A St. Paul, Minnesota, college’s microgrid research center is preparing to expand after securing significant new state and federal funding.

The University of St. Thomas’ Center for Microgrid Research plans to triple its three-person staff and enroll more students thanks to money from a $7.5 million state legislative appropriation and $11 million in federal defense bill earmarks secured by U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum.

State officials who championed the funding said they hope the center’s education and research efforts can help train future grid technicians and smooth the state’s path to 100% clean electricity by 2040.

“We’re at a time of not only a great transition but of a great opportunity,” said state Sen. Nick Frentz, a Democrat from Mankato. “We’ll be looking at transmission, distributed generation and innovation as we transition, and funding for the St. Thomas microgrid research is a part of the state’s plan to lead.”

Microgrids are small, hyperlocal networks of electricity generation and storage systems that together can operate independently of the rest of the power grid. They’re often used by military, healthcare or research campuses that require a level of reliability greater than what the local utility can provide. 

But they’re not just expensive backup power for wealthy institutions. Microgrids are also expected to play a role in the clean energy transition, helping to get the most value out of clean energy investments and connecting customers to one another in new ways.

“Microgrids are another opportunity for clean energy,” said John Farrell, co-director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance and director of the Energy Democracy Initiative.

Microgrids could help balance variable power sources such as wind and solar, helping to absorb and store surplus generation and share it with the grid later when it’s needed, Farrell explained. While microgrids can be powered by fossil fuel backup generators, they also can run on solar panels, whose value can be greater when they are networked with arrays on multiple sites. 

The University of St. Thomas has been developing its campus microgrid for about a decade. Today, it consists of a 48-kilowatt rooftop solar array along with a diesel generator, a lead acid battery pack, and an inverter that converts direct current to alternating current. A campus substation connects to Xcel’s local grid. 

Like most microgrids, the St. Thomas system can run in “island” mode, meaning it can operate even when the power grid fails by drawing on the battery, solar panels and backup generation.

The Center for Microgrid Research opened in 2020 as a way to build research and education programming around its campus microgrid. Mahmoud Kabalan, the center’s director, was hired in 2017 from Villanova University to teach engineering and helped secure seed funding from Xcel Energy’s Renewable Development Fund for the program.

Don Weinkauf, the school’s dean of engineering, said the new state and federal funding will allow the center to expand both the program and the microgrid system itself. 

“This stuff is expensive,” Weinkauf said. “Each piece of equipment is on the scale of a million dollars, and right now, we are expanding to reach a 1-megawatt capacity.”

The center will have 10 full-time employees next year and be able to enroll up to 25 students. More staff and students will allow more collaboration with utilities, corporations, and fellow researchers. Within the next few years, the microgrid will connect to more than five buildings, including a new science, technology and arts center, dorms and a parking facility.

Kabalan said he expects more funding from the U.S. Department of Defense, which sees the program as a workforce training ground and source of applied research to help design, test and implement microgrid technologies.

“This funding will position the state and the nation to produce innovative engineers that can address the need for microgrids and distributed energy technologies,” Kabalan said. “A big part of what we do is educate and train engineers.”

The center is collaborating with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on a military initiative to install microgrids at every military base by 2035, Kabalan said. Research related to that project will be publicly available to other microgrid operators and researchers. Students and faculty have other clients and supporters, including utilities Xcel Energy and Connexus Energy.

Part of the center’s design and strategy has been to serve as a place where clients can test how their equipment works in a microgrid. The technology available includes test bays to plug in products, controllers, relayers and emulators capable of creating simulated environments. 

“Interested parties can literally roll in their equipment and we can test their technology at full scale,” Weinkauf said. “This is an industry-friendly center that can help us, and the state of Minnesota, navigate our future grid.”

Students like the hands-on quality of the microgrid center. Engineering student Oreoluwa John Ero, a research assistant at the center, has helped develop models to attach the new STEAM building to the university’s microgrid.

“I like the ability to see and practice the different things you learn in school and the chance to learn while on the job,” Ero said.

