With support from MITEI, students launch new campus energy projects

Kendra Johnson, an MIT junior in environmental engineering, says little changes in behavior can make a big difference in turning students from polluters into environmental stewards. Take the example of printing class and other materials at the campus's 20 Athena clusters (grouped workstations for student use). Encouraging paper conservation could save up to $20,000 annually, plus it's environmentally friendly, according to Johnson. What's required are some simple changes in behavior, such as picking up the tasks you print, printing double-sided, and eliminating header pages whenever possible.

"I arrived at MIT as a freshman and saw ridiculous waste in Athena clusters. I'd see piles of paper that wasn't ever going to be picked up," said Johnson. Students can print as much as they want and send a print job to any Athena cluster on campus.

Johnson and her team recently won $250 from the MITEI Student Campus Energy Project Fund for preparing "Print Smarter" educational posters to place in Athena clusters. Their project is part of a broader proposal called "Behavior Change Toward Sustainability" that includes paper conservation, energy-efficient computer use, and shutting off lights. The project aims to change the ways people around campus use energy and, as a result, to create an instantaneous impact on energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.

"You can use a laptop for two hours on the same amount of total energy it takes to produce one sheet of paper," said Johnson. This embodied energy includes paper manufacturing, transportation, and distribution.

About 10 million sheets of paper are printed each year in Athena clusters, according to MIT printing logs. Of those, fewer than one-third were printed double-sided. In a survey, Johnson's group found that 63 percent of the 652 respondents always printed header pages (cover pages with the user's name), half of them because they didn't know how to turn off the header pages function. About half of the people said they don't know how to print double-sided, and another half said some things need to be single-sided.

Small changes add up

Johnson's group was one of 10 new student campus energy projects funded by the MITEI Student Campus Energy Project fund, bringing to 16 the total number of grants under the semi-annual program that started last year. The new projects range from testing thermoelectric devices for waste heat recovery on MIT's power plant to hosting an undergraduate dorm electricity competition and a comprehensive lecture series exploring what individual MIT department expertise can be brought to bear on the climate crisis.

"Our students continue to be a driving force for change on campus. Many of their ideas are becoming integral solutions for our campus energy challenges," said Steven Lanou, deputy director of the sustainability program in the Environmental Programs Office and a member of the MITEI Campus Energy Task Force. "The fact that so many students are willing to give so much of their limited time to help MIT 'walk the talk' is a testament to the importance of the issues and the urgency of the problems."

Johnson's group is an example. In a collaboration with MIT's Information Services and Technology (IS&T) and the Share a Vital Earth (SAVE) groups, the default printing mode for newly registered computer accounts is expected to be changed to double-sided to affect the incoming class of 2012. "This change, along with several joint outreach efforts to current students promoting double-sided printing, aims to significantly reduce unnecessary paper consumption in Athena clusters," according to Oliver Thomas of IS&T.

So far, 68 percent of students polled using Athena clusters in Building 12 and W20, where the first signs were placed, said they found the signs helpful, 54 percent said they helped them save paper, and 50 percent switched their default to double-sided.

Dishing out energy

Mimi Zhang, who expects to earn her master's in city planning this year, is on a team that also is looking for a simple, inexpensive way to make a difference at MIT. The team is developing a solar thermal dish concentrator that could potentially produce an average of 1.5 kilowatts of thermal power in a Cambridge climate—enough to supply the hot water needs of one person in a dormitory or six people in an office building year round.

"The dish could be rigged to heat water and plug into a current system, so it isn't necessary to replace an entire water heating system," Zhang explained. The existing hot water system can still serve as a backup in case there are any problems with the dish.

Zhang's team hopes to encourage MIT to use more renewable energy resources to provide heat and power to residents living on and off campus. They are building a solar thermal dish concentrator from inexpensive, commonly available materials such as standard piping, flat glass mirrors, and bicycle parts. The project also aims to introduce the MIT campus to the possibility of using solar thermal energy in addition to the solar photovoltaic panels already installed on several MIT buildings. Solar thermal collectors are an order of magnitude more cost effective than solar photovoltaic, so it makes sense that MIT consider installing them, according to her team. The total estimated cost for the experimental dish is $4,000.

The group expects to build a prototype before graduation. The 12 foot square parabolic dish will weigh about 500 pounds, including its mirrors, support structure, and steel base. The students would like to install it on the MIT campus and test it for a year in New England weather to see its durability and ability to produce thermal energy.

Retrofitting MIT for efficient energy use

Another group of students is looking at how to create inexpensive, high-impact retrofits for current MIT buildings. Buildings rank among the main contributors to inefficient energy use and carbon dioxide production. While it makes sense to build new buildings that are carbon neutral and energy efficient, it doesn't make sense to tear down all existing buildings.

"Current buildings will be standing for the next 30-50 years, so we need to decrease their energy footprint," said Adam Siegel, an MBA student at the Sloan School of Management who is a member of the MIT retrofit team. "We're not researching potential new technologies to implement, but rather we are installing energy-efficient lighting, for example." Siegel, Chris Kempes of the Earth System Initiative, and architecture graduate student Carrie Brown aim to summarize the cost, benefits, and potential behavioral barriers of retrofits, and apply the relevant retrofit technology on campus.

The group also wants to identify buildings on campus that need efficiency improvements and use them as test sites for experimental technologies from companies or from MIT itself. MIT has a rare set of building monitoring tools, ranging from advanced sensors to the energy map, all of which could allow the group to analyze the effects of retrofits. For example, the group is looking at the occupancy sensors that had been in some classrooms in the past to sense the body heat of people in the room. The sensors did not work well, partly because some were blocked by a shelf or were in the corners of the room where they couldn't sense people. "We want to have a better understanding of how they work," said Siegel. "We're talking with the MIT Department of Facilities about this."

"One big thing you'll see by the end of this semester is student brigades, large groups of students who will take Saturday or Sunday to learn about retrofitting technology and implement the technology," he said. The Department of Facilities is helping the students. Siegel said the activities will be advertised soon.

Other student projects