Final+Draft+Newsletter+Article 

We are a group of four Rubenstein school students pursuing several potential future green projects within our community. Through our Greening of Aiken Internship course we have been given guidance from RSENR faculty, research staff and graduates students within the Aiken center. One project Sara Engerman is developing is the creation of rain gardens around the university. The goal of a rain garden is to remove the toxins and pollutants collected by water on its journey from the clouds back into the ground. These rain gardens will not only be easy on the eyes but they will be easy on the local ecosystem too. Another main concern of the Greening of Aiken Interns, Future Greening group is to understand the progress UVM is making towards their efforts to reduce carbon emissions. Sara Engerman is working to find what UVM’s current total carbon emission status is and what the largest sources of carbon emissions on campus are. She is working with Gioia Thompson, who is an expert working on figuring out the numbers for this project. The next step is exploring alternatives to fossil fuels to heat and cool UVM buildings. Intern Grant Troester is working on drafting a proposal for the installation of an electric vehicle parking spot here at UVM. The spot would potentially be located in the guest parking lot on the side of the Jeffords building. This location is ideal because a pay station already exists for these parking spots, making it easier to convert the existing infrastructure to accommodate for the costs of plugging in a vehicle to charge. Nick Clemens is working on two future projects; an on-campus hydrogen car station and developing a plan to fill the open space above the first-floor entrance of the Aiken Center with several engaging and educational items. The hydrogen charging station would capture energy from the sun through the use of photovoltaics. Energy from the photovoltaics would then be used to split hydrogen from oxygen to power the vehicles, which would emit water vapor as a byproduct. This project also includes investigating the potential to purchase a hydrogen-fueled vehicle for RSENR. In 2015, Hyundai, Honda, and Toyota are releasing new models of hydrogen-fueled cars. The hydrogen would be used for local faculty, staff and student travel. Nick’s second project involves filling the large open space above the north entrance of the Aiken Center with either greenwalls or a large, indoor tree. The last member, Sydney Eberth, is working on reinstating the Carbon Offset Fund program here at RSENR. This program would allow students, faculty, and staff that have traveled for RSENR activities to report their travel miles into a web-based system and use a centralized fund to purchase carbon credits to offset the carbon used to travel. The second project Sydney is working on is to look into the potential of harnessing geothermal energy and using it to heat and cool some buildings on campus. This particular project is looking to make the Gund Institute climate neutral by using geothermal energy. On top of using geothermal energy as an energy source, we were also considering using photovoltaic cells, which would help harness the geothermal energy and aid in creating a more climate neutral building. By the end of the semester we will have written proposals to start advancing several of these future Greening projects. Feel free to contact us with any ideas you may have for new green building features around the building, we are always open for suggestions! This is a Hydrogen car fueling center, but not just any fueling center for hydrogen cars; this is a solar powered fueling center that uses the power from photovoltaics to create hydrogen for fuel.