Utility industry professionals who have visited the center also like the hands-on approach. Connexus Energy engineering and system operations director Jared Newton said the center “immediately resonated with me because I saw students learn on real-world equipment that we use. The problems they were trying to solve and the tools they were using were familiar.”

As climate change and aging infrastructure make weather-related power outages more common, Kabalan thinks microgrids will become more common for critical infrastructure such as hospitals, prisons, data centers, food storage areas, cooling centers and government facilities.

Ero sees how the microgrid could transform the power grid in the United States and in his home country of Nigeria, where electricity outages are common and can last for hours and weeks.

“It’s a technology that should be made available to people,” Ero said, “not just in Nigeria, but all over the world.”

State, federal funding fuels expansion of Minnesota microgrid research center is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

It has been quite a whirlwind month for Lindsey Greer.

Just as her team from Virginia’s Smithfield High School was snagging an award at the 8th annual National KidWind Challenge, the 17-year-old senior found out she had won a $5,000 college scholarship from the Business Network for Offshore Wind.

Greer, who graduates next month, plans to attend James Madison University this fall to study engineering, which she anticipates will be her launchpad to design the next generation of offshore wind turbines. The Harrisonburg school is selected regularly to participate in the esteemed U.S. Department of Energy’s Collegiate Wind Competition.

Her six-member high school team from the Hampton Roads region, The Goon Squad, was one of 82 that faced off this month at the University of Colorado. Students from elementary, middle and high schools earned points via contests that included testing their small-scale model turbines in wind tunnels and explaining their thinking to judges.

“We love the movie ‘The Goonies,’” Greer said about her team’s namesake. “And we’re pretty goofy.”

Greer and her fellow wind whizzes won a special award in the “Fixed Bottom Offshore Wind Challenge” category. Fittingly, teams constructed a fixed bottom foundation in a fake ocean and tested it in a wind tunnel.

“It’s a replica of what Dominion Energy does offshore,” she said. “We used a sand screw, PVC pipes, 3D-printed supports, and our usual hub and blade design.”

Greer is one of three recipients of the business network’s Rising Star Offshore Wind Student Scholarship, which was initiated last year. The two other winners are from Newport, Rhode Island; and Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The nonprofit educational organization has offices in several East Coast states.

Virginia sent half a dozen teams to KidWind in Boulder. One was the AirBenders, also from Smithfield High School. Team J.A.M.S., also of Smithfield, was named a top performer in the middle school division. Another Virginia top performer, in the high school division, was the Tabb High School Wind Breakers of Yorktown.

Greer will continue to savor KidWind memories after she receives her diploma on June 16. And, no doubt, she will be deploying some of that know-how in her freshman engineering classes this autumn.

“Once you get started, it’s hard to stop,” she said about the joy of contributing to a creative team. “It’s almost like you’re addicted to it. There are lots of ups and downs and the highs are definitely worth it.”

In an interview with the Energy News Network, Greer elaborated on her commitment to offshore wind. This conversation was lightly edited for clarity and length.

Q: What do you want to tell readers about your team, The Goon Squad?

A: We had the greatest time. Our team had two juniors and four seniors and I’ve known a good portion of them since elementary school. It’s definitely a lot better to have a team because when something goes wrong, someone is there to try to fix it.

Competition can be stiff and communication can be complicated. Our approach is to divide and conquer. We’re playful, but I’m fortunate that this group knows when it’s time to get serious, lock in and get things done. 

Q: What’s your specialty with the team? 

A: This year, I was in charge of the blades on our model. We ran through a lot of birch wood because we experimented with six or seven types of blades, trying different lengths and widths.

Fortunately, birch is not in high demand, and the manufacturing and engineering program has access to a lot of supplies. Our school is very kind to us.

Q: What sparked your interest in wind energy? 

A: During my freshman year, my engineering exploration class included a brief lesson about the wind industry. My teacher was my mom.

I learned about the KidWind competition and thought, “Hey, I can do this.” We had a team of three girls in 2020; two were seniors. Our project had a wooden base, blades made of PVC pipe, and an old bike wheel as part of the pulley system. We advanced from the regional level, but the pandemic canceled the state and national competition that year.

