Sustainability News

Arizona State University has joined forces with Medavate and Baya Build, companies that innovate in healthcare and construction industries, respectively, for a unique partnership to deliver groundbreaking healthcare through remote medical and telehealth clinics. The trio partnered based on common missions to address inefficiencies in healthcare, building and energy.

The partnership's energy solutions are designed and integrated by an interdisciplinary team of collaborators led by Nathan Johnson, an expert in sustainable and resilient energy systems at Arizona State University. Johnson is an assistant professor in the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering, director of the Laboratory for Energy and Power Solutions, and senior sustainability scientist in the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability. Johnson’s team of researchers and developers collaborate with developing countries seeking to address energy needs for emerging market economies and the rural poor. Their work incorporates both on-grid modernization and off-grid solutions for application to industrialized countries and emerging economies.

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At the fourth annual State of Sustainability Summit, Arizona State University remains committed to leading — and teaching — sustainability. Home to the world’s first school of sustainability and the first university to offer a degree in the practice, ASU strives to act as a living laboratory and example of sustainability for society.

“We are educating the next generation of leaders who will go out with this knowledge, and every decision they make will be informed by this knowledge,” university Chief Financial Officer Morgan Olsen said. “I can’t think of anything more important in the area of sustainability we can do than that single function. … We’re a model of what we’d like to see in this world.”

Set against a global backdrop, the university’s efforts aren’t even a drop in the bucket. All the efforts of all American universities who signed a pledge to reduce carbon emissions amount to about 3 percent of U.S. emissions.

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Veronica Horvath, an Arizona State University Master of Science in sustainability student and Decision Center for a Desert City research assistant, is a first place awardee of the 2018 Central Arizona Project Award for outstanding water research. This is the first time a DCDC research assistant has won this award. Horvath presented her work at the Arizona Hydrological Society's annual symposium on September 21 alongside several ASU sustainability scientists who research water.

“As an aspiring water scholar, I feel extremely grateful to receive this award for water research, especially because the Central Arizona Project and Arizona Hydrological Society are significant players involved with addressing Arizona's water future beyond academia,” Horvath said. “It is an honor to share this work with Arizona's dedicated practitioners, policy makers and water managers, and is a true representation of how ASU, DCDC, and the School of Sustainability foster use-inspired research.”

Horvath answered a few questions for us about her research and experience at ASU.

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Mountain snowpack is melting earlier, leaving water regulators searching for new approaches and farmers concerned about the risk to their crops. To help stakeholders find solutions, the U.S. Department of Agriculture on Thursday awarded $4.9 million to an interdisciplinary team of researchers from five institutions in three states, including Arizona State University.

Mountain snowpack and rainfall are the primary sources of water for the arid western United States, and water allocation rules determine how that water gets distributed among competing uses. But earlier melting of mountain snowpack is altering the timing of runoff, putting additional pressure on reservoirs to meet the needs of agricultural water rights holders.

Over the next five years, scientists from ASU will join researchers from the University of Nevada, Reno; Desert Research Institute; Colorado State University and Northern Arizona University to use a new $4.97 million grant from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture to explore different aspects of this issue:

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Michael Herod has two degrees from the School of Sustainability: a bachelor of science and an Executive Master of Sustainability Leadership. But Herod didn’t enroll in sustainability because of a passion for the environment or for the health of communities around the world, as many students do. Herod initially pursued sustainability to prove his boss wrong and to do something beneficial with a “pocket full of Uncle Sam’s money” after returning from Iraq with the U.S. Army.

During his last undergraduate semester, Herod had a realization that inspired him to pursue the EMSL, and then to start a successful business called GOEFER that allows people and businesses to monitor and save on their energy use through advanced power strips. Read on for more about Herod’s journey and how he got the idea for his business.

Question: What was your “aha” moment when you realized you wanted to study sustainability?

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A new paper by Hanna Breetz, a senior sustainability scientist in the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability and an assistant professor in the School of Sustainability, argues that “politics is the hidden dimension of technology experience curves, as it affects both costs and deployment.” This paper, which Breetz wrote with authors from the University of California Santa Barbara, is called “The political logics of clean energy transitions.”

The full report is available from Cambridge University Press.

Bridget Abraham recently began pursuing a bachelor of science in sustainability at Arizona State University. She became interested in sustainability during her time at Chandler High School, where she was Student Body President and involved in all Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate classes. During Abraham’s junior year, she enrolled in AP Environmental Science, and through a partnership between ASU and Chandler High, she earned School of Sustainability credit for this class.

Abraham answered questions for us about how this experience in high school led her to choosing a path in sustainability, and what sustainability means to her.

Question: What did you like about the ASU Sustainability School @ Chandler High School program?

Answer: The aspect I enjoyed the most about SOS was the passion behind it. My teacher, Mrs. Culver, loved what she taught and put all her effort into her students to share her knowledge and passion. I was captivated not only by what she taught us, but also her devotion to the environment.

Q: What was your “aha” moment when you realized you wanted to study sustainability?

