The Solar Decathlon competition is a biennial event hosted on the National Mall in Washington D.C. The competition is scheduled to take place next year from September 23^rd to October 2^nd 2011. Since 2002 when the competition was first held 92 collegiate teams across the U.S. have participated. During the competition the National Mall will be converted into what they call the Solar Village. There, the twenty solar houses will be erected and tested rigorously to measure efficiency metrics, judged for architectural design and structural integrity (metrics and design are judged in 10 subcategories) and visited by hundreds of thousands of people from across the country. It is important to note that the competition stresses the need for the houses to be affordable and provide a healthy and comfortable living environment.

Leading Team New York City is Professor Christian Volkmann. He’s the faculty in charge of the putting the project together and assembling the student team. I was able to talk two students involved in the project, Asher Salzberg, a fourth year undergraduate architecture major and Master of Sustainability in the Urban Environment graduate student Michael Catalano.  Salzberg is a part of the core group of students working in conjunction with engineering students on the design of the solar roof pod. His motivation for this project stems from his personable belief that his profession has a responsibility to curtail the energy consumption of buildings. Salzberg believes that “the planet is our site, so we always have to design based on what our planet can provide.”

The solar roof pod is approximately 700 square feet and has a tripartite design, the deck, body and roof. The deck is a structural support for the weight of the pod on the roof.  It will also allow for plants to be grown, creating a green roof serving as a carbon sink (minimizing carbon release into the atmosphere) and reducing heat gain. Salzberg points out that a variant of the deck is being designed for the competition because the pod will be assembled at ground level. The body also contains a core which provides the living functions to enable the customizable layout consisting of a kitchen, bathroom, living room and a Murphy bed. Catalano and his team are conducting research to design a smart façade system that will be integrated into the Solar Roof Pods curtain wall. He says that the smart façade will “take advantage of solar heat gain principles and thereby passively regulate internal air temperature” to a section of the pod. Air filtration may also be a smart facade component. Finally the roof is described as a  “trelliswork space frame which supports a solar array”, the space between the roof and the solar array serves as a cooling mechanisms for the panels to facilitate maximum efficiency.

What is remarkable about the design of the pod is that it has an effect like it’s floating in mid air. The structure is designed to be mass-produced with many parts that can be transported to the roof via an elevator.  Salzberg does concede that some parts of the pod may have to be crane lifted but for the most part they are working to eliminate this scenario. Both Salzberg and Catalano expressed to me that the solar roof pod is unique because it is built to be plugged into an urban environment and work symbiotically with the existing building infrastructure. What that means is the pod will capture energy from the sun and distribute the surplus energy to the building. It reduces the heat island effect and will also provides infrastructure to support a green roof or some other form of biodiversity that’s non-existent at the ground level.

The competition serves two main purposes. The first is educational; it provides a platform for the public demonstration of practical uses of renewable and clean technologies, in addition to innovative, efficient and cost effective building design. The second I believe to be the teambuilding component, students work collaboratively across academic disciplines to bring the project together affording them with a sort of real world experience.

I wish Team New York the best of luck on the project and look forward to seeing the solar roof pod in D.C next year.

What I would like to do is shed some light on the enormity of the chemical industry and highlight one of the major pushes to reform its oversight. There are 55 million chemicals currently registered in the American Chemical Society’s database, called the CAS Registry. That number is up from the 28 million that were recorded in 2006 report. This includes various combinations of organic and inorganic compounds, metals, alloys, minerals and polymers to name a few. Estimates made by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) indicate that less than 240,000 chemicals are regulated under governmental agencies globally. What we see here is the hyper accelerated discovery, development and distribution of new chemical compounds to meet the demands of consumers. Agencies responsible for regulating this industry are placed in a continuously reactive – as oppose to a proactive – position in weeding out chemicals that pose a threat to human health and the environment.

The EPA was granted oversight and the power to regulate chemical substances in consumer goods under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) of 1976. When the Act was passed there were 62,000 chemicals in production, today over 80,000 chemicals being used in consumer goods, according to the Environmental Working Group, a research organization based in Washington DC. For the most part little is known about the health risks associated with the majority of these chemicals and the EPA has played somewhat of a limited role in regulating the industry. Over the past year the EPA has posted action plans for managing a range of chemicals determined to be hazardous. The number of chemicals on that list is a far cry from truly managing the vast number of chemicals currently in the market, but some is better than none. The chemicals include the following, Benzidine Dyes, Bisphenol A (BPA), Hexambromocyclododecane (HBCD), Nonylphenol and Nonylphenol Ethoxylates, and Long-chain perfluorinated chemicals (PFCs). These are not common household names but are part of products that we use every day.

The TSCA is embedded with loopholes that have been exploited by chemical industries since its passage. This has prompted a response from policy makers and advocates to introduce legislation from both the Senate (Safe Chemicals Act of 2010) and the House of Representatives (Toxic Chemical Safety Act of 2010). These bills include but are not limited to a combination of the following: extensive review process and testing of chemicals, improving transparency of chemical production, higher safety standards, identifying high priority chemicals, promoting safer chemical alternatives and the elimination of harmful chemicals on the market. Both bills have failed to garner enough support to make it to the floor for a vote and are currently being held in their respective committees.

This is stalling reform to an industry whose products are ubiquitous in our lives and impact us in ways in which we may not know about for many years to come.  News in this area is not all grim, at least not in California. California’s Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) is currently working on State legislation under the Green Chemistry Initiative to regulate and provide greater oversight of chemicals used in consumer goods.

I believe that oversight and transparency of the chemical industry is in the best interest of both the consumer and environment. This will allow regulators to take a proactive position in limiting the production of harmful chemicals, promoting safer alternatives and educating consumers. Our current system does not allow that and it needs to change sooner rather than later.