollutants require expensive, logistically challenging remediation techniques.
“The idea of using bacteria for bioremediation of recalcitrant pollutants isn’t a new one,” said Sambrotto, noting that research interest has waxed and waned over several decades.
Advances in Biotechnology
As advances in biotechnology have moved into the environmental field, the notion of deploying nature’s soldiers against a decidedly unnatural group of pollutants has gained momentum. Sambrotto and his Allied Microbiota co-founder Frana James describe their approach as “augmentation,” as it uses specialized bacteria to amplify the work of native microbes, a process they believe can be done safely and at low cost.
“Our bacteria are thermophiles, and they only reproduce when conditions are ideal,” Sambrotto said, adding that if temperatures drop below 40 degrees Celsius, the bacteria enter a dormant state.
When active, they are powerhouses of bioremediation, eliminating recalcitrant pollutants at breakneck speeds relative to other bacterial breakdown methods. Sambrotto credits this speed to the fact that the microbes are aerobic, rather than anaerobic, like most strains used in remediation.
“Aerobic enzymes have much more rapid degradation rates,” he said. “Oxygen is just a better hammer to hit these things with.”
Testing Their Technique
With support from PowerBridgeNY, a proof-of-concept center that commercializes cleantech spinning out of universities, Sambrotto and James are pilot testing their technique on polluted soil and sediment samples from the Hudson River and other sites.
“People are more than happy to send us samples, and they’re especially interested in hearing about the speed of remediation, as that’s what drives costs,” he said. Experiments on samples containing a mix of PCBs and chlorobenzene reveal breakdown rates of 25–40 percent per day under optimal conditions, versus 1 percent with anaerobic bioremediation. “When we hit that sweet spot to maintain optimum growth of the organism, breakdown rates are orders of magnitude faster than anything we’ve seen,” said Sambrotto.
While more pilot tests are needed — and the company is on the lookout for such projects — the promising early results have inspired the team to think about the future. Sambrotto described his vision of eliminating the financial barriers to remediating desirable but toxic spots along the Hudson River and restoring their utility.
“Hopefully, we can bring the cost down enough to address these areas,” he said. “Rather than digging up sediments and moving them elsewhere for treatment, I can envision a portable system that allows us to bring bacteria to the site and treat it right there. It’s incredible to think that we could reclaim properties that have been fallow for decades.”
Turning Carbon Dioxide Emissions into Tomorrow’s Fuels
Most people don’t often think about combustion — the fundamental chemical reaction that converts a fuel source into energy, leaving water and carbon dioxide as waste products. Jason Salfi is the opposite. As CEO and co-founder of Dimensional Energy, along with David Erickson, Tobias Hanrath and Clayton Poppe, he spends his days talking about ways to reverse combustion, which may sound like a tall order, “but it’s what plants do all the time,” Salfi said, describing the process his company is working to commercialize: a form of artificial photosynthesis that uses sunlight, water and waste carbon dioxide to create fuel.
Dimensional Energy was born from serendipity, when Erickson and Hanrath, two faculty scientists from Cornell University, unknowingly submitted complimentary applications to NEXUS-NY, a clean energy business accelerator for which Salfi serves as an advisor. Noting the ties between the professors’ technologies, which tapped sunlight and catalytic materials to convert waste carbon dioxide (CO2) into hydrocarbon fuels, the NEXUS-NY team played matchmaker, suggesting the two join forces with Salfi to form a company.
Since 2016, the team has refined their core technology and begun laying plans for an industrial partnership to test their capabilities at increasingly larger scales. Although the technology is still in its early stages, the team envisions a scalable reactor that uses sunlight as an energy source, along with novel nanocatalysts and fiber optic waveguides developed in Hanrath and Erickson’s labs, to convert waste CO2 into methanol or syngas for use in a broad range of industrial processes.
“We’re not just sequestering carbon dioxide, we’re creating something useful,” said Erickson.
The Dimensional Energy technology is “plug-in” compatible with established carbon capture systems. The schematic illustrates how waveguide and catalyst concepts are integrated to enhance light exposure to the surface of nanostructured catalysts.
