News Briefs
Solar Decathlon stars sustainable designs
This solar house, designed by a team from Carnegie Mellon University, harvests rainwater in barrels to feed its wall-climbing garden.
set by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, the primary sponsor of the event. Of the 20 teams competing, the Technische Universität Darmstadt (Germany) crew created this year’s winning entry. The team won in part for innovation as well as for their house’s perfect score for “energy balance”—the stored battery energy was as much as or more than that used in the house. Second place went to the University of Maryland team, which used a creative leaf-structure design. The roof of this house had a “stem” and “veins” for its architecture and solar cells for “photosynthesis”. The team from Santa Clara University, which took third place, calculated that its house would cost about $250,000 to build if it were mass-produced—about what
designs, such as the use of a curtain of milk bottles to trap heat in the Pennsylvania State University house. Teams incorporated sustainably harvested materials into their houses, including salvaged slate and trees grown on their university campuses. Other highlights included the miniature windmills perched outside the submission from Texas A&M University and the gardens that climbed homes’ outer walls, watered with recycled gray water. Another challenge involved electric vehicles, provided by the organizers of the event: the teams had to drive as far as they could in tiny cars, powered only by the houses’ excess energy. The Solar Decathlon will return to Washington, D.C., in the fall of 2009. For more information, go to www.solardecathlon.org. —NAOMI LUBICK
Water levels in almost all of the streams and rivers in Kashmir have decreased by about two-thirds in the past 40 years, according to a report released in September by the nongovernmental organization ActionAid International. On the Brink? A Report on Climate Change and Its Impact in Kashmir documents the disappearance of many small glaciers from the region’s mountains, the western Himalayas. The report warns that receding Himalayan glaciers could jeopardize water supplies for hundreds of millions of people. Other climate-related changes include rising sea levels that could threaten Indian cities such as Mumbai and Kolkata, more floods and droughts, more disease, and lower crop yields. To view the report, go to www.actionaidindia.org/down load/On_the_brink.pdf.
Future growth for nuclear power?
The world’s output of nuclear power could nearly double by 2030, according to a new report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). IAEA’s Energy, Electricity and Nuclear Power Estimates for the Period up to 2030, published in October, suggests that the increase will be fueled by demand from emerging economies and fears about supply security. Much of the expansion in nuclear-generated electricity will be in Japan, South Korea, China, and India. Of the 31 nuclear power plants currently being built, 11 are in China and India. The U.S.—which has 103 reactors that provide one-fifth of its electricity—could see capacity expand by 15–50%, from old and proposed plants. Despite that growth, the report predicts that nuclear energy’s global share could drop from 16% to 13% by 2030, because other sources of electricity will grow faster.
December 15, 2007 / Environmental Science & Technology n 8209
NASA
Kashmir’s climate crisis
many of the Solar Decathlon structures would cost. Energy-saving concepts popped up throughout the teams’ structures. For example, passive solar heating through well-insulated, south-facing windows made for beautiful views and innovative Rhitu Chat terjee
The third Solar Decathlon, held in October on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., drew students from universities and colleges around the world “to design, build, and operate the most attractive, effective, and energy-efficient solarpowered house,” in the challenge