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The Macedonian-born Ivan Ermanoski concentrates on making fuels and products using solar heat. He’s a recent arrival at Arizona State University LightWorks, where he’ll be working on solarizing our society — that is, reducing the use of fossil fuels by replacing them with solar-derived fuels.

To accomplish this, he and his colleagues are planning to use a thermochemical cycle that would keep carbon dioxide from being added to the atmosphere.

The thermochemical cycle begins when a metal oxide is heated until it gives up some of its oxygen. At lower temperatures, the material wants that oxygen restored, and if exposed to carbon dioxide or steam, the material will take an oxygen from those molecules to yield carbon monoxide or hydrogen.

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A Thought Leader Series Piece

by Bob Litterman

Continuously pumping greenhouse gases into Earth’s atmosphere is a risk. We simply don’t know our atmosphere’s capacity to safely absorb these heat-trapping emissions, but we do know it’s not limitless. Evidence shows that Earth’s temperature is rising, oceans are warming and acidifying, ice sheets are shrinking, and intense weather events are happening more and more frequently — all of which directly or indirectly cause societal damage. Though Earth’s climate has always changed, it is virtually certain that this rapid trend of warming is caused by human activity since the mid-20th century. And there’s no sign of it slowing down.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, carbon dioxide accounted for 81 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions in the United States in 2016. As we drive gas-fueled cars, power electricity grids with fossil fuels, grow food and live our lives, we are dumping carbon into the atmosphere at an unprecedented and alarming rate. Once released into the atmosphere, carbon dioxide can affect climate for hundreds or thousands of years — longer than any other greenhouse gas.

At what point will we reach a catastrophic tipping point in which future generations will be unable to adapt to the impacts of climate change, leading to a significant and permanent decline in well-being?

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Arizona State University’s School of Music launched the 2018-19 Organ Series with a multidisciplinary presentation, “Walls of Sound: The Ecology of the Borderlands,” addressing the ecological impact of a wall at Arizona’s southern border.

“Our program seeks to show that the border wall is an invasive species amongst the biodiversity in the borderlands,” said Kimberly Marshall, Goldman Professor of Organ in the School of Music in ASU’s Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts. “Knowing that the border wall issue has been explored extensively, we focus specifically on the unforeseen ecological problems of erecting a wall through a fragile Sonoran Desert ecosystem.”

The multidisciplinary presentation consisted of video, audio and scientific work of many on- and off-campus collaborators. In addition to the music, Toby Yatso, lecturer in the ASU School of Music and artist-in-residence at Phoenix Theatre, narrated the performance. Michael Schoon, associate professor in the ASU School of Sustainability and Senior Sustainability Scientist for the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability, provided expertise to the program’s narration. Samantha Lloyd, multimedia specialist in ASU’s School of Life Sciences, provided experiences and expertise on biodiversity in the borderlands through her videography work.

Read the full story on ASU Now.

Not only is Phoenix situated in the Southwest desert — the hottest region in the United States — it also happens to be the hottest major city in the country, and among the hottest in the world. More than 300 days of sun and thousands of square miles of concrete, asphalt and glass combine to make Greater Phoenix a living laboratory for the urban heat phenomenon and its associated ills.

And it’s only getting hotter.

Climate scientists predict daytime high temperatures will get higher, and nighttime low temperatures will continue their alarming upward trajectory. This is happening in a city that has already warmed an average of 5 degrees Fahrenheit over the past century, according to Nancy Selover, the state’s climatologist at Arizona State University’s Arizona State Climate Office.

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For many ASU Online students, the chance to make a difference in their communities is a powerful motivator for earning a degree. Whether their goal is to advance in their current field or propel into a new arena altogether, working professionals who enroll in one of our online degrees find the flexible and robust nature of the program helps set them up for success.

Pursuing a Master of Sustainability Leadership degree enabled ASU Online student Annalise Dum to transition from the field of architecture into the nonprofit sector, where she now works as the Chicago facilities and workplace wellness manager for the Natural Resources Defense Council. Her role with the environmental action group includes overseeing the day-to-day operations of the Chicago office, in addition to consulting and advocating for the wellness component of sustainability within institutional construction projects and NRDC’s workforce.

“I focus on holistic sustainability, corporate social responsibility, and health and wellness in the workplace,” Annalise says. “I am certain that I got here, in large part, because of the MSL program. Being able to talk about the four different threads of the program and my capstone project is what sold me in my interview."

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Cancer has been a part of life on Earth since the beginning of multicellularity, yet it is a foe humankind continues to grapple with — at least in part because we still do not fully understand it.

Athena Aktipis, senior sustainability scientist at Arizona State University, studies cooperation among living things. Aktipis and her husband, fellow ASU scholar Carlo Maley, are making inroads toward a better understanding of cancer through more traditional scientific methods in their labs at the Biodesign Institute at ASU. But they’ve also conceived an unusual way to allow people to consider it anew.

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Junkee Ahn is a senior at Arizona State University studying sustainability at the Tempe campus. This summer, he took his skills abroad to South Korea to work in the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific. His studies focus on sustainable energy, materials and technology.