Carbon Conversion Technologies
As a semi-finalist in the Carbon X-PRIZE, a $20 million competition accelerating the development of carbon conversion technologies, the Dimensional Energy team is testing the feasibility of situating their reactor at point sources of CO2 emissions, such as natural gas or coal-fired power plants, although Salfi says such co-location isn’t crucial for the system to be successful at scale.
“Ultimately, it’s up to the industrial customer whether we capture the carbon on site or use sequestered carbon,” he said. “For now, we’re just aiming to create a reactor that fits within the current industrial infrastructure, with a few novel modifications.”
This level of attention to design schemes that work well in industrial settings is a distinguishing factor of Dimensional Energy’s approach to tackling what is, by all measures, a challenging end goal. Carbon conversion technologies are viewed as a critical component of efforts to rebalance the carbon landscape, but the field is still relatively new and most technologies are early-stage.
CO2 Sequestration and Transportation
At present, the cost of sequestering and transporting CO2 makes many potential applications cost-prohibitive at scale, and new sequestration technologies, including those that capture CO2 directly from the air, are not fully commercialized. Erickson believes the company’s pragmatic approach to design and functionality will ease the process toward scalability.
“We’re pursuing traditional methods of building small prototypes and learning how to optimize and grow,” said Erickson, “But since day one we have looked at major chemical plants to understand what works in that setting, and we’ve modeled our reactors on proven designs that we know can scale.”
Salfi and his team are realistic about the timeline for carbon conversion to have a measurable impact — easily 30 years by many estimates — but they, like most others working in the renewable energy field, are undeterred by the long time horizon.
“This is hard work, and I can tell you that there are easier ways to make money,” Salfi said. “But there are so many pioneers and passionate people excited to build businesses around these technologies, and our mission to make a difference drives what we’re doing and how we approach the challenges we face.”
The New York Academy of Sciences supports the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, focused on issues like poverty, human rights and sustainability.
Published May 1, 2017
By Hallie Kapner
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon gives the opening remarks at the Sustainable Development Goals Summit
As Ban Ki-moon stepped up to a podium at the New York Academy of Sciences Summit on Science and Technology Enablement for the Sustainable Development Goals on November 29, he joked that back in school, science had never been his strong point.
But as the UN Secretary General kicked off a day-long deep dive into how innovation could transform life for billions across the globe, Ban’s admiration for those in the sciences was clearly evident. Indeed, he was there to ask scientists and representatives from industry, UN agencies, NGOs and intergovernmental organizations for their help in achieving the most ambitious to-do list ever created by humans for the sake of humankind—the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Jumpstarting an Unprecedented Collaboration
The Goals are a monumental undertaking, calling for unprecedented collaboration. To jump start the necessary teamwork, UN Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson and Academy President Ellis Rubinstein came up with the idea to convene this first gathering of representatives from the science and technology communities at the Academy headquarters, in hopes of spurring action and innovation on behalf of the SDGs.
“The Academy has brought people together to address global issues since the beginning of our 200-year history,” Rubinstein told the packed auditorium. “There is no task more global than the work of fulfilling the Sustainable Development Goals. We felt it right to host this important meeting.”
Focused on Poverty, Human Rights, Sustainability and Peace
David Nabarro, UN Special Adviser on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and Climate Change
Adopted by the UN’s 193 member states in 2015 as the centerpiece of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the 17 SDGs are a plan of action for the planet, comprising 169 targets for eradicating poverty and hunger, realizing human rights for all, embracing sustainability to protect the planet and fostering peaceful societies. Building on the framework established over the past 15 years by the Millennium Development Goals, which mostly focused on developing countries, the SDGs aim for global engagement and global cooperation.
As the declaration announcing the Agenda stated, the SDGs are “universal goals and targets which involve…developed and developing countries alike. They are integrated and indivisible, and balance the three dimensions of sustainable development: the economic, social and environmental.” “The SDG’s are universal goals…and balance the three dimensions of sustainable development: the economic, social and environmental.”
When the SDGs were adopted, UN officials realized it was crucial to “mobilize the scientists,” Ban said, remarking on how that community has long paved the way for global transformation.
“You aren’t daunted by ambition, and you’re quite at home with big goals and new ways of thinking,” he told the Academy audience.
