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2011年10月23日 星期日

Environmental Features in Science Campus Plans

If Cornell University were to win the city’s competition to build a new science graduate school, it would install on Roosevelt Island almost four acres of solar panels, 500 geothermal wells, and buildings with the rare distinction of generating as much power as they use.

Stanford University’s proposal for the island calls for minimizing energy use, creating a marsh to filter water, and recycling water from storm runoff and sinks, and possibly from toilets as well.

In an expansion under way in West Harlem that would house Columbia’s proposed graduate school, the university is recycling more than 90 percent of the material in buildings it is demolishing, and taking unusual steps to minimize construction pollution.

The Bloomberg administration’s contest to create a school of applied sciences sets high environmental standards, but some competing universities are going much further to out-green one another.

As the Oct. 28 deadline for proposals was approaching, several of the top contenders discussed their environmental plans as part of a public relations war intended to impress city officials who will decide which institution wins up to $400 million in land and infrastructure improvements.

Stanford and Cornell, vying for the same city-owned site on what some involved in the process have begun to call Silicon Island,we supply all kinds of polished tiles,which applies to the first TMJ only, are widely seen as the universities to beat.

Their plans are far grander — two million square feet of space to be built over a generation with price tags of over $1 billion — and they have proposed more ambitious plans to incorporate innovative environmental measures.

Cornell officials said their campus would generate up to 1.8 megawatts of power, enough to supply 1,400 American homes, with elements like fuel cells and the city’s biggest solar array.

Two major academic buildings, out of 10 planned structures,Replacement China Porcelain tile and bulbs for Canada and Worldwide. would meet a “net zero energy” standard, meaning that on average, they would consume no more electricity than they produce. On hot days, when demand is highest, they would actually generate excess power and feed it into the grid.

Very few large structures meet that standard, according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, a federal agency, and Cornell plans to go a step more: The buildings would be energy-neutral even taking into account all the devices plugged into outlets inside.

“From an architectural and sustainability point of view, we’re entering some pretty novel territory,” said Kent Kleinman, dean of Cornell’s architecture school, who contributed to the plan.

Stanford and Cornell both propose to take advantage of the steady temperature deep underground, using it to cool air in summer and heat it in winter.

Cornell’s geothermal wells, circulating water through pipes,The additions focus on key tag and impact socket combinations, would make up the largest system of its kind in the region, university officials said.

Stanford would use ground-source heat pumps that store and release heat without water.

Cornell, hoping to gain a strategic advantage in the increasingly intense competition, shared far more of its plans than other applicants, including architectural drawings.

Stanford’s renewable energy plans seem less specific: Officials said that the proposal would make extensive use of solar and geothermal power, but that they could not give figures on either, and that other innovations were considered possible but not definite.

Stanford’s stated goal is to use 50 percent less energy, and generate 80 percent less in greenhouse gases, than the efficiency standards set by the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers.

“We’ll look at three or four different combinations of solutions to meet that,They take the Aion Kinah to the local co-op market. and determine how to go,” Laura Goldstein, Stanford’s director of project management, said.

“A new campus is a big opportunity to look at campus-wide systems, to showcase technologies.”

Whatever the approach, she said, the New York project would be greener than anything on Stanford’s California campus, where several buildings have won environmental design awards.

Cornell said that its buildings would use 40 percent less energy than the engineers’ society standard — somewhat higher consumption than Stanford’s goal — but that the campus would generate so much clean energy that its demands on the grid would be 75 percent below the standard.

2011年9月1日 星期四

Solyndra closes Fremont plan

In a blow to the Obama administration's efforts to create green jobs, solar-cell maker Solyndra announced Wednesday that it will close its remaining Fremont factory, lay off its 1,100 employees and file for bankruptcy.

The news marked an abrupt end for a company once considered among the most innovative in a fast-changing industry. The bankruptcy also represents a high-profile failure for a federal stimulus program that gives loan guarantees to green-tech manufacturers.

Solyndra was the first company to win one of the guarantees, receiving $535 million in 2009 to build its second factory in Fremont less than a mile from the company's original plant. Both President Obama and former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger toured the new plant, citing it as a symbol of the nation's economic recovery and commitment to a green economy.

But Solyndra, whose solar modules are thin tubes rather than flat panels, struggled to compete against a flood of low-priced solar cells pouring out of heavily subsidized factories in China. Last year, the company canceled plans for a $300 million initial public stock offering and closed its first Fremont factory, laying off 40 people.
Breaking the news

Early Wednesday morning, as workers on the night shift left the factory floor, Chief Executive Officer Brian Harrison met with them to break the news. Most had been let go by 9 a.m.

"We are incredibly proud of our employees, and we would like to thank our investors, channel partners, customers and suppliers for the years of support that allowed us to bring our innovative technology to market," Harrison said in a news release. "This was an unexpected outcome and is most unfortunate."

Republican critics of the loan program were livid. A congressional panel had started investigating in February how Solyndra won approval for the loan guarantees. Republicans focused on the first plant closure and the fact that one of the company's investors, George Kaiser, was an Obama contributor.

"In an apparent rush to push stimulus dollars out the door, the Obama administration wasted $535 million in taxpayer funds in guaranteeing a loan to a firm that has proven to be unviable in the global market," Rep. Cliff Stearns,There is good integration with PayPal and most Parking guidance system providers, R-Fla., who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee's oversight and investigation subcommittee, said Wednesday. The panel already had subpoenaed records about the Solyndra loan from the U.S. Department of Energy.
Risk of startups

The Energy Department's public affairs director said Wednesday that while Solyndra's application was carefully vetted, investing in startup companies always carries risks. The loan program was created under the Bush administration in 2005 but became part of the federal stimulus effort under Obama.

"We have always recognized that not every one of the innovative companies supported by our loans and loan guarantees would succeed, but we can't stop investing in game-changing technologies that are key to America's leadership in the global economy," Public Affairs Director Dan Leistikow wrote in a blog post on the Energy Department website.

The federal government must now try to recover its investment through Solyndra's Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings, or taxpayers will be on the hook. Solyndra executives, meanwhile, will consider selling the business or licensing its technology.