CU SNR team: Natural gas development to get a hard look
Oct 2nd
NSF awards CU-Boulder-led team $12 million
to study effects of natural gas development
to study effects of natural gas development
The National Science Foundation has awarded a $12 million grant to a University of Colorado Boulder-led team to explore ways to maximize the benefits of natural gas development while minimizing negative impacts on ecosystems and communities.
Led by Professor Joseph Ryan of CU-Boulder’s civil, environmental and architectural engineering department, the team will examine social, ecological and economic aspects of the development of natural gas resources and the protection of air and water resources. A part of NSF’s Sustainability Research Network initiative, or SRN, the project will focus on the Rocky Mountain region, where natural gas development, as well as objections to it, are increasing.
“We all create demand for natural gas so we have to accept some of the outcomes of its extraction,” said Ryan. “Our goal is to provide a framework for society to evaluate the trade-offs associated with the benefits and costs of natural gas development.”
The SRN team assembled by Ryan includes air and water quality experts, social scientists, human health experts, information technology experts and a substantial outreach and education effort. The SRN team will be advised by an external committee that includes representatives of the oil and gas industry, regulatory agencies, environmental organizations, local governments, academia and Native American tribes. Preparation of the SRN proposal to the NSF was fostered by CU-Boulder’s Office for University Outreach, which supported the creation of the Colorado Water and Energy Research Center, said Ryan.
As part of the effort, Ryan said team members will review industry practices for hydraulic fracturing, which involves pumping pressurized water, sand and chemicals deep down well bores to crack rocks and free petroleum and natural gas for easier extraction. The team will evaluate the current state of drilling technology, the integrity of well bore casings and natural gas collection mechanisms and processes.
- Drill pads around the Roan Plateau
- Hydraulic fracturing requires large volumes of chemically treated water — most wells require between 3 million and 5 million gallons of water each, say experts. The fracturing fluid left in the ground, as well as the fluid that returns to the surface, known as “flowback,” present potential ecological and health risks if not handled properly, Ryan said.
While oil and gas extractions from hydraulic fracturing also result in atmospheric emissions of some greenhouse gases and volatile organic compounds, natural gas is nevertheless seen by many as a “bridge fuel” that leads away from dirty coal combustion toward cleaner sustainability methods, said Patrick Bourgeron, associate director of the SRN and a fellow at CU-Boulder’s Institute for Arctic and Alpine Research.
As part of the project, a team led by CU-Boulder Professor Harihar Rajaram will be investigating the hydrologic processes tied to potential risks of natural gas and oil extraction, including groundwater and aquifer systems. The team also plans to assess the risk of natural gas and oil extraction to water quality and mitigation strategies that involve improvements in current water treatment technology.
Professor Jana Milford of CU-Boulder’s mechanical engineering department will lead a team monitoring and modeling the potential risks of natural gas and oil development to air quality. Professor John Adgate of the Colorado School of Public Health in Denver will spearhead a team assessing the potential risks of natural gas development to public health.
Natural gas waste pit
Other partners on the CU-led NSF project include the Colorado School of Mines, Colorado State University, the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo., the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the University of Michigan and California State Polytechnic University Pomona.
Attitudes toward natural gas extraction using hydraulic fracturing vary widely around the West, said CU-Boulder Professor Mark Williams, a co-investigator on the project. One classic Colorado example is Boulder County and adjoining Weld County to the northeast. “The geology doesn’t change, the price of gas doesn’t change and the extraction methods are the same,” he said. “But for the most part, Boulder County opposes hydraulic fracturing while Weld County generally embraces it.”
Ryan said the network’s research findings eventually will be shared with the public through an extensive outreach and education effort led by SRN co-investigator and CU-Boulder Professor Patricia Limerick of the Center of the American West. The effort includes a “citizen science” component in which the public is encouraged to make science measurements, including air quality readings made with portable instruments compatible with smart phones, and share the results with the SRN research team.
“The citizen science aspect of this effort will result in a stronger connection between the public and the science used to make regulatory decisions,” said Professor Michael Hannigan of CU-Boulder’s mechanical engineering department and one of the co-investigators on the SRN project.
Natural gas production, especially the use of hydraulic fracturing, has become the subject of intense controversy, said Limerick. “Some people living in proximity to well sites are understandably worried and anxious, often feeling powerless as they confront a possible threat to their health and to the quality of their lives.
“Environmental advocates find themselves pulled between the climate benefits of natural gas, which releases significantly less carbon in combustion than coal, and the disturbances associated with natural gas extraction,” she said.
Outreach events will include periodic town hall meetings around the West. There also will be SRN meetings involving engineers, natural scientists and social scientists to stay abreast of the latest technologies and evolving socioeconomic factors regarding natural gas production, Limerick said.
“Unraveling complex processes involving Earth systems, especially the coupling of human activities and climate, depends increasingly on partnerships among natural science, philosophy and ethics, economics, social science, mathematics and engineering,” says Marge Cavanaugh, NSF acting assistant director for geosciences.
The CU-led research team and a second team from Penn State were chosen from more than 200 SRN proposals by the NSF as part of its Science, Engineering and Education for Sustainability program. The $12 million award to CU-Boulder is for five years.