Ahn recently spoke with ASU Student Life about his internship. "I found my internship opportunity and applied through the official United Nations website," he said. "I strongly encourage students to visit their website to search through available positions since there are many internship opportunities throughout various sectors in numerous countries."

Read Junkee Ahn's full Q&A from ASU Student Life.

Decades ago, oilmen had little interest in natural gas, the byproduct of crude oil extracted from the earth. So, they burned it off, like so many lit torches atop Texas’s oil fields. Jim Miller’s grandfather recalls reading the evening paper by their light. Miller, too, recalls living in their shadows. Now he’s living in the Valley of the Sun, working to develop a different kind of energy industry.

The native Texan says he wanted to be a chemical engineer because the successful people he knew as a child either worked in chemical plants or they worked for NASA. “That was it,” he says.

But years later, he found himself working not in a chemical plant nor at NASA but instead thinking up ways to create and harness alternative energy — energy gleaned not from fossil fuels but from renewable sources.

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The Association of Pedestrian and Bicycle Professionals (APBP) announced the winners of its annual awards program to honor excellence in the profession. Among those being honored is sustainability scientist Trisalyn Nelson, foundation professor and director of the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning, who is being named the Research Professional of the Year.

“Dr. Nelson’s research contributing to improving bicycling safety data and methods to map bicycle ridership stand out in the field,” said the APBP in its announcement of the award. “Her BikeMaps.org project to capture crowdsourced and official bicycling safety data allows professionals to characterize conditions in which crashes versus near misses are reported and the development of safety predictors along multi-use pathways will have a long-lasting impact on our profession.”

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Professors Bruce Rittmann and Mark van Loosdrecht received the 2018 Stockholm Water Prize on Wednesday for microbiological research and innovations that have revolutionized water and wastewater treatment. The prize was presented to them by Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden at a ceremony in Stockholm City Hall during World Water Week.

Bruce Rittman is a sustainability scientist in Arizona State University's Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability and a regents' professor in the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment. He is also the director of the Swette Center for Environmental Biotechnology in the Biodesign Institute. Rittmann's research, along with the research of van Loosdrecht from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, has contributed to the understanding of how microorganisms can transform organic pollutants to something of value to humans and the environment.

This remarkable scientific achievement has led to the implementation across the globe of technologies that make it possible to remove harmful contaminants from water, cut wastewater treatment costs, reduce energy consumption and even recover chemicals and nutrients for recycling.

Read the full story on ASU Now.

Arizona State University School of Sustainability undergraduate student Tearsa Saffell was interviewed on ABC15 Arizona morning news for her involvement with the Arizona Sustainability Alliance, a nonprofit organization with a mission to create and support cutting-edge, project-based sustainability solutions in Arizona. The organization recently won a $5,000 Community Heroes grant to expand their program bringing vertical gardens into low-income schools.

"We bring in vertical gardens and have the students help us set them up, and then they're able — for the entire school year — to work with the gardens, and maintain them, and harvest them and eat the delicious food," Saffell said in the interview. The first graders "say how much they love eating vegetables and how excited they are to pick them and eat them, so it's really great to see."

Saffell is a Food Systems Priority Lead for the Arizona Sustainability Alliance. Along with majoring in sustainability, she is working toward a certificate in Food System Sustainability.

Watch Saffell's interview on ABC15 Arizona.

Since 2015, Arizona State University’s School of Sustainability and ASU LightWorks have partnered with the Security and Sustainability Forum on a variety of webinars related to sustainability. The most recent of these, moderated by ASU Wrigley Institute board member Bob Litterman and featuring a powerhouse panel headlined by Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, attracted nearly 1,200 registrants. It was the most highly-watched webinar since the partnership began.

The School of Sustainability-sponsored webinar, Bipartisan Conversation on Pricing Carbon Emissions, included a discussion of current efforts to price carbon emissions. Panelists explored the most likely pathways toward pricing carbon, whether federal or state legislative efforts would gain more traction, and what kind of solutions might generate bipartisan support. The webinar followed an ASU LightWorks-sponsored event, Reframing Carbon Capture and Reuse.

RELATED: Litterman penned a recent Thought Leader Series essay on the topic of carbon pricing, outlining a conservative case for a carbon tax.

The effects of climate change are showing up all over the world, but small island nations such as Fiji are feeling them more strongly than most places. Over the past few years in Fiji, communities have been relocating to higher ground and away from shorelines due to rising tides, heavier rains and more destructive storms. It’s no small feat.

“We are now at an almost constant level of threat from these extreme weather events," said Fiji’s prime minister, Frank Bainimarama, in April after Cyclone Josie ripped through Fiji’s main island.

Recently, Arizona State University faculty, staff and students working to expand the reach of Solar-Powered Educational Learning Libraries, known as SolarSPELLs, visited Fiji and found that residents wanted to learn more about climate change. Access to the internet and outside information can be hard to come by for villagers living on remote islands, so SolarSPELLs are important resources. These portable, digital libraries come with their own offline Wi-Fi hotspots and are packed with thousands of educational documents and videos that are locally relevant.

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