In 2021, we competed digitally and only at the national level because of the pandemic. I didn’t compete last year because I had a heavy load of college-level courses.

Q: Wait, so your mother, Heather Greer, teaches your engineering class and coaches the wind energy teams?

A: Yes, she started out as a biology teacher. Now, she teaches engineering and Adam Shipman, our other coach, teaches manufacturing. My mom has had our school competing in KidWind since 2018. She’s an inspiration.

We’re lucky to have them in this program because they open us up to so many ideas and are always there with whatever we need. They invite professionals from Dominion Energy, James Madison University and engineering firms to our school to help introduce us to concepts and things we’ll see when we get into the business.

The best part about their coaching is that they don’t tell us what we should do with competition projects. They let us fail and figure out what the next step should be. 

They’re always trying to find ways to make us succeed and push us to the limit, in the most gentle way possible. 

Q: How did wind power become such a “thing” in Smithfield? Is it at all connected to the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project that Dominion Energy is constructing relatively close by? 

A: That’s part of it. My dad is a mechanical engineer in Portsmouth and my whole family is involved in engineering. And a lot of our residents have somebody in their family involved with energy or renewable energy.

Q: What kind of time commitment is a KidWind project?

A: I don’t know the number of hours this year, but including all three competitions — state, regional and national — it’s got to be up there. We spent two classes a day working on it and also time after school.

We’re thinking about the project and how we can make it better 24/7 because when something goes wrong we know we have to come up with a solution as quickly as possible. There are several instances where I wake up in the middle of the night thinking, hey, what if we …?

Q: Why did you choose to attend James Madison University in the Shenandoah Valley, which is definitely not coastal Virginia? 

A: I got a good look at the campus because it hosted the state competition for KidWind. I have toured its Center for Advancement of Sustainable Energy and it was eye-opening to see details about the wind industry. 

Their engineering program is general, meaning I’ll have a little taste of all types of engineering. So, in graduate school, I’ll know where I want to specialize. It seems to be hands-on based, which matters to me because I’m not a person who wants to be staring at words all day.

Q: Was there anything particularly difficult about this year’s competition in Boulder?

A: Well, because of a mix-up we ended up going to Martinsville, Virginia, which is about six or seven hours away, for the regional competition.

Then, we had three weeks to redesign something we knew we had to pack on an airplane. That time crunch meant we went with something we knew worked.

Our base was PVC pipe and we laser-cut the blades from birch wood. The whole turbine had a lot of 3-D printed parts that are adjustable and replaceable.

Q: You mentioned that you learned to “fail fast, reiterate fast and take failures as lessons.” How does that mantra tie into wind competitions?

A: Often, so many ideas we thought were top-of-the-line would just fail. Our coaches helped us realize that the longer you sit there and dwell on what went wrong, you lose time figuring out how to make it right.

That’s true for engineering and anything else in life.

Design competition gets gears turning for Virginia student’s offshore wind career is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

A small yet motivated coterie of environmentally minded University of Richmond students is urging the top liberal arts college to be the first in Virginia — and one of barely a handful across the South — to divest from the fossil fuel industry.

Senior Mason Manley and other GreenUR members spearheading the cause know that a single school’s actions won’t halt the climate crisis. 

But they are resolute in their belief that pivoting money away from coal, gas and oil and toward clean energy would signal their alma mater is attentive to the topsy-turvy future it’s preparing them to face.

“We have the potential to influence how billions of dollars are invested,” said Manley, an environmental studies major. “When else am I going to have the chance to do that?

“It comes down to getting dollars out of the hands of fossil fuel companies being a moral imperative.”

Thus far, university officials are “aware” of students’ passion, but noncommittal on altering their approach to managing a $3.2 billion endowment.

“I’m proud of the students and the thinking they’re doing on this issue,” said Dave Hale, the university’s COO and executive vice president. “However, we have to take a very broad view of how we manage our financial assets and steward them over the near- and long-term.” 

Public records spelling out exactly how much of the university’s endowment is even invested in fossil fuels aren’t available.