Developing a “Common Language” Among Scientists
Further, he noted that the common language of scientists is a powerful diplomatic asset in times when cooperation among nations is critical. History supports this assertion, as recently as 2015, when scientists aided in the negotiations that led to the Iran nuclear deal, and as far back as the famous U.S.–Soviet “handshake in space” in 1975, scientists have succeeded where others have struggled.
“When extremist groups and politicians strive to push people into groups of ‘us’ and ‘them,’ the scientific community is an example of problem-solving across lines that may otherwise divide us,” Ban said.
One Summit, Four Streams
Jeffrey Sachs, Special Advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on the Sustainable Development Goals
A crowd of over 100 VIPs filled the Academy’s auditorium in lower Manhattan for the Academy Summit. Surrounded by panoramic views of one of the world’s great cities, participants came together from the United Kingdom, China, Japan, Korea, India, Africa and states across the United States to join one of four working groups, or “streams” tasked with plotting a roadmap to advance the SDGs through science and technology.
The four streams—Early Childhood Development, People in Crisis, Sustainable Consumption and Production and Urbanization—were designed to encompass several SDGs.
For example, in Urbanization, participants explored interlinked concepts of resilient infrastructure, sustainable cities and clean energy, while Early Childhood Development brought together goals advocating good health and well-being, quality education and gender equality. In this way, the stream approach encouraged participants to think holistically, and to identify problems and potential solutions capable of satisfying multiple goals.
Developing a Framework for Achieving Goals
To ensure the feasibility of these solutions, each group began by listing the key research and data gaps that must be filled in order to lay out a framework for achieving the SDGs, before brainstorming potential partnerships—particularly between the public and private sectors—required for financing, implementation and monitoring. They were then encouraged to discuss proofs of concept within their fields that could be brought to scale in service of the SDGs.
Throughout the day, speakers presented brief case studies of partnerships that are utilizing existing technologies in new ways in the fields of health, education, disease management and nutrition. Jeffrey Sachs, Special Advisor to the United Nations Secretary-General on the Sustainable Development Goals, offered particularly salient advice for tapping promising but underdeveloped technologies, and described how the progression from basic idea to mass uptake of a new technology is often stymied not by a lack of need, but by a lack of planning.
“When extremist groups and politicians strive to push people into groups of ‘us’ and ‘them,’ the scientific community is an example of problem-solving across lines that may otherwise divide us,” Ban said.
“We have to plan for the whole value chain, and that means planning for diffusion,” he said, noting that the SDGs 15-year timeline calls for quick mobilization. “Otherwise, we have wonderful technologies sitting on the shelf, not deployed.”
To help achieve the SDGs, the scientific community will be relied upon to think about innovations that can be globally implemented by the year 2030. Sachs reminded the groups of the seemingly impossible tasks humans have tackled throughout history.
“We didn’t go to the moon because it was easy, we did it because it was hard. This too is hard, but it couldn’t be more exciting,” said Sachs, recalling John F. Kennedy’s famous “moonshot” remarks.
More than 100 leaders from industry, academia, government and philanthropy participated in a series of discussions on how best to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.
The Hope Factors
After a day of brainstorming, debate and discussion, the working groups presented their first set of recommendations to the Summit at large. Ideas ran the gamut, from rough sketches of how to use mobile apps to collect data on early childhood development interventions to suggestions for making cities more sustainable as well as more livable through technology. But a common thread emerged from all four groups: the desire to meet again, to continue the conversation and to collectively commit to the work ahead.
Many attendees echoed the sentiments of David Nabarro, UN Special Adviser on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and Climate Change, who described the Summit as a “landmark day” and hoped that the activism sparked would drive change over the next 15 years.
Along the way, “in every Goal, science has a role to play,” said Jan Eliasson, UN Deputy Secretary-General, as he offered the Summit’s closing remarks.
He explained that even before the SDGs were finalized, the Science Advisory Board of the UN Secretary-General advocated an integrated, scientific approach to achieving them, noting the universality of science and its reliance on empirical facts as a force to broker the kind of global cooperation on which the SDGs depend.
