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Notes from intro meeting

Posted by Morgan White on March 14, 2014

Energy generation SWATeam 

Intros Ben McCall, Tim Mies, Nate Welch, Stephanie Lage, Drew O'Brien, Ben Beeber, Morgan Johnston, Mike Larson, and Scott Willenbrock (chair).   Scott did house and wants to work on changing campus.    BJM thanks. All busy people and really great that you are willing to participate in this. ISEE is newest incarnation of sustainability on campus. Have ear of administration. Set up personally by wise. Something she cares about. When I took the job in dec, obvious I can't do it alone. Mission is icap. Commitment we made in 2010 to move to climate neutrality by 2050. Very big challenge. Especially in energy generation. Also one on conservation and bldg standards.    Long term vision is to recommend policy changes to campus for how to move forward with sustainability across the campus. Don't have a mechanism in place for taking these recs and funding streams. At vc level soon to be at chancellor level. So starting with evaluate where we are now. This team can evaluate. And identify actions campus could take to meet 2015 goals. We should use the word could for now.    Once mechanism is set up, then can up charge the teams scope. Team can spawn studies Etc to make progress. Core group of six and ultimately surrounded by consultation group to feed in ideas info feedback. Also public input open sessions for whole campus.    Ben remember about ten hours per week. Org mtgs. Background research. Gather and synthesize info. Also faculty chair of group. BJM here to kick you off and let you go. Mostly won't need him cause he doesn't know enough to be an active participant to the group.    Specific deliverable. Short report or white paper before April 21. Discussions that week about campus sustainability. Prefer to have his talk vetted by a group of people. Also could have public discussions that week.    Larger role of SWATeams. Vision of iSEE will be essentially permanent teams. Annually reevaluate progress. Every five years review targets. Ongoing effort for campus. Really here at the beginning.    Scott. Trying to get mechanical engineering prof to join us.    Ben please set doodle for next week and then three weeks for now. That to be regular meeting time. Not going to meet spring break. Four working weeks to produce this report.   Verbatim from icap targets and strategies. Comments non judgemental. Just statements of fact. Here's where we are at. Just factual. Not criticism or applause just fact.    Solar farm. Sentence about timeline should be removed. Solar farm speculating about what's going to happen in the future is not really in our purview. Mike says, The project is in progress with a completion date not yet certain. Nate says this is significant land use. My group is interested in app. Sequestration infrastructure. Going to need a big pond. Rice production and similarities between that and algae. Co2 bubbling sequestration in ground. Have bubble size from a four year old study. From a large perspective there's a 20 acre demand in motion. So that's a feasible technology for rooftop and parking decks etc. Scott you are talking about stage two discussion. That's a later discussion. Are we accurately describing the campus.    By fy15 means what? Start or end. Generation by fy15. During fy15, 5% electricity from renewables. Compared to fy08 during that. If no further action what is destined to happen. Fy 14 is almost done.    So assessing where we are now and using that to see what could be done in fy15.   Drew. Talking about renewable energy certificates. Do recs count for the five percent? BJM. My understanding if you were to buy green power from wind farm. Buy recs separately from electrons. Would count per BJM.    UI is pre buying power through hedge program. Reverse auction in April for fy 15-17. Mike 15-25% pricing info and deciding ahead of time. Buying electrons and recs together. Spirit of docs is offsets should be last resort. Do what we can to reduce emissions themselves. And use offsets to meet targets. Recs are dirt cheap right now. drew sticky issue. What percentage would that bring us to? About 2%.    Tim solar projects decathlon houses? Feed into campus. I hotel. Solar charging batteries etc. All over the place. Ask Morgan for arrays on campus. Ask why it doesn't include solar decathlon houses? Two now another in progress. Tim will find out status of one at energy farm. Connected to Ameren. Paid by campus. Mike I hotel. Tim AG.    BJM 4. Cease all investment to increase the lifetime. Abott is doing maintenance and repairs to be able to use the assets. Scott AEI report in progress. BJM showed Scott a prelim draft. ICAP asked for the report to be done by 2012.  Mike can provide the exact dates. Has been going on over a year. He will give the PO info.    KCPA array. Size? Study impact. Want this to have an upside to it. Maybe slower than icap wanted. Should acknowledge the efforts being made. Nate to understand what's in motion currently. Mike can outline what we have tried. Study of biomass available in area. Test burn of wood hips. Tried to figure out how to burn Miscanthus. Have design for a biomass feed. Have coal stoker boilers. Set up for rocks. Try to put in leafy materials. Have a conceptual design. Have gone down a lot of paths none of which have been successful.