George Hines (BS ’08) checks out the “Big Belly” solar-powered trash compactor outside the Red Door Café.

Lean, Green Caltech

By the time your carpool arrives at Caltech, you’ve read two papers in AIChE Journal, downed a cup of coffee, and discussed the subtleties of the Lakers game. When the car pulls into its prime, designated space, you head for the office by way of the Red Door Café. Because you brought your Caltech mug, your rich, organic coffee costs only 81 cents. You blow the savings on a muffin, though, slipping the unbleached napkin it came with into a solar trash compactor on your way out. Your hands are still full as you step into your office, but the renewable-energy-fueled lights sense your presence and switch on, brightening the daylight that streams in through thermally efficient windows.

Sound like a rosy portrait of a more sustainable future? Actually, this kind of morning is already possible, even common, at Caltech. With help from private benefactors and partnerships, the Institute is working hard to slash pollution and waste, minimize future costs, and help environmental technologies gain a foothold.

Caltech has firm ground to build on. Its recycling program, nearly 50 years old, diverted 1,248 tons of waste from landfills in 2006; it was named the city of Pasadena’s Recycler of the Year in 2007. Caltech produces almost 80 percent of its own electricity —a natural-gas-fired turbine puts out 10 megawatts, and the turbine’s waste heat makes steam that spins another two megawatts out of a second turbine and also heats labs and offices. A 2003 upgrade of this cogeneration system doubled its power output while lowering the emission of smog-forming nitrogen oxides and carbon monoxide by 17.4 percent.

Even so, college campuses —especially research-oriented ones—use a lot of electricity, water, and other resources. Caltech, as a research leader in clean energy and climate change, has a particular obligation to walk the walk, and members of an ad hoc sustainability committee established in 2007 by Vice President for Business and Finance Dean Currie are examining every aspect of campus life. As committee member Carol Carmichael—a faculty associate in engineering and applied science, and wife of President Jean-Lou Chameau—commented in the California Tech, “We want to ensure that the resources entrusted to us are used for teaching and discovery, and not for maintaining expensive, potentially unsustainable practices or forms of infrastructure.”

Think committees don’t do much? Members of this one have changed Caltech’s purchasing, cleaning, and landscaping practices; established summer undergraduate research fellowships (SURFs) to study Caltech’s environmental impacts; created incentives to carpool, bike, walk, and take public transit to Caltech; and helped catalyze “green” building and the ongoing installation of Pasadena’s largest solar-power facility.

It’s hard to miss the changes. Biodegradable paper- and corn-based cups, cutlery, and to-go containers have replaced petroleum-based standbys at campus eateries, which now mete out unbleached napkins in single-napkin dispensers. Solar-powered trash compactors have appeared on the Olive Walk and on the Chandler patio. Not much larger than trash cans, each holds 150 gallons—even if the trash truck makes 80 percent fewer visits, they still won’t be filled to overflowing. Motion-detecting lighting, compact-fluorescent bulbs, dual-flush toilets, waterless urinals, and Energy Star appliances save electricity and water across campus, thanks to Associate Vice President for Facilities Jim Cowell, the committee chair, and Senior Director of Institute Housing Tim Chang, also a member. Further, the housing office has enrolled all off-campus units for which it pays the bills in the Pasadena Water and Power (PWP) residential “All Green” program, 100 percent of whose electricity comes from wind farms. Director of Buildings and Grounds Delmy Emerson, also on the committee, has instituted green cleaning practices on campus, supplying the custodial staff with economical, concentrated, nontoxic cleansers. Emerson’s groundskeeping staff is on the same page, reducing water use by landscaping with drought-tolerant plants and refining drip-irrigation systems. As E&S was going to press, John Onderdonk began work as the Institute’s first sustainability program manager to lead and coordinate these efforts.

This summer, four SURF students will research Caltech conservation, supported in part by benefactors such as Kiyo Tomiyasu (BS ’40) and his wife, Eiko. Mentored by sustainability committee member and mechanical engineering professor Melany Hunt, Stassy Petkova will quantify Caltech’s greenhouse-gas emissions from 1990 to the present, Daniel Alvarez and Silas Hilliard will study Caltech’s energy use and evaluate conservation opportunities, and Tyler Hannasch will focus on ways to reduce electricity consumption in the undergraduate Houses.

What’s not happening is vital, too. Hundreds of cars stay out of L.A. traffic and campus parking spaces because of programs directed by sustainability committee member Kristina Valenzuela, Caltech’s transportation coordinator. The latest statistics show that Caltech has 141 registered carpools, two vanpools, 276 holders of discounted public-transit passes, 193 registered walkers, and 400 participants in bike-to-work programs. Participants enjoy incentives including monthly raffles, rainy-day parking permits, and guaranteed rides home in case of illness or emergency.

But the two biggest changes on campus are the least noticeable. The first—stringent environmentally friendly building standards—might just look like good design. The second—a massive new solar facility—will be above eye level on Caltech roofs.

All new construction and renovations will adhere to the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) guidelines. The three buildings under way—the Annenberg Center for Information Science and Technology, Schlinger Laboratory for Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, and Cahill Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics—will earn gold-level LEED certification. Each building will use 30 percent less water than comparable buildings. The Cahill and Annenberg Centers will use 24–28 percent less energy, while the Schlinger Lab will conserve 17–21 percent. But don’t expect to see pallid scientists in gray laboratories—daylight will illuminate 75 percent of rooms in the Cahill and Annenberg Centers and 90 percent of the Schlinger Lab. The buildings won’t have those dizzying new-paint, new-carpet, and new-plywood smells either: each project uses low-emission materials, keeping volatile organic compounds such as formaldehyde out of circulation. According to a state government task force, the average California green-construction premium of $4 per square foot yields a $67 return over 20 years, maximizing the long-term impact of the gifts provided by Warren (BS ’44, MS ’46, PhD ’49) and Katie Schlinger, the Annenberg Foundation, Charles and Anikó Dér Cahill, Fred (BS ’62) and Joyce Hameetman, Stephen Bechtel Jr., and others.

Caltech is also investing in solar energy, leasing the rooftops of three parking garages and four buildings to solar-power companies in order to generate 1.2 megawatts of electricity. The solar plants will offset 7 percent of Caltech’s peak power use, and it’s the dirtiest and most expensive power—part of the 20-odd percent currently purchased from PWP, half of which comes from burning coal. (It doesn’t hurt that PWP raised its rates 20 percent in the first half of 2008.) The first solar plant, under construction atop Holliston Parking Garage, will be the largest in Pasadena. When all seven solar rooftops are up and running, according to Cowell, “we’ll have one of the largest university solar facilities in the country.”

Private companies will design, install, finance, and maintain the new power plants, selling all of the power back to Caltech at rates that start at just over 10 cents per kilowatt-hour and that will rise less than 4 percent per year for 15 years. Cowell expects PWP rates, which now top 14 cents per kilowatt-hour, to continue to rise by 5 to 10 percent per year. Cowell’s also pleased about the relatively short contracts. “For 15 years, they give us lower, more stable rates and greenhouse-gas reductions,” says Cowell, “and then, if we want them to, they take it all away. My feeling is that we’re going to invent better panels in 15 years and want to put up our own technology. Or maybe we’ll want to do something else. The world is going to be a different place, and I don’t have a crystal ball.”

It hardly takes a crystal ball to see a future in which people call for campuses to use less power and water and generate less pollution and trash. The simple, low-cost steps Caltech is taking now will set the stage for greater innovation. As Bill Irwin, senior director of facilities management, puts it: “We take a lot of pride in what we have accomplished to date, but we are even more excited about what the future holds.”—AW