Freihaut at the East Campus Steam Plant at University Park, where a Combined Heat and Power (CHP) system burns natural gas to generate electricity, then captures the hot exhaust to make steam that further helps heat buildings on campus. The plant operates at 80 percent efficiency, much higher than a conventional power plant, where exhaust heat is lost to the environment.
At the MorningStar solar home in University Park, Donghyun Rim describes how ozone in the air interacts with our own skin and clothing to produce other substances, some of them harmful to human health.
For James Freihaut, improving our energy resilience is a perfect example of what a land-grant university should do: make a difference for people, communities, the economy, and the planet. "We do the laboratory work, all the way up to prototype demonstrations, to actual, real applications," he said.
Local generation of electricity, whether through renewable resources or fossil fuels, is much more efficient than producing it at power plants far from the consumers who will use it.
