The Faces of Clean Energy
Shawn Archibeque, College of Agricultural Sciences
The booming trend of ethanol production in the American heartland and beyond has helped to drive up the cost of corn and corn production. Once the corn is used for ethanol production, the spent corn has another potential: feeding the animals that feed America – an environmentally friendly way of disposing of spent corn.
Shawn Archibeque, an assistant professor in the Department of Animal Science at CSU, is researching the effects – both on the animal and the environment – of spent corn fed to cattle. Part of his current research activity is looking at ways for the animal industry to use byproducts of biofuel production without creating environmental problems.
“With high levels of distiller’s grain, you can create a phosphorous or nitrogen issue,” Archibeque said, noting that the digestive systems of cattle will release the gasses into the environment.
Beyond the use of distiller’s grains as animal feed, Archibeque also plans to investigate using byproducts of other methods of biofuel production for animal feeding, including algae harvested for conversion into oil. Archibeque joined CSU in 2006. He earned his bachelor’s degree from CSU in environmental health, and in animal science in 1998; his master’s degree in nutrition from North Carolina State University in 2000; and a doctorate in nutrition from Texas A&M University in 2003.
Michele Betsill, College of Liberal Arts
Michele Betsill is an associate professor of political science at Colorado State University. Her research focuses on the politics of global climate change, from the local to the global level. She is particularly interested in the various policy approaches to controlling greenhouse gas emissions. She is the co-author, with Harriet Bulkely from Durham University, of “Cities and Climate Change: Urban Sustainability and Global Environmental Governance,” (Routledge 2003), which analyzed climate change decision making in six cities in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia, with a focus on the energy, transport and planning sectors.
She continues to follow the development of local climate change policies in the United States and has recently worked with Barry Rabe, University of Michigan, on an analysis of the interactions between state and local climate policies. She has been a long-time observer of international climate change negotiations and is currently working on a project that traces the evolution of emissions trading markets as a policy instrument for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. In this project, she and Matthew Hoffman, University of Toronto, are examining how the idea of emissions trading developed and spread through more than 30 policy venues, how trading rules reflect the specific context of each venue, and the broader implications for the global politics of climate change.
She received her doctorate in political science from the University of Colorado-Boulder. Prior to coming to CSU, she was a post-doctoral fellow with the Global Environmental Assessment project at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. She spent her sabbatical, 2006-07 academic year, as a visiting scientist with the Institute for the Study of Society and the Environment at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
Daniel Bush, College of Natural Sciences
Daniel Bush, professor of plant biology and head of the biology department at CSU, has devoted his academic career to investigating sugar and amino acid transport from sites of primary assimilation to import-dependent sinks in plants – a fundamental process that allows plants to function as multicellular organisms.
His research uses molecular, genetic and biochemical tools to define the mechanisms and regulation of this essential process. For clean energy, Bush and his research associates are using their discoveries about the pathway and regulation of sugar partitioning to different organs to increase plant growth. The aim of this research is to maximize plant biomass generation as a feedstock for biofuels.
Plants are capable of synthesizing their own food from inorganic substances using light as an energy source. Nevertheless, they are composed of many tissue systems, such as roots, flowers, seeds and developing leaves that depend on sugar and amino acid import for growth and development. In general, these essential molecules are transported to the import-dependent cells from mature leaves. This process, known as assimilate partitioning allows plants to function as multicellular organisms.
Bush’s laboratory provided the first biochemical and molecular descriptions of several plant sugar and amino acid transport systems that are key contributors to resource allocation between organs.
Thomas J. Dean, College of Business
Thomas J. Dean is an associate professor of strategy and entrepreneurship, teaching in the Department of Management and in the Global Social and Sustainable Enterprise master’s degree program at Colorado State University. His research and teaching passions are at the intersection of entrepreneurship and sustainability, and the economic opportunities inherent in the transition to a sustainable economy.
Dean is an expert in a broad variety of topics related to sustainability, environmental issues, and business, but his specific expertise is in the area of clean technology entrepreneurship and sustainable venturing. He is an expert in sectors such as natural products, green building, renewable energy, energy efficiency, and opportunities in a carbon-constrained world. He is a member of the Clean Energy Supercluster steering committee at CSU.
Dean previously taught at the University of Colorado where he served as faculty director of the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship and founded the Cleantech Venture Challenge business plan competition, Sustainable Opportunities Summit and Sustainable Venturing Initiative. He created one of the first courses in environmental entrepreneurship in 2001, and developed new conceptual links between the fields of environmental economics and entrepreneurship. Dean also co-founded one of the first environmental management programs at the University of Tennessee, where he also served as faculty associate at the Energy, Environment and Resources Center. He is currently writing a textbook on sustainable venturing and pursuing further research on the topic.