Since Hampshire College in Massachusetts launched the divestment charge in 2011, at least 82 U.S. colleges have followed suit on a full or partial basis. While Northeast and West Coast universities dominate the list, it is geographically diverse.

Richmond’s pursuit to join two other Southern schools — Emory in Atlanta and Brevard in North Carolina — began in earnest when Manley, GreenUR president since 2020, returned to campus last fall after studying abroad his junior year.

Last September, the nascent organization found its footing by linking with Fridays for Future, a sweeping youth-led global environmental movement that began quietly five years ago in Sweden when then-teenager Greta Thunberg kicked off a solo school strike for climate.

Divestment shifted to the bull’s-eye after several GreenUR stalwarts brainstormed with faculty adviser Mary Finley-Brook, associate professor of geography and the environment.

“That idea was reignited by continuing to join with a larger network,” Manley said about connecting with student activists at Tufts University as well as the Sierra Club, Third Act, Appalachian Voices and other local, climate-aware allies. “That made me realize we can do this too.”

By January, Manley met one-on-one with university President Kevin Hallock, which led to a February make-the-case meeting with Hale. By late April, upward of 720 advocates had signed a pro-divestment petition inspired by a student-led rally in March. University enrollment is 3,164 undergraduates and 726 graduate students.

“I have been fortunate that I’ve made friends in high places while I’ve been here,” Manley, of Yorkshire, England, said about access via his President’s Student Advisory Board membership. “I do feel like I was well placed to raise these issues and have them at least respectfully listen to me.”

However, the 22-year-old wants to believe his words will open minds, not just doors. He’s also well aware GreenUR isn’t the only campus organization with a corner on morals.

“We have a moral obligation to protect and enhance the purchasing power of gifts given to us by supporters,” Hale said, adding that assets cover a range of sustainability initiatives, financial aid for students and 40% of the university’s operating budget. “Our guiding light is fiduciary responsibility.”

And Hale explained that the university’s portion of the endowment — $3.2 billion — is just 60% of a total of $5.5 billion to $6 billion handled by what’s called Spider Management Company, named for the university’s mascot. In 2008, the private university invited other small institutions to invest under the umbrella of the firm.

“It’s a unique structure of endowment management,” Hale said about the mix of university assets with those of roughly 20 nonprofits. “Right out of the gate, that makes divesting a more complex issue.

“We’re not trying to send a message to the students that climate change is not an important issue. At the same time, we have talented investment professionals and we allow them to determine what is appropriate to invest in and what is not. They are paid very well to make those decisions every day.”

Complicated portfolios don’t necessarily have to be a barrier to divestment.

For instance, Kingston, New York, financial analyst Tom Sanzillo, who works at a nonprofit organization backing energy transition, said divesting from fossil fuels is commonplace these days. 

“It is definitely doable,” said Sanzillo, of the Cleveland-based Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. “And it’s not an extraordinary request anymore.” 

He pointed to the roughly 1,500 global institutions that have coupled with the Divest-Invest Movement over the last dozen years.

“Maybe the university can’t do it abruptly,” Sanzillo said, referencing Richmond. “It’s going to take time, but there’s a way to move from a portfolio of traditional investments — whether it’s stocks, bonds, real estate or private equity funds — without getting bogged down in fees.”

And moving beyond fossil fuels, he added, “shouldn’t preclude having an aggressive stance on investments.” 

Faculty Senate stirring divestment pot

In late March, the university’s Faculty Senate echoed GreenUR’s call to reconsider fossil fuel investments by approving a four-page climate justice resolution.

Addressing the climate crisis, faculty members wrote, “can not rely on international action alone but requires local leadership, and the University affirms to being a leader in action in building an equitable, inclusive, and sustainable society.”

A pair of the 13 specific recommendations center on potential divestment. For instance, one is a request that Spider Management assess the university’s endowment for carbon risk and liability.

The second asks that the endowment’s climate risk be reviewed, “meaning risk assessments based on formal analysis of the consequences, likelihoods and responses to the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions.”

Faculty Senate President Stephen Long said the resolution likely isn’t much of a hammer because it’s nonbinding — and hasn’t yet prompted a response from Hallock or other university officials.