“To solve problems in real life, you need a cross-cutting approach that helps coalesce people around a problem—the scientific community has perfected that model,” Eliasson said. Acknowledging the titanic scope of the SDGs and the dire circumstances of the people the Goals seek to aid, he emphasized the vast potential to create a brighter, healthier future. “The people in this room lift our hopes,” he said. “The future depends on women, youth and science—these are the hope factors.”
With the help of PowerBridgeNY, the HIGHEST Transformers company aims for cleaner, safer electrical technology that could save billions of dollars a year.
Published March 29, 2017
By Marie Gentile and Robert Birchard
What if one component of the electrical grid could be redesigned to be safer and more environmentally-friendly, plus save the United States billions of dollars each year?
Engineers-turned-entrepreneurs Saeed Jazebi, PhD, and Francisco de Leon, PhD, from the New York University Tandon School of Engineering, are bringing their clean-tech to the marketplace to accomplish exactly this task. The product, HIGH Efficiency Shielded Toroidal (HIGHEST) Transformers, is designed to be a reliable and cost-efficient clean-energy alternative to traditional transformers for use by electric utilities. With new energy efficiency standards from the U.S. Department of Energy that went into effect in January 2016, the timing is deal for HIGHEST Transformers to enter the field of electrical engineering with a unique green technology.
Jazebi and de Leon honed their product and started their company as part of a proof-of-concept center program called PowerBridgeNY, which provides early-stage investments and services to help inventors and scientists turn their high-tech, clean-energy ideas into successful businesses. The POCC, for which the Academy serves in an advisory capacity, is funded through a grant from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA).
Typically, transformers transfer electrical energy between two or more circuits via electromagnetic induction; because it’s not efficient to transmit electricity at a low voltage across long distances, transformers increase or decrease the alternating voltages in electric power applications. Ideally these transformers would operate at 100% efficiency, but energy losses linked to transformer inefficiencies are estimated at 60-80 billion kilowatt hours (kWh), carrying a cost of approximately $4 billion per year.
In addition, the coils of toroidal transformers are often insulated and cooled with mineral oil that can have a risk of leaking, or even exploding. As part of their work with PowerBridgeNY, Jazebi and de Leon set out to develop a more reliable dry (non-oil) toroidal transformer that is environmentally friendly and has a lower risk of explosions.
With the technology developed during their participation in the POCC program, HIGHEST Transformers are capable of significantly reducing energy losses and thus cutting energy costs.
“HIGHEST Transformers are comprised of a continuous steel strip that is wound into a doughnut shape (toroidal iron core) and then wrapped entirely in coils. The core has a gapless construction with extremely low no-load losses,” Jazebi explains.
A specialty designed electrostatic shield, new winding strategy, and amorphous iron cores allow the smaller transformers to be comparable in price and efficiency to larger transformers that use oil.
Built with Business Expertise
PowerBridgeNY also helped to provide HIGHEST Transformers with the business expertise and knowledge that is extremely beneficial-but not always accessible-to startups.
“The resources that they provide such as workshops and hourly meetings with lawyers and accountants are invaluable for startup companies,” Jazebi emphasized. “The conferences and networking events assisted us in connecting with national labs, large manufacturing companies, and electric utilities to test the product as well as understand the market.”
With this aid, HIGHEST Transformers achieved two extremely valuable milestones: the company became an incorporated business, and received a National Science Foundation Small Business Technology Transfer Research grant to further develop their ideas and research.
Innovation for the Next Generation
Next steps for HIGHEST Transformers include manufacturing up to five prototypes to be tested according to the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Standards Association standard test codes and then implement pilot programs with utility companies and work with large transformer manufacturers or venture capitalists. Because of the new energy efficiency standards are poised to save 3.63 quadrillion BTUs of energy for equipment sold over the next 30 years, it is an ideal time for HIGHEST Transformers to enter the marketplace since there will be a greater demand than ever for this cleantech.
More than anything, the potential impact of this technology drives the research and development of HIGHEST Transformers.
“We owe the environment to future generations; we have to maintain it. This is the prime factor of our progress,” stated Jazebi. “Providing U.S. residents a better place to live with innovative engineering and design motivates us to innovate on this path.”
Learn more about NYSERDA‘s energy-focused Proof of Concept Centers in thispodcast from the Academy.
It’s easier to find people to invest in a great new tech product if you can show that it will be profitable relatively quickly. Unfortunately, that’s not so easy to demonstrate. Learn how we’re working to change that.
