The June Partnership for Sustainability Committee Meeting will be held at Hickory Hills Middle School and hosted by Springfield Public Schools. Hickory Hill Middle School is the district’s only LEED certified school, and the first in southwest Missouri.Springfield Public Schools

We will meet in the Library for a brief presentation on the district’s successes and then have a tour of a couple key LEED areas. Below is the Mission and Vision of Hickory Hills and more about their plans and goals regarding sustainability.

What: SPS Sustainability and Hickory Hills Middle School

When: Tues, June 8, 7:30 a.m.

Where: Hickory Hills Middle School (4650 E. State Highway YY)

Please RSVP by Friday, June 4. Feel free to pass this to the appropriate person/people in your organization.

Web Freeman
Communications Coordinator
Partnership for Sustainability
417.862.8459
webfreeman@greenozarks.org

Hickory Hills School Green Curriculum Implementation

MISSION:

The mission of the Hickory Hills Green Team is to increase awareness of environmental and sustainability issues and solutions within our school and community and model best practices to better the Earth.

VISION:

That Hickory Hills will be a school that protects the health of our students and staff members and create an atmosphere where all students will achieve their full potential. Using the building as a teaching tool we will educate our students and community what it means to live green, why it is important, and what role can we all have in protecting our environment. We want Hickory Hills to be a school that will attract families to our community because we are green.

GOAL 1: Reduce – Reuse and Recycle

GOAL 2: Incorporate Green Cleaning Products / Health Initiative

GOAL 3: Outdoor Classroom

GOAL 4: Renewable Energy Demonstration Models

GOAL 5: Green Roof Top Terrace

GOAL 6: Student Green Clubs

GOAL 7: Curriculum Integration

GOAL 8: Communication – Community Awareness

The coolest thing going on in the nation’s capitol this week? The U.S. Department of Energy’s Solar Decathalon on the National Mall. Open to the public this week, the Solar Decathalon is an inter-collegiate competition in which students compete to design, build and operate the most attractive, effective, and energy-efficient solar power house–in two weeks.

It’s a very focused race to the finish for these teams of college and university students. The goal, according to the Department of Energy, is for each of the 20 teams to produce houses that “must power all the home energy needs of a typical family using only the power of the sun. The winner of the competition is the team that best blends aesthetics and modern conveniences with maximum energy production and optimal efficiency.” Houses must maintain a comfortable temperature, provide adequate and attractive lighting, power typical household appliances and electronics, and efficiently heat normal amounts of water.

What goes on display at a Solar Decathlon could very well end up being on the market soon. Students in architecture and engineering make up many of the teams, and the cool developments from past competitions are now popping up in green building projects around the nation.

Teams include private and public universities in the United States, as well as university teams from Alberta, Canada; Germany; Ontario and British Columbia; and Spain. A Missouri team from MU and the Missouri University of Science and Technology received one of the twenty competition spots.

The Solar Decathlon houses are open to the public October 9-13 and 15-18. The next competition will be in 2011.

Walking through the Solar Decathlon, it is hard not to have many “I want that” moments or think “I could live in this” (actually, I want to live in this). Wandering around, the “oohs”
and “ahs” of attendees, at all ages, are constant. (My children, for example,
definitely want to go back again, having been to the past two.) If you can, this
is an Energy COOL must do event.

Now, this event could well be different than the previous three as, to put it
politely, the White House is a bit more engaged and supportive of the core
principles and objectives of the Decathlon.

There are many reasons for the DOE’s support to the Solar Decathlon from encouraging “young people to pursue careers in science and engineering, helping the U.S. maintain its technological competitive edge” to education about renewable energy and energy efficiency (for both the students and the general public). The Decathlon also creates requirements to break down stove-pipes, as different academic disciplines work together in ways that typically doesn’t occur in the academic environment. This contributes to a larger ‘breaking stove-pipes’ issue:

To promote an integrated, or “whole building design,” approach to new construction. This approach differs from the traditional design-build process, because the design team considers the interactions of all building components and systems to create a more comfortable building, save energy, and reduce environmental impact.

Buildings are the largest single energy user and largest source of greenhouse gas emissions — more integrated approaches, such as driven by the Solar Decathlon, could help us address that issue while providing us homes and buildings that are more pleasing, healthier, and more productive.

Now, lets take a moment on one specific objective:

To help move solar energy technologies to the marketplace faster. The Solar Decathlon helps accelerate the research and development of energy-efficiency and energy production technologies.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/a-siegel/the-race-for-the-sun-raci_b_313825.html

The plant will use power from renewable resources such as wind and solar power, which will then be converted into hydrogen and transferred back to the grid as available power, according to the New Mexico-based company.

The process is completely sustainable, doesn’t create any greenhouse gasses and produces distilled water as a byproduct, a promising prospect for parts of the world without access to freshwater.

“We’re looking at technology that is cleaner than anything ever invented,” says Henry Herman, CEO and founder of the company.

The company plans to keep costs low by using renewable resources to supply the power needed to produce hydrogen. The high cost of cost of hydrogen production due to the vast amounts of energy needed for the process have made hydrogen power plants unfeasible in the past. The ability of the plant to provide hydrogen to the industrial market as well as hydrogen fueling stations at a lower cost will contribute to the company’s goal of a long term sustainable, renewable and affordable energy solution.

According to Jetstream Wind ten national and international renewable energy plants are scheduled for implementation. Ground was broken on the first plant in Truth or Consequences, NM, though it is still awaiting completion of the permitting process. The company estimates the project will take over a year to build once the required permits are gathered.