EDITORIAL: Green energy red hot in region

Three green energy advancements in Middle Tennessee hold the potential for significant research gains and industrial development that could change the course of the nation's economy.

These initiatives are leading to new jobs and possibly new technologies that could alter American fuel consumption and affect our lives on a daily basis.

We are excited to see Middle Tennessee playing such a crucial role in the nation's green technology.

One of the newest developments involves a $20 million grant from the National Science Foundation to a coalition of 11 public and private universities, including MTSU, for five years of solar research.

MTSU will receive $370,000 over the course of the grant to provide summer salaries for two teaching positions and two student scholarships to conduct the research. Nathanael Smith, an assistant professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, and Dwight Patterson, an associate professor in the Department of Chemistry, will lead the university's studies in solar energy.

Univ. of Memphis to exhibit new water turbine

Geoff Greene saw the power of water currents up close 15 years ago, when a 25-foot boat he was riding in the Mississippi River was nearly dragged underwater when its anchor snagged on the bottom and pulled down on the back of the vessel.

A question then popped into Greene's brain: How can I harness that underwater energy?

'A lot of power there, I've got to look into this,' Greene recalls thinking. 'It evolved into this wonderfully simple wheel.'

Using water's movement to generate energy is certainly not an original thought -- dams and hydroelectric power plants fill that role. But Greene's challenge was to create a new way to produce clean energy and avoid the costly and time-consuming effort of building a dam or power plant.

Enter the Greene Turbine, a 15-year labor of science, engineering and love that will be exhibited starting Monday at the University of Memphis. Greene, a 46-year-old high school graduate with no college degree who earns his living as a handyman, has a vision of installing his turbines in rivers and oceans to add juice to the nation's electrical grids."

Campus groups promote recycling, reducing | Kansan.com

The Center for Sustainability is using Hawk Week to get an early start on promoting eco-friendly habits throughout campus, which includes a sustainability pledge.

“It’s asking students to commit to some specific behaviors and then also along with that we’ll also provide incentives for them to do that,” Jeff Severin, director of the center, said. “It really focuses on reducing waste.”

The pledge kicked off at Unionfest Sunday when the center handed out steel water bottles and will continue tonight at the ice cream social at the Adams Alumni Center with free, reusable shopping bags. The center will wrap up its efforts to promote the R’s — reduce, reuse, recycle — Thursday, when it will pass out cloth napkins at the back-to-school barbecue at Mrs. E’s and more steel water bottles during Rock the Rec."

California college GOING GREEN

Amplify’d from voices.washingtonpost.com

California college is first to go 'grid positive' Dozens of colleges in the Mid-Atlantic and beyond have become community leaders in sustainability, producing alternative energy en masse and scaling back energy consumption dramatically. American University, for one, says it will be carbon neutral by 2020. The University of Maryland made Princeton Review's Green Honor Roll for raising its recycling rate past 50 percent. Johns Hopkins University has pledged to halve its emissions over 15 years. The list goes on and on. This release, though, caught my eye. Butte College in Northern California says it has become the first and only "grid positive" college in the nation, producing more clean energy than it uses. Butte College is poised to become the largest collegiate producer of solar power in the world, generating enough electricity to power 9,200 homes. (I think the shiny blue-metallic things in this picture are solar panels.) Read more at voices.washingtonpost.com

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