“Still, we have to be on the record about matters like this, when our students are trying to model the kind of global citizenship we are trying to teach them,” said Long, an associate professor of political science. “They have been very smart in their approach to this.”

While Long fears the resolution will fall into a void, Hale counters that’s not necessarily the case.

“We’re only four, maybe five weeks out from the climate justice resolution being submitted,” Hale said, adding that little at a university moves at lightning speed. “We take it very seriously. It’s part of the input brought forward for us to consider.”

Long said it’s eternally frustrating for those aware of unfolding climate catastrophes to witness the mismatch between what academic researchers know about the science and how universities act as financial entities.

“We’re trying to push to the extent that our voice allows us to be a leader instead of a follower,” he said about the resolution. 

Endowment managers tend to be risk-averse traditionalists, leery that rules or guidelines with an environmental, social, and corporate governance framework could lower returns and jeopardize sound stewardship, he continued.

“But that’s where the disconnect is,” Long said. “Ignoring the long-term risk that climate change poses, not just in terms of the fate of humanity, but with fossil fuel investments that will lose out as we transition to clean energy — that’s a financial risk.”

Sanzillo, IEEFA’s director of financial analysis, said it’s incumbent on the university’s board of trustees to take the initiative with Spider Management if divestment is indeed the goal.

“It can’t be the other way around,” he said. “The university board needs to lay out what it wants so managers can develop an investment strategy that gets out of fossil fuels by certain dates.

“And they can tell managers to construct the plan in a way that meets targets and sound fiduciary practices.”

Sanzillo has specialized in divestment for 15 years, more than half of his financial career.

These days, he said, almost every allocation in a portfolio has a parallel index fund that is “green” and earns returns consistent with traditional funds.

“Climate can pose a leadership challenge,” Sanzillo said. “It’s hard for boards to tell fund managers what to do. Board members have to say, ‘We understand your reservations, but we think it’s a good idea. So, show us how to do it.’”

Advocates: Spider Solar a green cover

Hale and other officials boast about the university’s multi-pronged sustainability undertakings and commitments. Chief among them is being an early solar adopter in Virginia.

Beginning in 2021, the university has covered all of its electricity needs — roughly 40,000 megawatt-hours annually — by tapping into 20 megawatts of a solar mega-farm 50 miles away in Spotsylvania County. The 500-megawatt array was built by sPower, which merged with AES’s clean energy branch.

Electricity usage has remained steady even while the university’s building footprint has expanded by 300,000 square feet over the decade beginning in 2012, said Rob Andrejewski, university director of sustainability since 2015.

GreenUR students claim the university uses the photovoltaic project as a green cover that distracts from its lack of progress on issues such as updating the latest version of its Climate Action Plan from 2018 and acting faster on its 2019-2025 Sustainability Plan checklist. 

But Andrejewski defended Hale, saying that the Board of Trustees might not have greenlighted the Spider Solar contract in 2018 without his intervention.

“Early on, the project was no sure thing,” he said. “Having Hale go to the board was a big deal. He’s the face of that investment.”

Overall, campus greenhouse gas emissions have fallen roughly 70% between 2011 and 2021 — and Spider Solar is a major force behind that. Statistics for 2022 are still being compiled, Andrejewski said, adding that emissions figures over the last few years were skewed by the pandemic shutdown.

He also noted that the university’s emissions took a deep dive in 2012 when price drops and student advocacy spurred a fuel switch at the central steam plant from coal to gas.

Thus far, the university has completed 30 of the 93 “action items” laid out in its 44-page Sustainability Plan. Another 21 are in progress and the remaining 42 are undone.

GreenUR advocates are upset that officials have yet to target a goal of partnering with Spider Management to develop a committee focused on responsible investing.

Andrejewski is sympathetic to the students’ cause, but explained that his title allows him to do tons of legwork but doesn’t grant him the authority to make unilateral decisions.

“With many of these goals, we’re at the early stages of exploring best practices,” he said. “For me, the process is very much a ‘build the road so we can drive on it’ one. I know it’s a lot slower than people would like.”

