In our backyard

The unfortunate plight of our amphibian friends hits closer to home. The Barton Springs salamander, found only guess where is facing extinction as the oxygen levels in the water drop to to lack of rain.

Story here.

Director of New Energy Institute Named At The University of Texas at Austin

Maybe this will get the ball truly rolling on alternative energy research and ways to reduce Texas' carbon footprint.

From the University of Texas website:

July 14, 2009

AUSTIN, Texas — Dr. Raymond Lee Orbach, the U.S. Department of Energy's first undersecretary for science, has been appointed director of The University of Texas at Austin's Energy Institute, a multi-disciplinary institute that combines the strengths of the university's schools and colleges to advance solutions to today's energy-related challenges.

Dr. Raymond Lee Orbach

The Energy Institute is developing multi-disciplinary research programs and educational materials to overcome the scientific and technological barriers to a secure and sustainable energy future, while helping policy leaders make the informed decisions required to reach this goal.

Orbach, whose appointment begins Aug. 1, also will have joint appointments as a professor with tenure in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Cockrell School of Engineering; the Department of Physics, the College of Natural Sciences; and the Jackson School of Geosciences.

The Energy Institute will integrate the most advanced expertise from across the university's schools and colleges, including the Cockrell School of Engineering, Jackson School of Geosciences, College of Natural Sciences, McCombs School of Business, School of Law, LBJ School of Public Affairs, School of Architecture and the College of Liberal Arts, as well as expertise from the private sector.

"I am delighted that Ray Orbach has agreed to serve as the director of our Energy Institute at The University of Texas at Austin," said Steven Leslie, provost of the university. "He is a world leader of energy research and policy and he will be instrumental in organizing research efforts of our faculty in areas of critical importance to our state's and nation's energy needs."

"It is with great enthusiasm that I look forward to becoming a part of The University of Texas at Austin," said Orbach. "The superb quality of the faculty and students, its supportive relationship with the State of Texas, and its national and international renown make this an opportunity of enormous promise. I am delighted to be a part of the university's faculty, and I look forward to working with the campus, the city of Austin, the Texas legislature and our nation's leaders to solve the technical and policy issues facing our planet's energy future."

Orbach said he sees the Energy Institute as a unifying collaborator to help The University of Texas at Austin mobilize its faculty and academic resources, as well as talent from other universities in The University of Texas System, to make "transformational changes in energy production and usage" of fossil fuel, renewable and nuclear energy resources. He said these changes would address threats to the economic future of Texas, the nation and the world.

Orbach said the energy resource issues to be addressed initially would include:

• Fossil fuel production and use operating in a carbon-constrained environment. The lack of economical technology, combined with an absence of a legal and policy framework, could put Texas' energy resources at risk.
• New concepts and technologies in wind and solar energy for the development of electrical energy storage for these resources.
• Recycling spent fuel from carbon-free nuclear energy. The university has the opportunity to recreate a robust radio-chemistry program to extract the energy contained in spent fuel and to substantially reduce its toxicity and heat load for subsequent storage.

"These three areas combine to form the nexus of the future of energy production and use in the State of Texas requiring game-changing transformational research and development," said Orbach. "With success in this endeavor, our state will enjoy an economy and quality of life in the future comparable to that which it has enjoyed in the past."

Orbach was sworn in as the Department of Energy's first undersecretary for science in June 2006. He was the chief scientist of the Department of Energy, and adviser to Secretary Samuel W. Bodman on science policy as well as all scientific aspects of the Department of Energy, including basic and applied research ranging from nuclear energy, to environmental cleanup of Cold War legacy sites, to defense programs. Orbach was responsible for planning, coordinating and overseeing the Energy Department's research and development programs and its 17 national laboratories, as well as the department's scientific and engineering education activities.

Orbach also was responsible for the department's implementation of the president's American Competitiveness Initiative, designed to help drive continued U.S. economic growth. He led the department's efforts to transfer technologies from Department of Energy national laboratories and facilities to the global marketplace.

From the time of his Senate confirmation in 2002, Orbach also was the 14th director of the Office of Science at the Department of Energy. He managed an organization that was the third largest federal sponsor of basic research in the United States, the primary supporter of the physical sciences in the country and one of the premier science organizations in the world.

From 1982 to 1992, Orbach was the provost of the College of Letters and Science at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and from 1992 to 2002, he was chancellor of the University of California (UC), Riverside. Under his leadership, UC Riverside doubled in size, achieved national and international recognition in research and led the University of California in diversity and educational opportunity. In addition to his administrative duties at UC Riverside, Orbach sustained a research program, worked with postdoctoral, graduate and undergraduate students in his laboratory and taught the freshman physics course each year.