Brian Dunbar, College of Applied Human Sciences
Brian Dunbar is executive director of the Institute for the Built Environment and construction management professor at Colorado State University. Dunbar’s teaching, research and project work focuses on environmentally sustainable design and construction materials, methods and systems. His sustainable building teaching and research as been recognized by the American Institute of Architects, the U.S. Green Building Council-Colorado Chapter, the Colorado Governor, communities and the university.
Dunbar coordinates the graduate emphasis in sustainable building at Colorado State. Through IBE, an interdisciplinary research institute that engages faculty and industry partners in healthy and sustainable building issues, Dunbar has guided project work and facilitated charrettes for the National Park Service, U.S. Forest Service, AIA, municipalities, school districts, New Belgium Brewing and the Colorado Governor’s Energy Office. Dunbar also teaches professional certificate programs.
He has served as LEED project director for numerous registered and certified projects and, each year since 2004, has been selected as a LEED faculty member by the US Green Building Council. Dunbar holds degrees in architecture from the University of Michigan and is a U.S. Green Building Council LEED Accredited Professional.
Bill Parton, Warner College of Natural Resources
Bill Parton, senior research scientist in the Warner College of Natural Resources’ Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory, has worked extensively on the development of ecosystem models used around the world to determine the impact of climatic and land use changes on natural and managed ecosystems. His models have been used to determine the effect of current biofuel cropping systems on the net greenhouse gas exchange and biofuel production.
Currently, his models are being linked to economic and life cycle models to evaluate the environmental impact of biofuel cropping systems at the regional, national and global scales. In Colorado, his models are being used to evaluate the environmental impact of biofuel cropping systems. These models are helping determine the environmental impact of expanding corn and grain biofuel cropping systems on net greenhouse gas exchanges within the United States. This analysis is being expanded as part of an EPA project to evaluate the potential global impact of U.S. government mandated biofuel production on land use practices and net greenhouse gas flues at the global scale.
Earlier this month, Parton worked with the Ecological Society of America to co-chair a national meeting on the environmental impact of biofuel cropping systems within the United States. He has published many publications on the impact of climate and human induced land use changes on managed and natural ecosystems and has one of the highest science citation ratings within the environmental science field.
Jennifer Peel, College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences
Jennifer Peel researches environmental epidemiology – specifically, the health effects of certain kinds of air pollution. She identifies the kinds of pollutants in the air in specific areas and measures their impact on the health of the population that breathes the air. Peel particularly looks at possible relationships between pollution and its health impacts such as emergency department visits for specific illnesses, arrhythmic measurements in patients with internal defibrillators, and conditions in infants including apnea, and preterm birth and low birth-weight.
Peel’s work usually concentrates on pollution from automobiles and sources such as industry and power plants. She also has worked on looking at pollution from cookstoves in third-world countries.
Peel is an assistant professor in the College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences in the Department of Radiological and Environmental Health Sciences.
W.S. Sampath, College of Engineering
Since 1991, Professor W.S. Sampath and his research group at the Materials Engineering Laboratory in Colorado State University’s College of Engineering have worked on manufacturing technology to efficiently and cheaply produce photovoltaic solar cells, which can be one of the most cost-effective, environmentally clean and reliable energy sources of the future. Sampath - along with two affiliate faculty members and former students of his, Kurt Barth and Al Enzenroth - formed AVA Solar in January to commercialize the technology. Since then, the company has raised substantial funding including a $3 million contract from the U.S. Department of Energy's Solar America Initiative. The company now employs 40 people.
"Without moving parts or external fuel, photovoltaic devices directly convert absorbed sunlight into electrical current," Sampath says. "The high-powered devices produce no waste or pollution, and by using the technology developed at Colorado State, the devices will soon be mass produced at low cost."
The cost of manufacturing photovoltaics has the potential to be less than $1 per watt of electricity generated, competitive with current methods of electricity generation in most parts of the United States and the world.
Sampath joined Colorado State University in 1985 as an assistant professor in mechanical engineering after obtaining his doctorate from Arizona State University in 1985. He received a Colorado State University Engineering Award of Excellence in 2000.
Jim Sites, College of Natural Sciences
Performance is paramount in Jim Sites’ photovoltaic laboratory. Solar cells fabricated across the United States and abroad are shipped to it for precision electrical and optical measurements. The goals are to separate the various solar-cell losses, to explain the losses on a fundamental basis, and to suggest strategies for improved solar–cell performance.
When a solar cell arrives, precision current and capacitance – a measure of the amount of electric charge stored or separated for a given electric potential – measurements are made as a function of voltage, temperature, light intensity and light wavelength. Other tests are conducted on the physical model, analytical techniques and cell comparisons.
Sites, associate dean of Research in the College of Natural Sciences at CSU, has had an increasing leadership role in the thin–film solar–cell community. He has published 150 papers; 38 of his students have completed their master’s degrees and 22 their doctorates.