Defining Sustainability:

A Virtual Tour• The Alternate Energy and

Environment Center (AEEC) 1975 by students and faculty

• Response to the energy crisis of the 1970's.

• Demonstrate alternative methods of producing and using resources, particularly energy, food, and shelter, that were not heavily based on depleting and polluting sources of fossil fuels.

• Create experiential and interdisciplinary learning experiences.

Creating a Sustainable Legacy

• provide people with the necessities of life, food, shelter, heat, electricity and water

• ecologically sustainable, able to be provided in the long-term without depleting the life-support systems such as pure air, water, soil, micro-organisms and bio-diversity of life essential for the well-being of future generations.

Public Education: Green Demonstrations

Demonstrate technologies and ideas that could easily be incorporated into a visitor’s current household and lifestyle, including:

• small-scale production of food

• yard and organic waste composting

• energy efficiency

• minimizing use of all resources

• reuse and recycling

• maximizing the use of the sun to provide energy

Building Community

Model social and community sustainability:

• full participation

• climate of equality

• mutual and environmental respect

• achieve personal self reliance and collective survival

• demonstrate technological and social/community approaches

Building Community of Place

Experiential and Participatory Learning

Many students experienced their first opportunity to create, understand design, and participate in shaping their setting to fit the environment.

CONVIVIAL SYSTEMS

• relatively simple

• easy to use

• easy to understand

• participatory

• easy to maintain

• use local resources such as soil, water, and the sun to provide for human needs

• integrated technology and social processes

• defining a new vernacular

The Center’s Integrated Systems

• Green Shelter

• Renewable Energy

• Materials Cycling

• Food Production

• Water Conservation

and Protection

• The Lessons

Shelter: Off-Grid and Renewable Power

The sun, wind, and biomass (wood) provided the solar schoolhouse with:

• heating,

• cooling,

• electricity

• hot and cold water

• cooking

The pioneering passive solar greenhouse

• Erected in 1974 in the midst of the first Energy Crisis to redirect people from a fossil fuel dependent world

• Used discarded or donated materials

• Off grid but never froze

• The greenhouse was directly lit and heated by the sun

• The building was oriented due south

• Only the south wall was fenestrated

• The rest was tightly built and insulated

Greenhouse as a Passive Solar Collector

In passive solar mode:

• Sunlight entered the structure;

• its energy was stored and re-released automatically from thermal mass by natural processes without the use of fans or pumps run by electricity

• The building is a solar collector that collects, stores and releases energy

• temperature kept above 40 dgrs

• Suitable for cool-loving plants

• No fossil fuels used

Accessory Systems: Backup, Covering

Reflection in the Solar Greenhouse

To assure adequate light for

optimum plant growth, many

surfaces in the greenhouse were

painted white to reflect light

from all sides, especially the

north. Storage was black.

Illustrating the Primary Uses of a Passive

Solar Greenhouse.

Winter growing of cold and temperature swing tolerant vegetables

Starting seedlings before putting them out to the garden

Extending the season for certain crops: 1. summer crops such as cucumbers, tomatoes and peppers can be grown into late fall and 2. early winter and spring crops such as brassicas can be grown earlier.

THE SOLAR SCHOOLHOUSE:

Design Principles

Passive Solar Design• The structure itself is the collector and heat storage system

• South facing windows are a form of passive solar collector called a direct gain system– they collect solar heat.

• Sunlight enters and is absorbed by surfaces, changing into heat.

• Heat is transferred throughout the house without the use of fans or pumps.

• Each square foot of south facing window typically saves you a gallon of heating oil over the winter heating season.

• The building has no windows on the north or west sides, where heat loss, not gain, occurs.

Storing Heat for Cold Nights

• To avoid overheating the building and store energy for nighttime use, thermal mass is required in the form of a concrete slab, masonry, tile, or water barrels.

• These absorb the sun's energy, warms, and reemits the energy later when the house is cooling.

• The slab under the Schoolhouse was insulated to prevent heat loss to the ground.

The Trombe or Vertical Mass Wall

• Indirect solar heat gain, passive solar collector

• No fans or pumps involved in the system

• Located at the far left front of the building

• Glazing looked onto concrete blocks painted black

• Openings at the top and bottom allowed warm air to

circulate

• The concrete block wall is superior storage

Energy Efficient Construction

Proper insulation of the walls and roof: R-25 to R-30 for walls and R-40 for roofs.