Leading quantitative conservation biologist named CU’s first Colorado Chair in Environmental Studies
Oct 1st
The University of Colorado Boulder has hired its first Colorado Chair in Environmental Studies, an endowed chair awarded to Daniel Doak, a conservation biologist known for his quantitative analysis of how different government policies could affect the populations of species ranging from sea otters, California condors, corals and rare plants.
The endowed chair in environmental studies was made possible by $4 million in gifts made anonymously in 2009 and 2010 toward the chair.
Dr. Daniel Doak
Sharon Collinge, professor and director of the CU-Boulder Environmental Studies Program, called Doak a perfect match. “He epitomizes what we’re looking for,” she said.
Doak is especially skilled in interdisciplinary research, she said. He brings expertise in policy to his analyses of risks of energy development, for example. And he is widely cited for his research in quantitative conservation biology, which combines sophisticated computer modeling with varying policy scenarios to project changes in populations of rare species.
For instance, the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science recently published a study co-authored by Doak concluding that the California condor is chronically endangered by lead exposure from hunters’ spent ammunition.
While the free-flying condor population has risen in the last three decades, that increase has been achieved through captive breeding, monitoring and veterinary care, the study found. Meanwhile, the primary threat to the endangered bird — lead poisoning from bullets and shotgun shells lodged in carrion — has gone largely unmitigated, the study said.
Doak and his fellow researchers found no evidence that California’s 2008 partial ban on lead ammunition yielded any decrease in lead exposure and poisoning in condors.
Since 2007, Doak has served as a professor of zoology and physiology at the University of Wyoming. Previously, he was a faculty member at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Forest Service, California Department of Fish and Game and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. Scholarly papers have cited his work more than 3,000 times since 1998.
Doak said he was drawn to CU-Boulder’s Environmental Studies Program because of its breadth, spanning disciplines ranging from biogeochemistry to political science to philosophy. This interdisciplinary focus is necessary to confront some of the world’s most intractable problems, Doak and Collinge said.
“That’s the only way we can really address and resolve some of the major environmental challenges that we face,” Collinge said.
Working with experts from a wide range of disciplines, Doak added, provides a motivation and opportunity “not once a year but every day to confront your own ignorance and thus to appreciate and learn new ideas and approaches.”
It is not that interdisciplinary work is always best, he added. “We need to train ourselves and our students to determine when the problem we are confronting requires an interdisciplinary approach. If you want to build a bridge that won’t fall down, you don’t need an interdisciplinary team. You need a good engineer.”
The critical question, he said, is the following: “Is this problem a nail that requires a hammer, or is this a problem that requires a lot of tools? And most environmental problems require an entire chest of tools and the different people who know how to use them.”
Collinge said students sometimes grasp this distinction better than professors do. “Students who are interested in the environment understand very deeply that they have to know something about politics and policies and how we make choices and why we make choices,” she said. “They’ve essentially pushed us, encouraged us to provide that broad and deep training for them.”
Of the donor’s gift, Collinge said, “This was incredibly generous. And we are really grateful.
“For me, it validates or speaks to the importance of what we’re doing,” she said. “With more than 1,000 undergraduate majors in environmental studies and 50 graduate students, enthusiasm was abundant even before the gift that enabled the endowed chair.”
CU’s biotechnology building earns LEED platinum rating
Oct 1st
Oct. 1, 2012
The University of Colorado Boulder’s Jennie Smoly Caruthers Biotechnology building has received a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED, platinum rating — the highest possible evaluation — from the United States Green Building Council.
The 336,800-square-foot research and teaching facility opened in April on the university’s east campus. More than 60 faculty and 500 researchers, staff and students work inside, tackling a wide swath of challenges from cancer and heart disease to the development of new biofuels. LEED certification is a national benchmark for sustainable design, construction, operation and maintenance.
The building posed intense energy and water needs as well as complex safety requirements. “Earning a LEED platinum rating for such a large research building highlights the engineering challenges of providing safe and practical research space while ensuring the highest level of sustainability,” said Moe Tabrizi, director of campus sustainability.
The result is a building that is 30 percent more energy and water efficient than recently built buildings with a similar function. One tactic used by designers was to group labs with similar functions near each other in the building to centralize common lab equipment and maximize the efficiency of energy use, ventilation and heat recovery. The building’s mechanical and electrical systems incorporate significant energy savings and resource recovery.
The facility will have an array of large-scale, ground-mounted solar panels to help fulfill its energy needs. It also features evaporative cooling, which is the most energy-efficient cooling method in Colorado’s dry climate; daylight harvesting, lighting controls and LED technology; energy-efficient freezer compressors and lab exhaust fume hoods; low-flow plumbing and additional features.
The new building, which is prominent when accessing campus from Colorado Avenue and Foothills Parkway, also matches CU-Boulder’s distinct architectural look.
“This project demonstrates that we can achieve a high-performing, technically complex facility that blends our Tuscan Vernacular — or rural Italian — style with the demands of cutting-edge, 21st century world-class research,” said Paul Leef, campus architect.
The design team and campus engineers undertook a meticulous engineering process that combined best practices in green building, LEED requirements, and recommendations from Labs21, a program of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Department of Energy that is dedicated to improving the environmental performance of laboratories.
CU-Boulder is a sustainability leader in higher education. The campus currently has five LEED platinum rated buildings, eight gold rated buildings and one silver. The university is committed to earning gold ratings or higher for all new construction and renovations on campus.
