USU AT FOREFRONT OF SUSTAINABLE ENERGY MOVEMENT
USU President Stan Albrecht said he hopes the Sustainable Energy and Climate Initiatives Conference held Friday at the USU innovation campus “is the beginning of a conversation, not the end.” The conference was attended by Park City Mayor Dana Williams and Logan mayor Randy Watts, Dianne Nielsen, Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.’s energy adviser, as well as members of the governor’s energy advisory council and energy industry leaders, city and county policy makers, environmental consultants and representatives of non-government organizations. Albrecht, one of the original signers of the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment, said his personal involvement in environmental issues goes back to the beginning of his academic career, as a professor at USU. He shared an anecdote about leading a team of graduate students who were discussing land-use issues with hayseeds in rural Utah. Albrecht said recognition across the nation is growing that it is time to act to prevent the worst effects of climate change. “The topics that we will discuss today are not without controversy,” Albrecht said. “Despite those detractors, the numbers of those who recognize the need to act continue to grow.” Albrecht also said he was excited by the opportunity for USU to showcase some of its interdisciplinary work at the conference. “One of the exciting things about the conference is it gives us a chance to show you the things USU is doing to lead the way,” Albrecht said. “That’s the most important thing – exposing our students to these issues and letting them show us the way.” The next speaker to take the podium was Dr. Lance Seefeldt, professor of chemistry and biochemistry, who gave a quick rundown of the worldwide energy crisis, or as Seefeldt termed it, the World Energy Challenge. Seefeldt said there is no present technology that can meet global energy needs sustainability due to predicted global population increase. Eighty-six percent of current energy comes from fossil fuels, a resource which has been depleted by as much as half. Seefeldt quoted the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, in which economist Sir Nicholas Stern predicted business as usual will result in five to six degrees of warming by 2100, resulting in a loss of five to 20 percent of the global GDP, the worst market failure ever. “Attacking the problem is a pro-growth stance,” Seefeldt said. Seefeldt said one of the problems with current energy sources is nuclear power to meet growing energy demands would require one new gigawatt plant to be built every day for the next 50 years. Terrestrial uranium supplies would be exhausted in 10 years at this rate. Traditional renewable sources like hydroelectric, tides, geothermal and wind power are capable of producing from .5 to 12 terawatts annually, but these all pale in comparison to the sun, which offers 120,000 terawatts per year. “More energy from the sun strikes the earth in one hour than is consumed in one year,” Seefeldt said. Harnessing this energy and putting it to work is problematic, however, he said. Breakthroughs on the cost of passive solar array equipment are needed before it becomes feasible on a wide scale. First-generation renewable fuels like ethanol and biodiesel are not as environmentally friendly as once believed. “The price of tortillas in Mexico has doubled because people are buying corn to make fuel, not food,” Seefeldt said. The big problem, Seefeldt said, is the expansion of food production land into forests and prairies resulting in massive carbon gain due to conversion of food production land into fuel production land. But Seefeldt said there is a solution to this food vs. fuel conflict. The promise of microalgae, a second-generation sustainable liquid fuel, could replace half of the fuel in the U.S. using just one or two percent of present croplands. Seefeldt said another benefit of second-gen sustainable liquid fuel based on algae is it could be brought online using our current infrastructure. Second-generation biofuels, unlike hydrogen, would not require any new service stations or pipes to be built. USU’s vision is to create 10,000 gallons of fuel per acre per year without competing with farmland, Seefeldt said. He ended his presentation by showing a graph from the U.S. department of energy, which shows fossil fuel consumption continuing to grow at pace with the population into the future. “I would like to challenge all of you to make the graph wrong,” Seefeldt said, “because we can’t have this.” Jeff Muhs, executive director of the Sustainable Energy Research Center, was the last speaker at the conference. Muhs recently spent a year on Capitol Hill working on energy issues and said, “Politicians are more willing to innovate out of this than they are to mandate our way out of the energy crisis.” Muhs is working to create better ways of growing the algae, which he hopes will one day power the global economy. Most algae currently grown for commercial uses are farmed in outdoor raceway ponds which waste water, are susceptible to contamination, and have many other problems as well. Closed photobioreactors like the ones Muhs said he is working with are better than open ponds because it is easier to control the amount of light and the temperatures the algae are exposed to. Photobioreactors prevent contamination, reduce water and CO2 loss, improve light use and help researchers control the culture conditions and sustain high density. Muhs said the challenges algae face include overheating, oxygen accumulation, biofouling and cells dying from stress. “They don’t like to be moved,” Muhs said. Using algae for fuel is a multi-step process, Muhs said, consisting of strain selection, incubating and culturing, food stock production, harvesting, dewatering and oil extraction. USU’s researchers are focusing on the first three steps. Muhs said algal growth is followed by lipid accumulation. “It’s kind of like us as humans,” Muhs said. “We grow very quickly at first and then start accumulating oils.” One specific experiment currently underway at USU is focused on understanding the relative merits of two different kinds of bioreactors: biofilm and suspended solution reactor architecture. Muhs said USU has advantages over traditional research models: top level commitment from leadership like Albrecht and dedicated facilities at the innovation campus. The conference continued into the afternoon, with presentations by Sandra Reategui on wind power, Byard Wood on solar power, Conly Hansen on biomass and Nat Frazer, dean of the College of Natural Resources, who spoke about the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment and what it means for USU.
-graham.terry@aggiemail.usu.edu