Innovation Showcases (Asynchronous Session)
Rapid Coastal Community Climate Adaptation : How the Great Lakes Climate Corps Accelerates Community Resiliency View Digital Media
Innovation Showcase Carl Lindquist
The Great Lakes Climate Corps has demonstrated how even underserved coastal communities can quickly adapt to a changing climate. From weatherizing low-income housing to installing solar panels, from planting trees to restoring shorelines, from K-12 climate literacy to hands-on community adaptation projects. Learn how any community can move from theory to practice and from vulnerable to resilient! The Superior Watershed Partnership serves coastal communities and Native American tribes on Lake Superior, Lake Michigan, and Lake Huron.
Proof of Carbon: Carbon Capture at Personal Scale View Digital Media
Innovation Showcase Muqing Bai, Mohib Jafri, Amelia Wen Jiun Gan
Carbon capture and storage technology have long been utilized on an industrial scale. To provide the individual agency in addressing climate change, carbon capture technology is speculated for use on a personal scale. Taking inspiration from the pioneer of the first-invented computer, we named the device “Mark-I” to evoke the possibilities of incorporating carbon-capturing technology into our daily routines within a design space at a personal scale. Mark-I employs mineral carbonation with olivine (MgSiO4) as the carbon-capturing technology to sequester and track carbon dioxide produced in a home environment. The device incorporated a researched-and-designed mechanism that accelerates the mineral carbonation process, actively creating data visualizations and instructions to guide and communicate with users. The design considers the afterlife of olivine filters. It proposes to occupy the existing recycling infrastructures to maximize the use of olivine based on its material capacity. The design of the material afterlife also includes an awarding system based on the blockchain system. It generates carbon coins in exchange for every batch of successfully reused carbon filters of olivine that is full from sequestering carbon dioxide as raw material for new industrial productions.
Voluntary Energy Efficiency Program: The Work from Home Trend Presenting a Win-win Opportunity for the Triple Bottom Line View Digital Media
Innovation Showcase Moulshree Mittal
The global pandemic COVID-19 has led to an advanced exploration of the remote world, with many employees and employers wanting to continue with the work-from-home (WFH) scenario even after offices reopened. Consequently, it becomes essential to understand the impact of energy load shifts from commercial to residential buildings and the resultant opportunity for the energy-efficient design community with this new trend. Simultaneously, businesses and companies are increasingly declaring net-zero goals, adopting various green market approaches, to tread a socially and environmentally responsible path. We are proposing the creation of a new program for such companies bringing them closer to their climate action goals while also benefitting their employees. It encompasses an opportunity for employers to incentivize energy efficiency upgrades of their employees’ homes, in a manner that proves to be financially feasible for both the primary stakeholders, i.e., companies and employees. We began the research by analyzing utility load shifts due to employees shifting to a WFH setup. Then, we collected information for residential green building retrofit techniques, identifying the most cost-effective and impactful ways to create healthier WFH environments while reducing GHG emissions. Further, we evaluated the viability of the new proposed program relative to the widely used existing decarbonization strategies. Next, we theoretically tested the implementation of the program through a case study. The report culminates with different suggestions to standardize the roadmap of such a voluntary energy-efficiency program and a discussion about its practical implementation to enable a win-win response of COVID-19 to climate change.
Global Warming Must and Can Be Brought Under Control - Now: To Bring an End to Global Warming - Make It Rain View Digital Media
Innovation Showcase William Van Brunt
Over the last 40 years, the catastrophic storm risk has tripled, as the latent heating power of the atmosphere grew, driven by the 15% increase in the average global concentration of the primary greenhouse gas, water vapor. The annual number of catastrophic, weather-related events increased to over 750, by 2019, 525 above the 1980 baseline of 225 annual events causing additional economic losses of 130 billion dollars annually. Since 1980, these global warming weather-related catastrophic events have taken tens of thousands of lives, while wreaking 2.4 trillion dollars in cumulative worldwide weather-related destruction. The annual number of catastrophic weather-related events has increased at an average rate of 11.8 yr.-1 or 45 per tenth of degree increase in temperature. New principles of atmospheric physics are applied to determine changes in the average global concentration of water vapor in response to changes in heating and sea surface temperatures and gauge the effect of these changes on global temperature. These principles demonstrate that by reducing the global concentration of atmospheric water vapor, the rate of increase in the average global temperature can be reduced and with sufficient reduction, the temperature increases can be reversed. An increase in the average, annual, global rate of precipitation of 0.3%, 2.9 mm yr-1 can return the average global temperatures to those of the mid-seventies. While it has taken 40 years to get here, this solution might be effected within a few years. Action has to be taken, now.