The New York Academy of Sciences and NYSERDA (the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority) are teaming up to drive investment in the new technologies that will help revolutionize the way we produce and use energy by supporting Proof of Concept Centers – institutes that bridge the gap between academic laboratories and working companies. In this podcast we learn about Proof of Concept Centers: what they are and how they have the potential to create a sea change in the way new technologies are turned from ideas into realities.
Now in their third year of operation, the POCCs run programming to help inventors and scientists turn their high-tech, clean energy ideas into successful businesses by going through an immersive commercialization program that lasts for more than a year. The POCCs are led by Columbia University and the New York University Polytechnic School of Engineering, which have collaborated to form PowerBridgeNY, and High Tech Rochester, which has formed NEXUS-NY. The ultimate goal is to create more New York State-based businesses in clean technology.
Advising the POCCs
The Academy, which serves in an advisory capacity for the POCCs, in concert with NYSERDA, formed the Advisory Board (members listed below) to provide strategic advice to the POCCs, on topics such as refining program processes, timelines, and outcome reporting. In addition to discussing successes, challenges, and future plans with representatives from the POCCs, at this year’s meeting, the Board heard from three POCC program participants about their companies, technologies, and experience in the program, as well as from two POCC mentors, who shared both successes and ideas for improvement.
Board members were selected for their expertise in innovative technologies, commercialization, and start-ups, as well as their experience working across sectors, including academia, industry, government, and non-profits.
The Advisory Board is comprised of:
Richard Adams, Manager of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Center (IEC) at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)
David Audretsch, Distinguished Professor and SEPA Director of the SPEA Overseas Education Program, Ameritech Chair of Economic Development, and Director of the Institute for Development Strategies, Indiana University
Abigail Barrow, Founding Director, Massachusetts Technology Transfer Center
Bill Bonvillian, Director, MIT Washington Office, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Michael Cassidy, President and CEO, Georgia Research Alliance
Jerome Engel, Founding Executive Director Emeritus, Lester Center for Entrepreneurship, University of California Berkeley
Ed Greer, Manager, Scouting and Exploration Network, Ventures and Business Development Group, The Dow Chemical Company
Jerry McGuire, Former Associate Vice Chancellor for Economic Development, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Glen Merfeld, Platform Leader, Energy Storage Technology, GE Global Research – New York
Philip Mott, Technical Fellow, BorgWarner Corporation
Leon Sandler, Executive Director, MIT Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation
Robert Strom, Director of Research and Policy, The Kauffman Foundation
Dawn Tew, Program Director, Collaborative Research Initiatives, Global University Program, IBM
Experts gather in Barcelona, Spain, to explore the consequences of climate change on human health.
Published April 30, 2015
By Diana Friedman
The New York Academy of Sciences, in partnership with the “la Caixa” Foundation and BIOCAT, will host a 2-day conference, Human Health in the Face of Climate Change: Science, Medicine, and Adaptation, on May 14-15, 2015 in Barcelona, Spain.
“The threat of climate change to health will take many forms – from a more dangerous physical environment to the worsening quality of air and water to the spread of infectious diseases,” says Christopher Dye, DPhil, FMedSci, FRS, Director, Strategy, Office of the Director General at the World Health Organization, as well as a conference organizer and keynote speaker.
The conference is being convened in light of new research that seeks to provide a deeper understanding of the health consequences of climate change on humans – including better quantification of these effects – to improve health preparedness and protect vulnerable populations.
“Many infectious and non-communicable diseases are climate sensitive. They may be associated with specific seasons; respond to extreme events such as droughts, heatwaves, or flood; or shift in their distribution according to shifts in the long-term climate,” says Madeleine Thomson, PhD, Senior Research Scientist, International Research Institute for Climate and Society at Columbia University, as well as a conference organizer and speaker.
Empowering the Health Community
“Climate knowledge and information can be used to understand, predict, and better manage climate-sensitive health outcomes and can also help us to assess the impact of many health interventions. With a changing climate, understanding these connections and empowering the health community to use this knowledge is key to effective adaptation,” adds Thomson.
