The Registered Student Organization, Illini Eco Concept, will design and build a battery powered concept car to participate in the annual Shell Eco-marathon. In doing so, the team hopes to promote the use of sustainable energy in the automotive field and educate UIUC students about the technology behind electric vehicles. The automotive industry is predicted to greatly decrease its carbon footprint if society shift towards the use of electric vehicles over internal combustion engine vehicles. However, there is often backlash against the use of electric vehicles due to misconceptions about their abilities. This student team will educate its members to design and manufacture an energy efficient electric vehicle and the ecological advantages it can offer.

The Gable Home was designed and built by students to compete in the 2009 US Dept. of Energy's Solar Decathlon Competition. Following the competition, the house returned to campus and was located at the I Hotel until Spring 2017 at which point it had to be moved due to the expansion of the research park. Since then a team of students and faculty have been working on finding a new permanent location for the Gable Home. A suitable location was found at the Energy Farm on Race St. in Urbana. The house is a valuable educational tool for students from many units on campus to visit and experience occupying a space that is powered solely by the sun and uses passive and active systems to create desirable thermal comfort throughout the year. This SSC grant provides support for the installation costs to make Gable Home a permanent fixture at the Energy Farm, so it meets building codes.

The Media Commons at the University of Illinois Undergraduate Library offers all U of I students, faculty and staff access to our Video Production Studio, and other Media Commons Studios. The studio is primarily utilized by students of all majors and interests for the purpose of capturing high quality video footage, using professional studio equipment (cameras, lights, etc.)  This project replaces the current outdated, high energy consumption fluorescent lighting sources with a far more energy-efficient, low heat producing, and longer-lasting LED lighting system. LED lights also eliminate the need to replace bulbs, especially fluorescent bulbs which are constructed of hazardous materials.  

This graduate student-led team will augment management of food waste produced through the dining halls on UIUC campus, via hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) for biofuel production. This is an expansion of Dr. Yuanhui Zhang’s Environment-Enhancing Energy (E2E) research program focusing on Waste-to-Energy. During the Fall 2017 preliminary study, the student team proved that mixed and individual food waste can effectively convert into biocrude oil with different oil yields under different operating conditions. This SSC grant supports the team’s efforts to pilot the process on a larger scale, converting up to one ton of food waste to biocrude oil per day. For outreach, the team will offer tours, display a mobile demonstration, publish their results on campus media, and engage undergraduate students in the research process.   

This project provides an energy consumption reduction solution for The English Building. The team will install occupancy sensing light control modules that can automatically shut off a room's lights when not in use. 11 rooms (classrooms and restrooms) have been selected for the improvements.

We have begun data collection to compare baseline energy consumption to energy consumption after installation of the pilot project - energy efficient HVAC control retrofit. Sensors needed were determined and installed. Data collection has begun with 4 weeks of data so far. Initial review of the data has identified several challenges with the HVAC already including heating valves that are leaking by providing heat where not required, which explains why the Air Handler is getting rid of heat even in the winter. The variable air volume system is also not varying as it should. This is demonstrating some pitfalls of pneumatically controlled HVAC systems.

Hundreds of students have been participating in the event to date, resulting in over 100 tons of CO2 emissions being averted and over 120 megawatt hours of electricity being saved.

The project began in the start of spring 2018 semester and had four phases, each phase consisting of 2 months approximately. The first phase consisted of analyzing the feedstock sources from the dining hall for their energy content at laboratory scale in batch reactions and potential economical returns. In doing so, our team determined which food category had the greatest conceivable benefit to campus, based on quantifying the available waste and value recovery using HTL. The second phase of this project will consist of converting the oil phase of the laboratory HTL process into a refined product for the sustainability project. During this phase, the biooil was modified via chemical treatment to refine the petroleum alternative into a usable product that can substitute a campus cost. This portion of the work was essential to validating food waste HTL processing, as our projects can specifically improve UIUC sustainability. The following weeks focused on preparing a larger scale assessment for expanding the HTL scope of feedstocks for further energy recovery using waste at larger scale, as well as determining the potential impacts on campus with sizable amounts of food waste.

Last year in competition our new car earner us 12th place with 614mpg. This is much lower than we had hoped for but we have identified our problems and are ready for a much better season. Our biggest issue was we encountered a fuel leak. The leak was not discovered until the last day of competition when it could not be fixed in time. This had a large impact on our fuel economy and kept us from being successful. We also had a bad gear ratio which meant we had to run our engine more than we would have liked to. Finally, we had a lot of issues with our body panels that increased our drag. We have resolved the fuel leak and gear ration, and are redoing some of our body panels to correct this. We hope to bounce pack and break 1000mpg this year.

The project is progressing, but all equipment is currently sitting in purchasing waiting to be released, built, and delivered.

The project has had many successful test trials using small amounts of product in our test kitchen, and we are anxiously awaiting the production equipment to arrive to start using more of the produce that is being grown.

The project has had much opportunity to develop test recipes and trial the equipment that has arrived, but is waiting on some key pieces to arrive.  The harvester being provided by funding from Dining has also arrived and been tested in the field with this year’s harvest.

The seasoning line has arrived and is installed. The extruder system modifications PO has been issued and is in design/build process currently. We have been having a series of meetings to complete this work.

The sink has been fully installed and is meeting all goals of the project. Water usage from hand washing is down as a direct result of this installation, along with providing awareness of the use of water in a processing facility.

Spring 2017: Landscape Architecture student Cameron Letterly submitted proposal to SSC, along with Illinois Extension’s Eliana Brown. Cameron graduated.