In tandem, another goal is for the university to achieve platinum status by 2024 via a tracking and rating system developed by the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education or AASHE. 

A leap from gold to platinum could be within reach if the university earned points in the investment/finance category of the AASHE form. Currently, Richmond has a zero entered on that line.

“On this one, I don’t have a clear path forward,” Andrejewski said, adding that it’s up to separate committees. 

While all data on the evaluations are self-reported, he said it offers schools benchmarks on initiatives they ought to be considering.

“I do know that when those 93 items in the Sustainability Plan are done,” he said, “we ought to be near top of the tracking and rating system.”

GreenUR pausing, then persisting in autumn

In a newer twist on divestment, climate activists with at least one southern college, Vanderbilt University, have joined with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Yale, Stanford and Princeton universities in claiming that investing in fossil fuels is not only immoral but also illegal — because it conflicts with the mission of higher education.

The effort orchestrated a year ago by the Climate Defense Project argues that schools are violating a state law about where nonprofit institutions can put their money. Paperwork with attorneys general in the relevant states lasers in on the Uniform Prudent Management of Institutional Funds Act.

GreenUR isn’t ready to tack in that direction yet.    

With the end of the academic year looming, Manley and his fellow divestment champions are pausing their campaign to re-strategize.

Manley, set to graduate May 7, has accepted a Richmond-based job with the advocacy group Chesapeake Climate Action Network. As a booster of youth environmental activism in central Virginia, he will continue to advise GreenUR. 

However, one opportunity he doesn’t want to squander is a recent invitation to meet with the chief investment officer of Spider Management — now likely to happen this autumn.

Sophomore Zoe Cultrara, who handles communications for GreenUR, said she’s hopeful that hard-fought momentum doesn’t slip away in the interim.

“If we don’t keep going, who is going to be the one to put pressure on our administration?” asked the 20-year-old environmental studies major from Morristown, New Jersey. “The alternative to fighting is doing nothing, which doesn’t lead to any change at all.”

Manley noted that trash pickups, invasive plant species and energy efficiency were GreenUR cornerstones when it launched 15 or so years ago.

After slogging through COVID-19, this is the first year members have gelled as an advocacy group, he said. Recharging seems necessary after a gratifying yet exhausting journey to gain traction on campus. 

“The entire time our generation has grown up we were expected to accept the fact we are heading toward an insurmountable challenge, climate change,” he said.

“It comes down to this: If I don’t do something, who else will?”

The higher education divestment movement has arrived in Virginia is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

Ohio college and university instructors could be barred from teaching climate science without also including false or misleading counterpoints under a sprawling higher education bill that received its first hearing Wednesday.

Senate Bill 83, or the Higher Education Enhancement Act, seeks to police classroom speech on a wide range of topics, including climate change, abortion, immigration, and diversity, equity and inclusion — all of which would be labeled “controversial.”

On these and other subjects, public colleges and universities would need to guarantee that faculty and staff will “encourage and allow students to reach their own conclusions” and “not seek to inculcate any social, political, or religious point of view.” 

Colleges and universities that receive any state funding would be barred from requiring diversity, equity and inclusion training and have to make a commitment to “intellectual diversity” that includes “divergent and opposing perspectives on an extensive range of public policy issues.”

The bill also includes provisions for annual reviews and reports, requirements for “intellectual diversity” in recruiting invited speakers, disciplinary sanctions for interfering with that diversity, a prohibition against faculty strikes, and more.

Marginalizing conversations

Sen. Jerry Cirino, a Republican from Kirtland and SB 83’s primary sponsor, said it was his idea to include climate change as a “controversial” belief or policy, and that he “didn’t actually consult with climate people.”

“My agenda was not to use this bill to impact energy policy,” Cirino said. However, he also said, “What I think is controversial is different views that exist out there about the extent of the climate change and the solutions to try to alter climate change.”

To say climate change is controversial is “simply wrong,” despite efforts to pretend otherwise, said Cyrus Taylor, a Case Western Reserve University physics professor whose work focuses on climate science. “The science is absolutely clear.”