“We need to move forward effectively and quickly as our actions as humans are moving our climate to dangerous and unprecedented states that will for sure exert a strong pressure on the health status of people globally,” says Xavier Rodó, PhD, ICREA & Catalan Institute of Climate Sciences (IC3), as well as a conference organizer and speaker. “We need new science that teaches us how to face and respond to this challenge. This conference attempts to highlight those areas that require new science, as well as methods to spur policymakers into action by working together,” adds Rodó.
Topics to be explored at this multidisciplinary conference include: changes in the distribution of extreme climate events, vulnerability due to extreme weather events, land-use change and agricultural production, variable epidemiology of parasites and infectious diseases, and climate-altering pollutants.
The conference is designed to be of interest to climate scientists, atmospheric/oceanic scientists, ecologists, evolutionary biologists, epidemiologists, public health specialists, and policymakers, among others, as well as members of the media.
“The impact on human health is among the most significant measures of the harm done by climate change – and health can be a driving force for public engagement in climate solutions,” says Dye.
Some climate scientists are using humor and fantasy to combat the dark forces of ignorance and denialism.
Published January 16, 2014
By Diana Friedman
Climate science can be frustratingly difficult to understand for the uninitiated. Debate is often drawn along politicized lines, with vitriol and smear tactics sometimes casting doubt on scientific consensus. The accuracy of climate models is frequently called into question. This can be a tricky point for science communicators to rebut because most non-scientists don’t completely understand how these models work. (For a good introduction, see this article at Skeptical Science.)
Recently, climate scientists have made a few fun moves to close the gap between their work and the general public. They’ve used humor to make climate modeling and other climate research methodologies a little more accessible. Riffing off the word “model,” scientists from the International Research for Climate and Society and the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory posed for a climate science calendar. “From researchers studying tree rings to tracking satellite data, the calendar surveys the wide range of approaches that are being used to understand and predict climate change,” explains a Tree Hugger article, which features video interviews with some of the scientists involved in the project.
Across the pond, University of Bristol climate change researcher Dr. Dan Lunt used the supercomputers at the Advanced Computing Research Centre to model the climate of JRR Tolkien’s Middle Earth. (Apparently, Los Angeles is a lot like Mount Doom.)
Studying Past Climates
The actual, scientific goal of Dr. Lunt’s project was to simulate and compare modern-day Earth to Earth from the Cretaceous period. The study of past climates helps us better understand the processes that brought us to where we are. It also helps climate scientists to make better predictions about the future by vetting models against known geological history.
The analysis and interpretation of ancient climates involves modeling an Earth that would seem alien today. “The continents were in very different positions, as were the mountains and the ocean floor very different,” explains Dr. Lunt. “So, we’re used to moving things around in the models to simulate worlds that are very different than our own. It seemed natural to additionally simulate a fantasy world to try to catch people’s imagination while discussing serious points about climate science.”
The results of the Middle Earth-Modern Earth-Cretaceous Earth models are described in a mock paper on the project published under the pseudonym Radagast the Brown, a sort of magical environmentalist wizard friend of Gandalf’s. “The serious side is that the climate models I used, and those [other models] out there, are actually based on our fundamental understanding of science, of fluid mechanics, fluid motion, the science of convection in clouds, radiation from the sun, and the science of biology,” Lunt says. “Because of that, they’re not just tuned for the modern earth, they can simulate any climate.”
Listen to Dr. Lunt, a.k.a. Radagast the Brown, clarify the methodologies of climate science and some of the findings of the last Intergovernmental (or “Interkingdom”) Panel on Climate Change report to an angry Uruk-hai Middle Earth warming denialist in this podcast.
The green building community has made significant progress in designing and constructing energy neutral or ‘net-zero energy buildings’ (nZEBs), but these buildings are rare and are generally relatively low-intensity-use structures under 15,000 square feet. Now the community is developing strategies to scale up and to make the buildings more commonplace within the industry. On January 25, 2011, three speakers presented inspiring projects that are achieving new levels of sustainability in a challenging marketplace. They provided insights into metrics of success, best practices, trends, and prospects in the realm of low/net-zero energy building development.
Paul Torcellini, a commercial buildings researcher at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), described the goals and vision that guided the design of the NREL–RSF (NREL–Research Support Facility) building. NREL preferred a design-build bid that would meet as many goals as possible from NREL’s list of priorities.
