Caltech goes green in a big way
By Joe Piasecki 04/23/2008
As the city readies for Saturday’s celebration of all things green (see Prime Pick, page 17), its most fabled institute of higher learning is preparing to take a leadership role in addressing climate change.
Caltech has announced the creation of the Ronald and Maxine Linde Center for Global Environmental Science, which aims to develop scientific responses to global warming by combining the efforts of faculty and students in a number of fields.
As chemists study the creation and destruction of ozone in our atmosphere, for example, physicists might investigate the effects of wind and water currents, while geologists look at evidence of past climate changes and social scientists postulate how people can best respond to the climactic mess we’re in. Meanwhile, JPL scientists will use satellite technology to monitor ongoing environmental change.
“What Caltech does better than almost any other place is to bring together people from many disciplines and create an environment for them to incubate their thoughts and follow them through to solutions,” said Jill Perry, Caltech’s media relations director. The problem of global warming, she said, “is an area where we wanted to put more focus.”
The school also recently announced that it has begun installing on its campus what will be Pasadena’s largest-ever solar energy facility. The 220-foot long, 90-foot wide structure, which is being erected on top of a parking structure, is expected to produce 320,000 kilowatt hours of electricity. One kilowatt hour is about what it takes to run a 19-inch color television set for four hours or a 40-watt light bulb all night long.
Once completed in August, the solar energy facility will produce enough clean, renewable electricity to prevent 527,000 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions from reaching the atmosphere each year — the equivalent, according to a news release, of planting 72 acres of trees or removing 46 cars from operation.
Ronald Linde is a Caltech trustee and private investor who founded Envirodyne Industries, a plastics and packaging company, after earning a doctorate in materials science at Caltech. Maxine Linde once worked as a scientific programmer for space programs at JPL and was Envirodyne’s chief administrative officer. Together they established an $18 million trust to fund the Center for Global Environmental Science.
DIGG | del.icio.us | REDDIT