Advocates fear the legislation, if passed, would further stunt the state’s progress on clean energy by marginalizing important discussions about climate change and equity. 

“The bill reinforces the privilege and inequities and disparities that we see in our energy policy system,” said Dion Mensah, energy justice fellow at the Ohio Environmental Council. The “ripple effects impact us all, especially on energy policy.”

Colleges and universities are precisely the places where teachers and students, who include future policymakers, should be talking about social policies, clean energy and equitable solutions, Mensah said. In their view, that needs to include an understanding of systemic racial and environmental injustice that has led to higher pollution burdens, higher energy burdens, more health problems, and other disproportionate impacts on people of color, low-income communities, people who are disabled and other historically underrepresented groups.

“By ignoring those histories, we’re really setting ourselves up for building social policy that isn’t informed by truth, by the legacy of racism in this country,” Mensah said.

Cirino said nothing in SB 83 will ban teaching about climate change or other controversial topics. “It’s that both sides of the equation need to be understood.”

But on climate change, “both sides” arguments are often false or misleading propaganda from the fossil fuel industry and its allies.

“You’d be hard pressed these days to find a legitimate climate scientist or environmental scientist who says, ‘I don’t believe in climate change,’” said Steve Rissing, an emeritus professor at Ohio State University who taught about climate change in his biology courses, including discussions on the role of methane, climate change news and more.

The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, released on March 20, reaffirms “that climate change is real, caused by humans and going to have dire impacts,” Taylor said.

Chilling effect on instruction

Merely saying climate change is controversial in a state statute is “going to have a chilling effect,” said Glenn Branch, deputy director for the National Center for Science Education. Some faculty will likely shy away from teaching about climate change science and solutions if they would have to also present arguments they know lack a factual basis or risk being dunned by SB 83’s review processes.

Another chilling effect will be to discourage talented faculty and students from coming to Ohio colleges and universities, Taylor said. “What fools would come here if they weren’t even allowed to teach what they’re working on?”

The limitations on diversity, equity and inclusion programs also mean students won’t get an adequate grounding in cultural competency, Mensah said, referring to necessary skills for understanding and interacting with people from different backgrounds.

Nor will they understand the background of ongoing injustices, “how some groups have always suffered more than others and for the benefit of others,” Mensah added. Without that, “we can’t even begin to develop policy that is well-informed.” The results will repeat what’s happened historically, “which makes it worse.”

“The equity issues on climate change are really, really important, because there’s no doubt that it’s going to hurt different communities differently,” Taylor said. And if those differences aren’t taught and considered in developing policy solutions, society “is just going to double down” on the status quo, leaving the most vulnerable communities to get hit even harder.

Cirino said he and his staff wrote most of SB 83 with help from legal counsel who put the bill in proper format, based on his own research. He acknowledged that some concepts came from the National Association of Scholars. “It’s not exactly a right-wing organization,” he said.

A March 22 statement from the organization commended Cirino for taking concepts from a model higher education code it had drafted, adding that the group “will be delighted” to publicize SB 83 throughout the nation.

Founded in 1987, the group has a history of opposing affirmative action programs and “keeping outside political influences from tainting teaching and learning on campuses,” according to DeSmog. A 2021 report from the organization is also critical about climate change being taught in grade schools and high school.

“The authors of the report are a nursing professor, someone with a master’s in space science, and someone with a Ph.D. in history,” Branch noted.

“This is just a blatant power grab for education. Period,” said Sen. Catherine Ingram, ranking minority member on the Workforce and Higher Education Committee, to which SB 83 was assigned. The bill “talks about freedom of speech, but everything in here is against certain speech.”

Cirino gave sponsor testimony on SB 83 on March 23 at a packed committee hearing where some members of the public were diverted to an overflow room. He also chairs the committee and said he hopes to move the bill along swiftly.

Ohio higher-ed bill would require instructors to teach ‘both sides’ on climate change is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

A team led by University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign researchers is developing an educational game it hopes can inspire future farmers to think differently about solar power.

The app aims to teach kids the emerging concept of agrivoltaics, in which agricultural production is combined with solar photovoltaics. The game will be backed by science from the growing niche of research looking into how solar panel placement affects the growth of various crops.

