Another Green School Campus Gets Recognition

This trend is catching on and at iGreenBuild.com we love to read about higher education practicing what they preach about sustainability and green building. Naropa University recycles, uses wind power, uses eco-friendly landscaping practices, offers green transportation for its students and has undergraduate and graduate tracks in environmental studies. The mix of green school facility management and environmentally conscious student life will no doubt produce the type of business leaders and citizens the planet needs for a healthy future. Great work Naropa staff and students!
Princeton Review Recognizes Naropa University's Sustainable Leadership
in 2011 Guide to 311 Green Colleges  
BOULDER, Colo. (May 18, 2011) – Naropa University has been recognized by Princeton Review in The Princeton Review's Guide to 311 Green Colleges as one of 308 institutions of higher education in the United States and three in Canada that demonstrate a strong commitment to sustainability in their academic offerings, campus infrastructure, activities, and career preparation. 
The 220-page guide is created in partnership with the United States Green Building Council, an outstanding national nonprofit organization best-known for developing the LEED green building certification program. This past fall, USGBC launched its Center for Green Schools to increase its efforts to drive change in how campuses and schools are designed, constructed, and operated.
Naropa University was recognized as an American College & University Presidents' Climate Commitment (ACUPCC) signatory school, which the university joined in 2007. ACUPCC is a high-visibility effort to address global climate disruption undertaken by a network of colleges and universities that have made institutional commitments to eliminate net greenhouse gas emissions from specified campus operations, and to promote the research and educational efforts of higher education to equip society to re-stabilize the earth's climate.

ACUPCC's mission is to accelerate progress towards climate neutrality and sustainability by empowering the higher education sector to educate students, create solutions, and provide leadership-by-example for the rest of society.
Naropa University's Environmental Sustainability
Naropa University has long been committed to an institution-wide commitment to sustainable environmental practices. Offsetting 100% of its electricity from wind power renewable energy credits, Naropa University is committed to green practices. Naropa University's Zero Waste goal supports the university in being a sustainable system where resources are fully used and waste is reduced to a minimum, with partnerships with Eco-Cycle, on-going educational and community events, composting and weekly trash audits conducted on all Naropa campuses to assess potential waste reduction. Naropa University's other sustainable initiatives include:

• Naropa University landscapers utilize environmentally sound practices, creating a campus that is a model of efficiency.
• Recognizing the positive ecological, physical and economic benefits of alternative transportation, Naropa University provides all students and staff with an RTD Eco Pass, which offers free access to local and regional RTD buses.
• Naropa University also gives Naropa community members and visitors access to Naropa's bike fleet. At present Naropa has 120 bicycles that students have access to for free. Bicycles can be checked out for a month at a time and are maintained by Naropa's Bike Shop.
• Naropa students, staff and faculty are encouraged to participate in Boulder Car Share and receive parking and permit discounts as incentives.

With one undergraduate and three graduate study tracks in environmental career paths, Naropa University's environmental stewardship extends beyond the day-to-day approaches, to training the next generation of sustainable leaders.
Accredited by the Higher Learning Commission and a member of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools, Naropa University is a private, nonprofit, nonsectarian liberal arts institution dedicated to advancing contemplative education. This approach to learning integrates the best of Eastern and Western educational traditions, helping students know themselves more deeply and engage constructively with others. The university comprises a four-year undergraduate college and graduate programs in the arts, education, environmental leadership, psychology and religious studies.

Industry Leading Companies Join Fast-Growing EnOcean Alliance

The EnOcean Alliance, a consortium of companies working to standardize and internationalize energy harvesting wireless technology for green intelligent buildings is one of the fastest growing member organizations of its kind. EnOcean Alliance is proud to be adding such market leaders as General Electric, Titus, Viessman and Overkiz, a Somfy company, to its rapidly growing list of members. With the addition of BSC Computer GmbH as the newest promoter member, the EnOcean Alliance now totals 172 companies. In 2010, over 50 new member companies joined the consortium, resulting in 50 percent growth over 2009.

Confirming this technology’s rapid adoption rate, there are now thousands of EnOcean-enabled buildings in North America and more than 100,000 worldwide. Quickly becoming the industry standard for both new and retrofit green intelligent buildings, EnOcean’s miniaturized energy harvesting modules feature ultra low power radio technology that is highly attractive to OEMs developing wireless sensors and switches used to improve the energy efficiency of commercial facilities significantly.

“Battery-free wireless sensors leveraging radio frequency technology are on the verge of becoming ubiquitous because of their remarkable flexibility,” said Kirsten West, principal analyst at West Technology Research. “We’re seeing significant deployments across building, industrial and home automation applications. Consequently, OEMs representing all kinds of devices are exploring this technology more seriously. That certainly explains why the EnOcean Alliance is seeing its membership grow so quickly.”

As the latest member of the EnOcean Alliance, BSC Software allows the status of all EnOcean-based equipment to be captured and visualized in real-time, as well as stored in a database for further utilization.  With this information, facility managers can start or shut down a wide range of disparate devices on a scheduled or remote basis as well as program event controls and timers. As a result, idle systems can be taken offline to eliminate unnecessary power consumption and restarted on an as-needed basis with a simple mouse click or securely activated via a smartphone. 

Collectively, Alliance participants represent more than 700 interoperable products, all based on EnOcean’s battery-free technology that converts ambient solar, thermal and motion energy into usable electrical energy.  This breakthrough technology is being employed in products ranging from wireless key card switches to occupancy sensors to room controllers, all of which play a vital role in contributing to improved energy efficiency and occupant comfort.

The work of EnOcean Alliance members continuously focuses on creating seamless communication between different EnOcean enabled devices and standardizing the technology on an international level. To meet the needs of a growing list of OEMs, the Alliance’s technical working group recently released a new version of the EnOcean Equipment Profiles (EEP 2.1). The expanded specification has already been published, containing approximately 100 profiles for the development of a variety of building automation solutions.

 “The rapid growth of the EnOcean Alliance is strong validation that OEMs recognize the advantages of wireless energy harvesting technology for a wide range of applications,” said Graham Martin, Chairman of the EnOcean Alliance.  “Of equal importance is the fact that this technology is playing an instrumental role in driving energy efficiency initiatives across multiple industries on a worldwide basis.”

About the EnOcean Alliance
Leading companies worldwide from the building sector collected to form the EnOcean Alliance, with the aim of promoting and establishing innovative automation solutions for sustainable buildings – and so to make buildings more energy-efficient, more flexible and lower in cost. The core technology of the Alliance is the energy harvesting wireless technology for flexibly positioned and service-free sensor solutions. The EnOcean Alliance aims to standardize and internationalize energy harvesting wireless technology, and is dedicated to creating interoperability between the products of OEM partners. More than 170 companies currently belong to the EnOcean Alliance. The headquarters of the non-profit organization is located in San Ramon, CA.  See also:  http://www.enocean-alliance.org/en/

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Nine Challenges of Alternative Energy

In his just-released report, "Nine Challenges of Alternative Energy" Lawrence Berkeley staff scientist David Fridley assesses the obvious yet too often overlooked obstacles to the widespread deployment of alternative energies around the world. The report can be downloaded here. According to Fridley, these nine challenges are:

Scalability and Timing

Commercialization

Substitutability

Material Requirements

Intermittency

Energy Density

Water

The Law of Receding Horizons

Energy Returned on Energy Invested