The Energy SWATeam's November 2019 meeting involved discussions on the iWG feedback for the draft 2020 iCAP Objectives created by the SWATeam members. Edits to the draft objectives were made.

See attached for the iWG Meeting Minutes from 11/22/2019.

Sarthak Prasad met with Lisa Lillig at KCPA on November 21, 2019. Following are the meeting notes.

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I met with Lisa yesterday (November 21, 2019) at the KCPA lobby to discuss holding this event at KCPA. I was under the impression that it would be just for KCPA employees, and not that we will hold this event at KCPA for anybody who was interested.

Lisa said that she had spoken to the management at KCPA, and they do not think that their employees would be interested in this program. She said that there are 85 employees, and they have meetings with production, their team meetings, management meetings, and that they would not be willing to wait 30 minutes to get to their meetings using the bus. I tried to explain that it doesn’t take that long for the buses, and that it is much the better option for the environment. However, she was not interested.

She said that their employees often work 12 hour shifts and they would not want to wait another 30 minutes to get to their homes. She said that the employees usually park in the parking lot below, and they use the permits (I didn’t force the fact that they may want to save the permit fee, if they parked at the periphery of the campus and took the bus from there). Their employees usually have late night shifts as well, and I told her about the SafeRide program (she said that she knew about it).

Finally, she said that a 30-minute presentation and a 30-minute demonstration of how to ride a bus, is a lot of time. She suggested that we should do the presentation while in the bus, to which I explained why it would not be effective. However, she still maintained that 1-hour is a lot of time to invest (and said that I can do a lot of work in 1 hour) for this program.

Lisa suggested that I talk to Renee Laeyll from Employee Development and Learning, and include this in their program. She also suggested that I should contact the Department of Theatre (Cathy Feely) and Department of Dance (Ana Sapozhnikov) to see if their student, faculty, or staff would be interested in this program. Finally, she suggested that I contact LAS and Engineering to see if I could get a table during the Welcome Week at KCPA (as they hold the Undergrad Convocation at KCPA).

Overall, KCPA was not interested in holding this event, although I did not have the correct information about the program.

Thank you,

Sarthak

Attached is the document referenced during the SWATeam meeting on 21 November 2019. Delegations to SWATeam members can be seen within the document.

No meeting minutes are attached.

Ben Thomas from VeoRide presented an update on the dockless bike share program to the Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Commission (BPAC) on November 19, 2019.

David and I met on November 20, 2019 for our first meeting following his Biogas on Campus email on November 13th. David received an email from Doug Wolters from the College of ACES, and Doug said that he will discuss this project with his Dean. David had not heard from anyone else.

We discussed how to proceed with this project. I will try to get in touch with Lance Schideman to get his opinion on this subject. I introduced David to the SWATeam Clerk of the Transportation and Zero Waste SWATeam, Julija Sakutyte. I will talk to the Transportation SWATeam about a possible collaboration opportunity with the Energy SWATeam and Zero Waste SWATeam. David will also talk to the Energy SWATeam about this possible collaboration.

I have set up a biweekly meeting with David, and a monthly meeting with Meredith Moore for this project.

All, Last week was a big press week. We landed on the cover of the Daily Illini on Thursday and then when we did our shipping event on Friday with Working Bikes WCIA showed up!  https://www.wcia.com/news/bike-project-helps-people-in-need/

Good press all around!

The shipping event went just about as well as it’s ever gone in my tenure. To start we had 200 fewer bikes to deal with, then Working Bikes provided twice as many staff as they have before, and to cap it off we had good turnout between my staff and volunteers. Unfortunately, volunteer and staff availability isn’t something I can count on every year.  

For this week, today and tomorrow we’ll have LAS students in to volunteer. Other than that, it’s business as usual. We’re getting into finer and finer details of culling and organizing, getting into some deep cleaning, which I regret isn’t my strong suit but man does it make a difference. Next week we’ll be closed for Thanksgiving break.
Also, a big thanks to Todd for grabbing scrap over the weekend.

The numbers:

Visitors: 40
Sales: $527
Bike (refurb): 1 or $150
Bike (B-a-B): 1 for $80
Memberships: 2 for $60
Tires/tubes: 10 for $53
Thanks!

Jacob Benjamin
Manager, Campus Bike Center

See attached file.

Following is an email sent by David Rivera-Kohr regarding Biogas on-campus to several faculty and staff at the U of I.

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Hello,

My name is David Rivera-Kohr and I’m a student member of the Energy SWATeam. I want to propose using biogas for energy on campus. Since burning biogas for energy is effectively carbon neutral, this would bring us closer to our iCAP goal of achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. 