Windows R-3 or higher

Houses with large amounts of insulation are sometimes called superinsulated houses.

Air infiltration is stopped by tight house construction

Very tight construction may require use of an air-to-air heat exchanger

Comfortable Functionality

• The recycled post and

beam construction

allowed for a large open

room without support

partitions

• Perfect gathering place

for classes, tour groups,

or social events

• Allowed heat to circulate

freely

Two photovoltaic cells sat in maximum direct sunshine (30+ year life)

50 kW-hr a month for lighting and some appliance use (1/10th use of typical U.S. home)

A Windcharger wind mill produced 100 watts of power (14 volts at 7 amps DC) when the wind exceeded 20 mph, beginning at 8-10 mph.

OFF GRID: Electricity charged 12 volt rechargeable batteries

DC-AC inverter brought the voltage up to 120 volts AC

NET MTERING: synchronous inverter connects to utility power.

Excess electricity is sold to the utility.

At night, electricity bought from utility.

Meter runs backwards and forwards

Solar Electricity from Photovoltaic Cells and Wind:

Resilience from Off Grid vs Grid Options

Solar Hot Water

A passive batch solar water heater was made from a 30 gallon metal water heater painted black set in an insulated box with a transparent cover.

Reflective foil on the sides and back of the tank directed all the incoming sun's rays to the blackened tank.

This was a warm weather system.

As cold water was pumped from the ground, its temperature was raised from 50 degrees F to around 110 degrees F

Stored for night time use.

Our first wind generator experience at the AEEC places the grid/off-grid issue in historical perspective. This was a Jacobs Generator from the late 1920s or early 1930s (see http://telosnet.com/ wind/20th.html).

The Wind Generator

The Jacobs’ Generator

1920's Jacobs brothers built

wind energy system to

electrify their remote

Montana ranch.

Mid-1920's, Jacobs Wind

Electric Company

Moved to Minneapolis in the

early 1930's.

Manufactured thousands of

wind electric plants which

provided power to isolated

farms and ranches. (http://

www.windturbine.net/history

.htm)

People Power

It was an unforgettable moment in the mid-1970s when, the tall wind tower having been assembled by fifty Ramapo College students on the ground, they heaved together on long ropes to pull the tower upright. After the tower was secured, the Jacobs Generator was moved into position by a crane. Two faculty then climbed the tower and prepared the generator for operation.

The Modern Windmill

After two decades of service, the

Jacobs was replaced by a modern

lightweight Whisper generator. The

new machine could generate 1

kilowatt despite its much smaller

size and it began generating at 7

mph breezes, unlike its heavy

predecessor, giving it wider utility

(http://www.electricalternatives.co

m/world_power_technologies.htm).

A Monument to Renewability

While the Whisper will be re-erected at the new RCSEC, the Jacobs will be a centerpiece sculpture in one of the gardens. Thus, the Jacobs will continue to tell its story about the grid and the history of alternative energy to future generations of learners as it has for the past thirty years.

Materials Cycling: The Recycling Center

A 1976 “ramada” structure designed as a model community recycling center

Processed entire household waste stream even waste car oil.

1986 NJ Recycling Law transferred recycling to Mahwah

Modeling the 3-R’s

3 R’s of waste management:

• Reduce avoid waste creation

• Reuse longer use life

• Recycle recapture resource

values

90%+ of the 6+ lbs. of waste we each generate daily

Food Production: Four Season

Gardening

An integrated food

system combined:

• a three-season

intensive organic

garden and

• a passive solar

greenhouse

The Garden

The High Cost of Modern industrial large-scale agriculture:

• 20% of all our energy (farming, processing, transport, storage and preparation)

• artificial fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides (resources and pollution)

• land degradation from erosion and salinization

• water use for irrigation

• natural ecosystems (grasslands and forests) are being destroyed

Yet very large amounts of food can be produced on a small scale without these negative effects.

Becoming a Food Producer: Eating

Fresh Local Foods

With some knowledge and a

relatively small effort, we

can grow a lot of our fruit

and vegetables for

consumption in a small

space in our backyards.

The AEEC gardens

empowered students to

grow their own food with

most ecological and

sustainable approaches.

