Submitted by Grainne Kennedy on Tue, 2017-07-25 16:05
The winner of the Carbon Challenge was announced at our recent Cambridge Green Challenge awards. The announcement followed a number of months of project development and collaboration between students and staff from different departments. The Challenge brief was for teams to research, develop and prepare the business case for innovative solutions to reduce the University’s energy consumption. The Challenge had a number of stages which teams had to progress through and in the end, just two teams remained with two very different projects.
The winners – Planit Green (pictured with Professor Ian Leslie)
This team of five students from the Departments of Engineering and Psychology developed a proposal for how the University could use hydroponics to lower building energy use. Hydroponics are plants that are grown in a mineral rich water solvent instead of soil and their presence within buildings provides oxygen while removing unwanted carbon dioxide and other pollutants. In this system, energy savings come from the reduction in air changes required and the subsequent lowering of demand on building ventilation systems. A trial of this project is already underway in the James Dyson Building and it is anticipated that this use of hydroponics will result in a carbon emissions saving of almost 25 tonnes per year.
The runners up – Team Solar Storage
After meeting at the Carbon Challenge launch, this team of three students from three different departments came together to develop a solar array project. The project paired solar photovoltaic and battery arrays at the University’s Laundry Farm site, to demonstrate the benefits of utilising electricity storage alongside electricity generation. It is believed that the system will provide greater flexibility over the proportion of renewable energy used in the building.
This project is currently being developed by Estate Management and is predicted to result in a carbon emissions saving of six tonnes per annum.