“Dual-use land is really a great idea, intuitively, so why not build an app that lets kids explore these really interesting ideas while they’re playing a game?” said H. Chad Lane, associate chair for educational psychology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Think FarmVille, but instead of gamifying every aspect of running a farm, it will focus on the interaction between crops and solar panels. Researchers are discovering that several plant types can perform better when partially shaded by panels; for others, the reduced production can be offset by extra revenue from selling solar power to the electric grid.

The app is part of a $10 million, multi-disciplinary project funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture program, which is interested in evaluating agrivoltaics’ potential to reduce land-use tensions, boost crop yields, or increase revenue for farmers. 

The initial version will simulate an agrivoltaics operation in Arizona, and subsequent updates will include Colorado and Illinois scenarios. Players inherit a farm at the start of the game and then make decisions about crop selection and solar panel spacing before seeing the resulting output.

“We want to make sure that the game is accurate for both the process of farming and behavior of crops, and how all the biological processes are impacted by the use of solar panels on the farm,” said Scott Tuinstra, a project manager at Green Bay, Wisconsin-based Balance Studios, which the researchers enlisted to work on building the app.

Steven Thomson, national program leader in the National Institute of Food and Agriculture’s Institute of Food Production and Sustainability, said the project aligns with the agency’s goals of promoting sustainable agriculture and innovation to help farmers adapt to climate change. 

“The research explores an emerging agricultural system that could increase crop production and return on the land while helping mitigate climate impacts,” Thomson said. 

The federal institute awarded the four-year grant to the University of Illinois, which spread the funding across multiple departments. The education department pitched the app idea. Part of the grant’s overall objectives include education, from kindergarten to graduate school, as well as the general public, Thomson said.

Carl Bernacchi, an Illinois researcher who studies climate change’s impacts on crops, recruited Lane to the project based on his research on teaching tactics, which he thinks could help bridge public knowledge gaps on scientific topics, including climate-conscious agriculture and agrivoltaics.  

“There’s been a huge disconnect in the work that I do … with getting it to the minds of K-12 students,” said Bernacchi, a research plant physiologist with the Agricultural Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. “It’s really hard to distill complex science down into something accessible to children — even adults.” 

Targeting a young audience is a longer-term strategy that could lead to a culture change, rather than expecting immediate change. 

“When you’re trying to change a culture — and agricultural practices are very much culturally driven — it’s going to take not just reaching out to the farmers who are making decisions today, but it’s also planting the seeds and educating the next generation of farmers,” Bernacchi said.

The team is trying to strike a balance of delivering easily digestible information while making sure it’s factual and not watered down. One challenge is that agrivoltaics is a relatively new practice. Rich datasets about best practices and successful crops aren’t yet complete. The app development team plans to continually update the game based on emerging scientific research.

Tuinstra said the game will rely heavily on symbols instead of words, considering people generally don’t like to read much when using such technologies. That approach will also make the game more accessible to younger learners who do not yet read at a high level.

“We don’t really need to go into a lengthy description about how some crops may need water because they’re out in the sun more than those that are in the shade or have greater water retention in the soil,” Tuinstra said. “By playing the experience, you’ll come to that logical conclusion.”

The app will undergo its first real-world testing this fall at the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis and the St. Louis Science Center, which both have agricultural and energy exhibits. Museum visitors will get to play the prototype during a process called formative testing, in which student responses to a learning tool or method are monitored to determine if the tool is meeting its targets while identifying areas for improvement.

Insights about audience responses, including what they don’t understand and like, will be incorporated into the next version of the app with more user choices and scenarios. The team aims to take the app public on the Apple Store and Google Play store in three years.

Meantime, the team will continue to build up the app as additional cutting-edge agrivoltaics research is released.

“We’ll constantly be revising the understanding of everything, and we can go in and tweak the models in the game to reflect that emerging science,” Lane said. “I don’t know of any other game that’s ever tried to do that.”

FarmVille for agrivoltaics? Illinois team aims to teach solar concept with game is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.