Intensive Small Pot Gardening

• intensive spacing of plants on raised beds

• mulching

• enriching soil with natural organic fertilizers and nutrients

• extended three-season planting and growing techniques

• natural pest control (for insects, plant diseases and animals) through cultural methods, mechanical and biological controls, and safe use of natural chemicals

Soil: The Crucial Resource

The goal of an organic

gardener is to continually

increase the fertility of the

soil, leading to better

plant growth using

intensive spacing and less

problems with disease and

insects (healthy plants will

usually outgrow the

problems

Key Principles: Diversity, Succession, Natural Methods

(Intercropping and Companion Planting)

Year-Round Growing in This Climate

Permaculture

Permaculture:

• perennial and self-seeding food plants

• require little care

• supply an edible landscape, productive ecosystems, and good land management.

• The AEEC featured a small orchard, extensive plantings of edible perennials and a small tree nursery to support campus planting.

Water Pumping Wind System and Water

Storage

DO you know where your water

comes from and goes to?

We must consider both water

quantity and of water quality.

The AEEC demonstrated both

water conserving lifestyles,

buildings and landscapes and

efforts to protect aquifers from

contamination. Water must be

treated as a renewable resource.

Water as Renewable Resource

Need: the garden, greenhouse and solar school house

Source: drilled 100’ well to aquifer

Delivery: An encased pump powered by a windmill and later a solar panel.

Water was pumped into a raised cask for storage.

Gravity was used to move the water to its point of use.

Conservation as Renewal

Water conservation Steps: Plants require 1 inch of water per week:

Drip irrigation to plant roots to avoid evaporative losses

Hose and hand watering were done early in the morning

Mulch was used to keep garden beds moist and prevent evaporative losses.

The Composting Privy: Coming

out of the Water Closetwaterless toilet served to

challenge visitors to think about their assumptions.

the waterless toilet not only avoids substantial water use but it also allows for recovery of human waste as composted soil. Although not suitable for food crops, this soil is a great nutrient source for ornamental plants. (See Sim Van Der Rynand Stuart Cowan’s chapter “the Compost Privy Story” in their Ecological Design, Island Press, 1996).

Ecological Literacy

Those who toured the former Alternative Energy Center learned to understand how their observations reflected the very fundamental laws of science. The First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics, The Law of Conservation of Matter and the Laws of Ecology. In sum, they gained an ecological Literacy, the knowledge and wisdom of how to live on our earth.

The Law of Conservation of

Matter

The first principle is that we can neither create nor destroy matter; we can only change it from one form to another. There is really no such thing as waste in nature since the wastes of one species is food for another. We thus try to reuse and recycle all matter within our local system. Everything that we think we have thrown away is with us in some form or another; there is no away.

The Law of Conservation of

Energy

The second principle

involves energy flow.

We cannot create or

destroy energy; we

can only change it

from one form to

another. But at what

efficiency do operate?

Second Law of Thermodynamics

(or Entropy Law)

As we convert energy from one form to another, energy quality is always degraded.

Concentrated or high quality energy is useful and can do many things. Dispersed energy is low-quality and not very useful.

In other words, energy once degraded cannot be recycled to do useful tasks.

Low quality energy = pollution.

Dispersed pollutants are practically impossible to remove from the environment.

Renewable Means Sustainable

The only energy source that is truly sustainable in the long-term is from the sun.

Laws of EcologyThe laws of ecology tell us that:

humans are interconnected and interdependent with everything else

on earth

Everything is interconnected: we cannot do just one thing

Nature knows best:

we must not interfere with earth's natural biogeochemical cycles in ways that destroy our life-support

systems.

Everything goes somewhere: there is no "away"

Unassimilated Waste = pollution

Nature as the Ultimate Teacher

Participant learning followed Barry Commoner’s ecological rule that "nature knows best."

Students created, built and experimented with nature as a guide---the ultimate teacher.

They witnessed the cyclical relationships of nature---how compost fuels plants that are eventually composted.

They came to see nature as a learning process, where response to feedback builds highly variable and adaptive systems.

Collective Problems and Promise

It may seem at first that one person can have little effect.

Remember that each positive thing we do has a multiplier effect.

• Saving water saves energy and also reduces pollution.

• Recycling an aluminum can reduces the need to mine more ore, process it, transport it, and produce the can.

• All along the chain, energy and pollution is reduced.

As the world climbs toward 9 billion people, the cumulative ripple effect we each create is significant indeed.

But the solution is not merely individual. We must act together to address our collective impacts. A sustainable future requires our participation and leadership.

Working Together We Can

Achieve a Sustainable Future

Remember the Lessons of the AEEC

The concepts that we see in this tour ---the AEEC’s Legacy---can play a major part in helping to achieve long-term stability or sustainability.