Research for a Greener Future
Today's Earth Week feature highlights three cross-disciplinary research centers where Caltech scientists and engineers collaborate on projects that will have a positive impact on energy, the environment, and Earth's sustainable future.
The Ronald and Maxine Linde Center for Global Environmental Science
The Ronald and Maxine Linde Center for Global Environmental Science brings together researchers from chemistry, engineering, geology, environmental science, and other disciplines, with the goal of understanding the global environment and developing solutions to complex environmental problems. Linde Center scientists investigate how Earth's climate and its atmosphere, oceans, and biosphere have varied in the past and how they may change in the future. They are working on solutions to vexing challenges in climate change prognosis and mitigation, and to improve air and water quality.
The Linde Center was established thanks to support from Caltech alumnus and trustee Ronald Linde and his wife, Maxine. Led by acting director Paul Wennberg, Caltech's R. Stanton Avery Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry and Environmental Science and Engineering, the center is housed in the Linde + Robinson Laboratory, which was constructed in 1932 as an astronomy lab. The building recently underwent extensive renovations, to become one of the nation's most energy-efficient laboratories and the first existing historic building to earn the LEED Platinum rating. In 2012, Linde + Robinson was honored with a 2012 Los Angeles Conservancy Preservation Award for the "exceptionally creative and sensitive approach" of the renovation. The project, the conservancy noted, "not only preserved the building's unique historic features, it found brilliant new uses for them—particularly the solar telescope, built as the centerpiece of the original building but functionally obsolete. Now it tracks the sun and uses the light it captures for both illumination and exploration."
Resnick Sustainability Institute
Caltech's Resnick Sustainability Institute was created to fund and foster innovative Caltech-based sustainability and energy-science research collaborations with the potential to develop renewable-energy technologies that may one day help solve our global energy and climate challenges. The mission of the institute, which was founded with a generous gift from Stewart and Lynda Resnick, spans research, education, and communications. Current projects include research into energy generation, such as advanced photovoltaics, photoelectrochemical solar fuels, cellulosic biofuels, and wind-energy system design; energy conversion work on batteries and fuel cells; and research into technologies for energy efficiency and management, such as fuel-efficient vehicles, green chemical synthesis, and thermoelectric materials, as well as advanced research on electrical grid control and distribution.
This year the Resnick Sustainability Institute debuted two new initiatives: the Resonate Awards, which honor breakthrough achievements in energy science and sustainability, and a prize postdoctoral fellowship program. The Resonate Award winners will be announced at the Fortune Brainstorm GREEN conference in May 2014, and the inaugural class of postdoctoral fellows will be announced this fall.
Led by Harry Atwater, Caltech's Howard Hughes Professor and professor of applied physics and materials science, the institute is collocated with the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis (JCAP) in the recently renovated Jorgensen Laboratory, which has been awarded LEED Platinum certification. In the renovation, Caltech and its partners were able to reuse or recycle over 90 percent of the materials removed from the original facility, a computer science building. Jorgensen has high-efficiency lighting and HVAC systems, a "living roof" composed of evergreen and drought-tolerant grasses, and water-saving plumbing and landscaping, among other green features.
The Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis (JCAP)
JCAP, established in 2010 as a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Energy Innovation Hub, is the nation's largest research effort focused on artificial photosynthesis. Led by researchers from Caltech (JCAP South, housed at the Jorgensen Laboratory) and partner Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (JCAP North), the center aims to create a low-cost artificial generator that uses sunlight, carbon dioxide, and water to make fuel from the sun 10 times more efficiently than current living crops. Once a prototype generator is developed, it will be handed off to private-sector companies to launch a new solar-fuels industry. Such a transformative breakthrough would reduce our country's dependence on oil and enhance energy security.
JCAP researchers include Scientific Director Nathan S. Lewis, Caltech's George L. Argyros Professor and professor of chemistry; Jonas Peters, the Bren Professor of Chemistry; William A. Goddard, Charles and Mary Ferkel Professor of Chemistry, Materials Science, and Applied Physics; and Harry Atwater.
