Clarkson Sustainable Synergy

Synergy Joins Thousands at Net Impact 2009

On November 13 and 14 two members of Sustainable Synergy attended the 2009 Net Impact Conference at Cornell University. They joined thousands of other aspiring young professionals with a passion for sustainable enterprise for two informative days on sustainability. Keynote speakers included Jeff Immelt, CEO of GE as well as other CEO’s who all discussed the pressing issue of global sustainable enterprise.

Get more information at Net Impact 2009

Synergy Visits The Wild Center

Sustainable Synergy made a trip November 1 to The Wild Center located in Tupper Lake, NY. The Wild Center is a natural history museum of the Adirondack Park. One of the more interesting aspects of The Wild Center is the utilization of various renewable forms of energy. Helping achieve The Wild Center’s Silver LEED certification are a 40kW photovoltaic array, composting toilets, air monitoring systems, low VOC materials, storm water utilization, and a Wood Gasification Boiler will come on line in the near future. The goal of The Wild Center is to demonstrate that nature and humankind are able to thrive together.

Aside from touring the incredible systems The Wild Center uses, Sustainable Synergy used the time and facilities for a planning/strategy session. The members that were able to attend performed a sort of gap analysis of the club. They set out a plan for wrapping up current projects by the end of the semester and began to outline projects to begin in 2010. There was a consensus that the club needs to focus on larger scale projects if they hope to achieve lower levels of energy consumption and higher levels of renewable energy production on campus. These projects will include multidisciplinary audits of targeted buildings and processes on campus to find areas of improvement. The group will also begin fostering relationships with other institutions to broaden the perspective on issues they are facing at “home”.

Also, the group wishes to thank Jerry Hacker who is a board member at The Wild Center. He assisted in securing the group access to the facilities as well as spending time with the group to help develop projects.

Stay tuned for pictures from the visit to The Wild Center coming later this week.

National Grid gives Clarkson $350,000

National Grid donated $350,000 to Clarkson University for the study of Sustainable Energy.
Read more at:
http://www.watertowndailytimes.com/article/20091027/NEWS05/310279963

College Sustainability Report Card, Clarkson Below Average.

The 2010 National Sustainability Report Card was recently made public and Clarkson received an overall grade of C-. What can Sustainable Synergy do to raise the bar?

Check out the link below for all of the details:

http://www.greenreportcard.org/report-card-2010/schools/clarkson-university

Wind Energy Consortia between Institutions of Higher Learning and Industry

During the latter part of the 2009 summer Clarkson University in conjunction with SUNY Canton and Northern Power Systems applied for a 12 million dollar grant from the Department of Energy. If received, the grant will be used to construct a large scale wind turbine as well as a small scale wind farm and to perform research on the new technology wind turbine in the extreme climate of northern New York. The new wind energy will also be used to educate the students at both institutions, along with other innovation dealing with wind energy.

Sustainable Synergy Visits Maple Ridge Wind Farm

Students of Sustainble Synergy take a moment to pose with a portion of the wind farm in the back drop.