Biogas is a huge untapped resource for energy production at the U of I. Rather than utilize the methane from animal manure and carcasses and food waste, we allow much of it to escape into the atmosphere. The Sanitary District currently uses municipal waste, restaurant grease, industrial food processing waste and campus dining hall food waste as feedstocks for its own anaerobic digester to produce biogas which is burned to generate 25-30% of the facility's energy. However, the Sanitary District does not want to dedicate digestion capacity to manure due to the need to accommodate growth of the local area (i.e. anticipated growth of student population). Furthermore, the Sanitary District is not a UIUC facility, therefore its use of biogas does not alleviate campus energy demand or contribute to our net-zero emissions objective. 

I have a few ideas for biogas production on campus I would like feedback on:

1. Add a biogas siphoning system to the manure storage tanks at the Beef & Sheep Farm.

2. Conduct a study to determine which UIUC facility produces the most methane from animal waste and construct an anaerobic digester there. The 2014 Anaerobic Digester Feasibility Study indicated the Swine Farms collectively had the highest methane output; Miles Redden told me the Beef & Sheep farm is the highest manure-producing farcilty, though ionophore feeding of beef cattle decreases methane output. It may be worthwhile to determine which single facility has the highest methane output in 2019-2020.

Additionally, there are a few options in consideration for how to best use the biogas: 

1. Burn it on-site in existing natural gas furnaces to meet facility heat demands. This could be used in conjunction with the deep direct-use (DDU) geothermal system that is being studied for the ACES Legacy corridor—the brine solution from the DDU system will bring the facility's hot water to ~110 degrees F and the biogas furnace could increase that temperature to 130 degrees. There would likely be a considerable excess of biogas, which could either be burned on-site to generate electricity for distribution to the local grid (which is less efficient than combined heat & power), transported to nearby facilities to burn in their furnaces, or...

2. Upgrade the biogas (all or only the excess from idea #1) to pipeline-quality methane and inject it into the pipeline for use at Abbott Power Plant. There is a supply pipeline that runs through the ACES corridor where this methane could be injected. 

3. Use upgraded biogas for compressed natural gas (CNG) to power F&S vehicle fleets.

The 2014 Feasibility Study also discussed constructing a pressurized pipeline to deliver  waste from multiple facilities to the site of the anaerobic digester. This may be worthwhile if the biogas is to be used on a larger scale i.e. at Abbott Power Plant or some combination of the previous ideas.

Life-cycle cost analysis of the above options should be studied to determine the most cost-effective and, more importantly, the lowest emissions option. If you can, please let me know which of these options for biogas production and use sound most feasible, or if better ideas come to mind.

Finally, we need the support and expertise of faculty and staff to advance this proposal. If you are interested in backing or contributing to this proposal, or you know someone else who may be, please let me know. Thank you for your time, and I look forward to hearing from you!

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Best,

David A. Rivera-Kohr

Undergraduate Student 

University of Illinois @ Urbana-Champaign

College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Biochemistry

Dr. Rutilio Fratti's Lab

Jonah Messinger, President of the Illinois Solar Decathlon and co-chair of the Student Sustainability Leadership Council, provided this overview of clean energy markets to the iCAP Working Group.

Attached is the document referenced during the meeting on 12 November 2019. The version attached also has member commentary up to 14 November 2019.

There are no meeting minutes.

All, Last week was uneventful. Without traffic during hours we were afforded a lot of quality sorting/scrapping time.
On Wednesday I met with F&S, Urbana/Champaign, and CCB to discuss Bike Month/BTWD planning and to reflect on this year’s Light The Night. We’ve set the date for Bike To Work Day as Friday, May 1st.
Thursday was our Fix-a-Flat class that was a no-show unfortunately. However, it’s pretty much winter so attendance was expected to be low.
Big news for this week is that we’ll be hosting Working Bikes again this year to help us alleviate our abandoned bikes problem. They’ll be down this Friday from about 11am – 2pm packing up bikes to take back with them to Chicago. TBP and I will be there on Wednesday to clear out the good ones. I’ve got a couple staffers who said they’re available to help but I’ll put the word out with TBP to see if we can stir up some more volunteers. The more the merrier!
The numbers:
Visitors: 67
Sales: 171.50
Bike (B-a-B): 2 for $65
Memberships: 2 for $60
Tire/tubes: 1 for $5

Thanks!

Jacob Benjamin
Manager, Campus Bike Center