Your College’s Greenest Secret May Be Underground

The Daily GOOD
FEBRUARY 22, 2012
Why Universities Are Building Superefficient Power Plants

Pass through a pair of gray double doors within the sleek halls of New York Universitys Stern School of Business, and immediately its warmer. Most students probably walk by these doors every day without considering whats behind them. But a series of doors and hallways and stairs leads to a steaming hot room, the length of a city block, where a system of turbines, generators, heat exchangers, and chillers provides electricity, heat, and hot and cold water for dozens of campus buildings.

This system lives just below ground, a block off Washington Square Park, underneath a pleasant walkway (http://www.nyu.edu/construction/cogen/) spotted with local grasses and benches. If you sit and listen quietly, you can hear the noise of the turbines spinning at 13,000 revolutions per minute below. Once, the university created energy in this spot by burning oil. In that plant, you could smell the diesel exhaust fumes, according to James Merrihue, the plant manager.

But this new plant, which opened in 2011, starts by burning natural gas, which produces less air pollution and fewer greenhouse gas emissions. After that fuel produces electricity, the plant takes the leftover energy and uses it over and over again. “That’s what gets us the efficiencyalmost 90 percent, says Merrihue. The hot exhaust from two gas-fired turbines fuels a steam turbine, which produces additional electricity. The leftover steam travels to a hot water heat exchanger and then to a chiller, where the last bit of energy is used to cool a 2400-gallon tank of water down to 45 degrees.

Power plants like this one, which eke every drop of work they can out of their fuel, are called cogeneration or combined heat-and-power plants. The technology isnt new: Thomas Edison first used it commercially (http://syracusecoe.org/gpe/images/allmedia/LivableNewYork/CombinedHeatandPower.pdf) in 1882, at the Pearl Station, where heat from electricity generation went to warm nearby buildings. But it has been underused. In 2008, the Department of Energy called cogeneration one of the most promising options in the US energy efficiency portfolio and estimated [PDF (http://www1.eere.energy.gov/manufacturing/distributedenergy/pdfs/chp_report_12-08.pdf)]that if these plants accounted for 20 percent of the countrys electricity capacity, they would keep as much carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere as taking 154 million cars off the road would.

*Sarah Laskow (http://www.good.is/community/Sarah%20Laskow)*

*Photo (http://www.flickr.com/photos/f-r-a-n-k/256559060/in/photostream/) via (cc (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/)) Flickr user frankh (http://www.flickr.com/photos/f-r-a-n-k/)*

Can a Denim Kilt Fight Climate Change?

The Daily GOOD
FEBRUARY 21, 2012
When Battling Climate Change, Put On Your Denim Kilt

Clothing made from organic cotton (http://www.good.is/post/an-apparel-line-that-s-more-than-green-it-s-blue/) or other eco-friendly materials may lessen an outfit’s (http://www.good.is/post/ethical-style-fashion-advice-for-the-socially-conscious/) environmental impact (http://www.good.is/post/low-fashion-h-m-has-a-pollution-problem/).But what about garments that benefit the air by sucking up pollutants? A futuristic collaboration between a nanotechnologist (http://www.good.is/post/carbon-nanotubes-the-revolutionary-substance-that-will-change-the-world/) and fashion designer is raising the bar for environmentally friendly fashion with concept line Catalytic Clothing (http://www.catalytic-clothing.org/home.html).

More of an academic conversation piece than a marketable brand for the moment, the designs are the work of chemist Tony Ryan at the University of Sheffield (http://www.shef.ac.uk/) in England and professor Helen Storey of London College of Fashion (http://www.fashion.arts.ac.uk/). The duo premiered the project last summer with installations of air-purifying textiles, including a “field of jeans” (http://www.catalytic-clothing.org/foj.html) that used photocatalysts to fight air pollution. OnBBC (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b015sqc7) today, Ryan and Storey announced that Catalytic Clothing will return this spring when the two attend Edinburgh International Science Festival (http://www.sciencefestival.co.uk/)bedecked in nitrous oxide-absorbing nanotechnology. According to Storey, Ryan will don acatalyzed denim kilt complete with sporran (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sporran) (that external pouch that dangles around a kilt) and special socks, and I hopefully am going to be wearing an air purifying Vivienne Westwood top and fall frock.

According to Ryan, the denim’s coating of catalyst particles reacts with light and air to produce bleach to neutralize nitric oxidea gas that contributes to both climate change and asthma attacksin the air. Ifeveryone in the city of Sheffield wore the catalytically enabled clothes, Ryan says they could remove enough nitric oxide to keep the city’s air at a safe limit. To encourage mass action, future plans include a “pop-up laundry” where people could bring their clothes to get catalyzed. *Zak Stone (http://www.good.is/community/StoneZak)*

*via SmartPlanet (http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/intelligent-energy/wash-away-pollution-wear-his-kilt-her-designer-dress/13320); Image (http://www.flickr.com/photos/zoonabar/3353176439/sizes/o/in/photostream/) via (cc) (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/) Flickr user zoonabar (http://www.flickr.com/photos/zoonabar/)*

Democratizing Design for the Startup Community

The Daily GOOD
FEBRUARY 20, 2012
Online Agency Brands Social Enterprises on a Startup’s Budget

No matter how enticing (http://www.good.is/post/climate-hawks-get-a-logo/) the message or important (http://www.good.is/post/does-stem-education-have-a-branding-problem/) the mission of a new nonprofit or startup, a website and logo that look like theyve been slapped together for nothing will keep the idea from generating the buzz it needs to take off. Unfortunately, many social entrepreneurs who are just starting off can barely afford to pay rent on an office, let alone shell out thousands of dollars to branding strategists (http://www.good.is/post/what-s-so-great-about-ikea-anyway-why-no-one-in-the-world-likes-brands/) to coach them through their launch (http://www.good.is/post/three-steps-toward-a-fully-realized-brand-the-boba-guys-logo-tone-and-presentation/).

Brands For The People (http://www.brandsforthepeople.com/)is a new business that connects social entrepreneurs with design and brand strategy on the cheap. The company charges less than $1,000 for an entry-level package, claiming that its trimmed the fat associated with branding agencies by moving business entirely online. Using Brands For The Peoples online system, prospective clients submit a brand brief explaining their mission statement and summarize design preferences on a worksheet. The service suggests the best designers for the jobpulling from a database of 33 creatives (so far) from around the worldand allows the client to invite up to five of them to pitch ideas. The company argues that the result is a win for the clientwho pays less money to access a competing marketplace of ideasas well as the designer, who doesnt have to deal with sales or invoicing.

The company is the product of brand consultantAndrea Shillington, who abandoned a corporate career to found the company within Vancouver’s startup community.”We will rest when businesses make a profit without being greedy,” she declares on the Brands For The People website. “We will exhale when we’ve helped hundreds of thousands of startups become world famous brands.”

*Via Springwise (http://www.springwise.com/marketing_advertising/branding-platform-matches-socially-focused-startups-hand-picked-designers/?utm_source=feedburnerutm_medium=feedutm_campaign=Feed%3A springwise %28Springwise%29)*

Maybe I’m so bitter because everyone I thought as beautiful ended up not being around anymore. / Peut-être que je suis si amer car tout le monde je pensais aussi beau fini par ne pas être plus là.

[Google Translate sucks]