Orbach received his bachelor of science degree in physics from the California Institute of Technology in 1956. He received his Ph.D. degree in physics from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1960 and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He began his academic career as a postdoctoral fellow at Oxford University in 1960 and became an assistant professor of applied physics at Harvard University in 1961. He joined the faculty of UCLA two years later as an associate professor and became a professor in 1966.

Orbach's research in theoretical and experimental physics has resulted in the publication of more than 240 scientific articles. He has received numerous honors as a scholar, including two Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowships, a National Science Foundation Senior Postdoctoral Fellowship at Oxford University, a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship at Tel Aviv University, the Joliot Curie Professorship at the Ecole Superieure de Physique et Chimie Industrielle de la Ville de Paris, the Lorentz Professorship at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, the 1991-1992 Andrew Lawson Memorial Lecturer at University of California, Riverside, the 2004 Arnold O. Beckman Lecturer in Science and Innovation at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the Outstanding Alumni Award from the California Institute of Technology in 2005.

Orbach is a fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has held numerous visiting professorships at universities around the world and is a member of 20 scientific, professional and civic boards.

For more information, contact: Robert D. Meckel, Office of Public Affairs, 512-475-7847.

Tomorrow's energy today Pt. 2: Ethanol and Austin recycling

The field of ethanol research is a double-edged sword. Though ethanol and other biofuels basically use existing carbon, thereby not releasing anymore into the atmosphere, ethanol made from corn is an energy intensive process that doesn't really save the use of fossil fuels.

But many companies are researching ways to use any organic matter, such as wood chips and compost material to create biofuel. The process now involves breaking down the cellulose in plants that give plant cells hardy walls, converting it to sugar and then to ethanol. Today, a different tact is being researched. Carbon rich materials are pumped with oxygen and burned, making the carbon conversion to biofuel more efficient and cuts down on carbon dioxide and other by-products like slag.

So, the plants producing such energy could potentially reduce and possibly replace landfills - organic waste would be shipped to plants (hopefully in non-fossil fuel driven vehicles) to become fuel for the very consumers that created the waste to begin with.

Here in Austin, a new drive is under way to encourage a higher amount of recycling, another way to cut down on land wasted as dumps.

One impediment to recycling, even in the liberal oasis of Texas, was inconvenience. Glass and metal had to be separated from paper and cardboard and it was often a mystery why your recycling bin was emptied by the city last week but not this one. Such sorting systems work in Europe, particularly Germany, but such programs have been in place long enough that it's second nature for Germans to throw glass in one bin, waste in another, paper in another and so on. The bins are colored differently to make it as simple as possible.

In the US, things are going a bit differently. In order to encourage recycling here in central Texas, Austin is introducing single stream recycling. In other words, no more seperation, just throw anything recyclable into one bin.

However, this comes with caveats: No food waste (and all rigid plastic and metal containers must also be free of such), no plastic bags, yard trimmings, or broken or window glass.

However, at austinrecycles.com, the motto is "Zero Waste" and there is a search engine that will tell anyone how to dispose of anything that doesn't fall under the allowed recyclables.

It's a start and a good one. If even a small portion of central Texans began recycling, waste could be significantly reduced.

Now if we can get some of those biofuel plants close to the city, perhaps the promise of zero waste is not so far-fetched.

A renewable Austin. Smell that fresh air.

Another green victory in Austin

On Thursday, September 25th, the Austin City Council passed a few resolutions that prove why this fair city, a liberal oasis in a desert of rednecks, deserves its spot on the Top 50 Greenest cities in America. According to Country Home magazine, we are number 33. Popular Science ranks us at 10.

Aside from having one of the cleaner electrical plants (but that's not saying a lot) in the state, Austin's public transportation, its green-conscious citizens and one of the more effective municipal recycling programs around, the city is now installing photovoltaic cells (i.e., solar panels) on certain schools and offering cash incentives to green building.

In a rundown of the council meeting Thursday night, the Austin American-Statesman listed the resolutions passed.

The top 2:

The city council "agreed to give a $51,216 rebate to the Long Center for the Performing Arts for installing high-efficiency lighting, chillers and cooling towers."

And it "agreed to use $100,000 in state grants to buy and install solar photovoltaic systems in six Austin schools."

This is wonderful and groovy and should be applauded. However, though it may be a start, is it enough?

How about more money for all the schools? Why not turn every section of available rooftops at the University of Texas into solar collectors? Initial cost aside, in the long run it would reduce dependence on the power plants and cut down on the emissions that accompany the production of electricity the "old-fashioned" way.

Lastly, how about fining developers that don't make their new buildings energy efficient. It's more expensive to do so in some cases, and those that do should be rewarded. But the condos built as cheaply and as quickly as possible should have to pay for not respecting the land around the spot they just dug up.

The Austonian condos going up downtown have doggie toilets for chrissake. How about some solar panels and maybe a couple wind generators?