The energy goals held particular significance. According to Torcellini, the success of the NREL-RSF design-build process was that it provided performance-based guidelines rather than design solutions—thus allowing the design-build contractors to be creative and develop their designs within the performance guidelines. The resulting building, which represents a great step forward in the net-zero energy realm, was constructed with the budget typical for a regular office building. Most of that budget was spent on design and modeling rather than on construction.
Human Behavior: The “Final Frontier”
The value of such a front-loaded design process was echoed by Philip Macey who leads Haselden Construction’s sustainable building division. Macey noted that the design form and function of the NREL-RSF were modeled to meet the energy goal. This required designing the building’s components for synergistic roles and multiple uses. Macey explained that designing with a ‘multi-purpose’ concept for a building’s elements was not new: architects have been applying the same idea to work within space constraints, but the difference this time was that the constraint was an unequivocal and precise energy savings goal. Macey articulated that being goal-oriented from the beginning was crucial to maintaining control, achieving those goals, and reaching project completion within budget.
Bert Gregory, Chairman and CEO of Mithun, expanded the discussion to neighborhoods, which can offer benefits unavailable to single buildings. For instance, integrating water systems is better achieved at the district scale. Gregory outlined several sustainable urban design projects where the goals varied from carbon neutrality, to water neutrality, and, in the case of Mithun’s Lloyd Crossing project, to having a neighborhood that has an environmental footprint equivalent to that of a native Northwest forest by 2050. The Lloyd Crossing project aims to transform the Lloyd district study area, a 35-block area in Portland, Oregon, into an environmentally and financially sustainable community.
In all his examples, the goals and performance metrics were stated at the outset and were followed by the development of strategies to achieve these goals within constraints such as zoning regulations, electricity demand reduction capabilities, renewable energy generation capacity, resource recovery, governance models, financing, and human behavior. According to Gregory, when it comes to achieving the energy saving goals of demand-side management initiatives, human behavior is the “final frontier.”
An Academy event, in collaboration with the Knowledge Economy Institute, assembles high-level clean technology stakeholders at the New York Stock Exchange.
What will it take to build a new generation of high-growth entrepreneurial R&D businesses working at the bio-clean technology interface to produce jobs and solutions for global problems? That was the question at hand when staff with The New York Academy of Sciences (the Academy) moderated a leadership forum at the New York Stock Exchange last week. On Thursday, May 6, and Friday, May 7, the Academy joined partners from the Knowledge Economy Institute and a select group of high-level clean energy stakeholders for the NYSE-KE2 “Clean Tech Economy Leadership Forum.”
The invitation-only forum was designed to explore what needs to happen to ensure that the U.S. can build scale to innovate, commercialize, and rebuild the economy with new jobs and solutions for critical global challenges. Leaders from business, investment, research institutions, government, and philanthropic organizations were invited to discuss and debate how to produce sustainable economic growth in the face of today’s new reality.
The two-day forum emphasized clean energy and the convergence of different fields of science and technology; and of different business models and business sectors, such as biotechnology, energy, IT, and materials. Participants included representatives of CMEA Capital, United Technologies, Ernst & Young Americas Cleantech Network, Deutsche Bank, Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers Green Tech Initiative, GE Global Research Center, Goldman Sachs & Co. Environmental Markets Group, McKinsey & Co., and the NYC Mayor’s Office, among many others.
Creating Value in Clean Energy
A roundtable on Thursday afternoon examined ways to find and create value in clean energy, and to mobilize science and technology investments. And on Friday, after Knowledge Economy Institute Managing Director Michael Whitehouse rang the NYSE Opening Bell, discussions centered on achieving U.S. leadership in clean technology, clean technology capital formation and financing strategies, business models and market creation strategies for emerging clean technologies, and public- and private-sector strategies for incubating clean technology.
Forum organizers issued a challenge to participants to come up with new ideas for accelerating the transfer of developments from the research lab to the commercial pipeline and tangible outcomes: “Responding to the need for a more efficient approach to incubating and harvesting promising new technologies, we challenge participants to consider how you can apply your knowledge and resources to accelerate the impact of public investment in research.”