Summer 2017: Cameron completed initial design work for garden

Fall 2017: Staff turnover; Cameron left to start MBA program and Katherine Gardiner was brought on as Communications Lead

Winter 2017-2018: Staff addition of Landscape Architect student Layne Knoche

Spring 2018: Layne designing Extension pamphlets to base future RORG communications products upon, with assistance from Eliana and Katherine

Summer 2018: Staff addition of Landscape Architect Master’s Candidate Kayla Myers; Layne and Kayla work to re-design garden.

Fall 2018: Grounds will remove rock and install erosion control fabric.

Winter 2018-2019: Kayla Myers and Layne Knoche to work with Architectural Review Committee for final design approval and plant suppliers to arrange spring planting.

Spring 2019: Cement finishers will install the sidewalk. Afterwards, Master Gardeners, Master Naturalists, and the Red Bison student group will install the plantings.

Hi Everyone,

Ben from VeoRide and I have started a discussion about how we can make sure the VeoRide Bike Share opportunity is known and available to everyone in our Champaign/Urbana community.  We are not alone.  Other communities are exploring this question too. There is even a Better Bike Share Association! 

http://betterbikeshare.org

https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/news/bike-share-expansion-neighborhood-perception/545012/

https://ppms.trec.pdx.edu/media/project_files/TREC_BreakingBarriersSummaryReport_emQeiBA.pdf

Are any of you interested in joining this conversation?  Do you know of others who would be interested?  Let me know and I’ll create an email list and keep you in the loop of ideas and meetings.

Note: CU has a dockless bike share system and some of these studies looked at cities like Chicago and their large public docked bike share systems like Divvy.  But I think we can learn a great deal from what these studies and authors have learned about the introduction of bike share to various populations of potential riders.

CHANGING MINORITY & LOW INCOME PERCEPTIONS OF BIKE SHARE 
-> Smart Cities Dive reports when bike share was not understood or accepted when it expanded to the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood in Brooklyn, NY. A grant from the Better Bike Share Partnership provided resources for a community-led campaign. A historically rooted, minority-led organization lead the charge. Community groups and churches organized group rides, and schools offered bike education classes. Ads were rewritten to reflect the voice and priorities of the neighborhood. Discounted memberships were publicized and bulk memberships were offered to employers to get more people to sign up. From there, more listening sessions in the neighborhood helped Citi Bike explore new dock locations that would better serve the community. Just a year later, Bed-Stuy was an unexpected poster child for Citi Bike. Personal engagement has become a top priority for successful cities trying to expand mobility options. http://bit.ly/2CKogRj

[See Research section for links to 2 studies of minority and low-income neighborhood bike share perceptions and concerns.]

MINORITY & LOW INCOME NEIGHBORHOOD PERCEPTIONS OF BIKE SHARE 
-> Smart Cities Dive reports as bike share expands, neighborhood perception is key. (http://bit.ly/2CKogRj) A recent study published in Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice on bike share systems in Chicago reinforced a persistent problem for new mobility options: Minority and low-income neighborhoods aren't always on board. (Where Does Active Travel Fit within Local Community Narratives of Mobility Space and Place?: http://bit.ly/2Fe1jsg) Researchers used advanced machine learning to analyze focus groups of residents of 2 contrasting neighborhoods. Minority and low-income residents worry bike-sharing presence is yet another sign of a gentrifying neighborhood while more pressing needs, such as safety measures or expanded broadband are not addressed. 

A study from the Transportation Research and Education Center surveyed residents in Chicago, IL; Philadelphia, PA and Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood in Brooklyn, NY and found people of color, or those with lower incomes, had more concerns about bike sharing than white or high-income people. (Breaking Barriers to Bike Share: Insights on Equity: http://bit.ly/2FfqCdy) Among those concerns were uncertainty about how it worked, and the cost and the fear that bike share would make their neighborhoods too expensive.

[See The National & International Scene for an initiative that successfully changed a neighborhood vocally against bike share to on that embraces it.]

___________________

CCB has a growing concern about Cycling Equity, and making sure cycling events, education, infrastructure, and opportunity reach to all the neighborhoods and people in the greater Champaign/Urbana area. We will be giving this some thought as be plan for CU Bike Month 2019, and particularly, our Bike to Work Day - given that the data is showing that the majority of the people who bike to work in Champaign/Urbana are not pedaling towards the U of I, where we have traditionally put most of our efforts.

If you are interested in helping us explore something new and additional to our Bike to Work Day, let me know.  

Thanks,

Jeff

From a Washington Post article looking a census data:

Of special interest, the demographics also reveal an important underlying dichotomy. The people most likely to bike or walk to work are either the least educated in society or the most educated. Slice the demographics by income, and the less money you have, the more likely you are to take either of these modes of transportation to work. Unless, that is, you're really wealthy. The graph below illustrates that biking and walking decline as income rises, until both start to tick back up again for the two highest income groups:

The pattern is even clearer when we look at educational attainment (this is my graph, using the Census data):

Data via Census Bureau

These two graphs illustrate a transportation paradox: Alternatives to driving in the United States are both a luxury for the well-off and a last resort for the poor.

* These charts taken from here:  https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/05/09/the-demographic-paradox-of-who-bikes-and-walks-to-work/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.c8e6397e5c49

Jeff Yockey

Board Member

Champaign County Bikes

www.champaigncountybikes.org

Rooms 104 and 222 of the Illini Union are both utilized extensively throughout the day. Each room maintains a high level of foot traffic and visibility within the building. An assessment team concluded that transitioning the old lighting fixtures to LED would have an overwhelmingly positive impact on energy consumption and unnecessary waste. The overarching goal of this project is to promote sustainability from within the Illini Union. The smaller scope of this project is to reduce carbon emissions and save energy by utilizing LED lighting fixtures within rooms 104 and 222 in the Illini Union. The lighting levels generated by the new LED fixtures are more than adequate for the usage, and end users and staff have been very satisfied.