Winter 2007 Featured Story

Purple, Gold and Green

Meanwhile, faculty at Minnesota State Mankato have been at it for thirty years.

That's three decades of staying consistently in the forefront of energy research, for starters. And a cross-section of the University today shows intense study and research taking shape across disciplines. From pumping Minnesota corn into cars to turning garbage into compost in Ghana or working to reverse the pollution in the Minnesota River, Minnesota State Mankato has been home to active, passionate research well before such passions took their place among the nation's economic and political priorities.

Sustainability is a wide umbrella of a term, under which both environmental and social studies come into play. In any form, studying sustainability requires thinking above and beyond better gas mileage and recycling aluminum. It means finding ways to replace society's reliance on oil and finding them before the oil runs out; it means being responsible with land use, construction, waterways. It means nurturing human relationships so solutions can be created locally. Sustainability has many faces, and all have their eyes on the clock.

"Sustainability is no longer a topic of popular convenience," says Wayne Allen of Minnesota State Mankato's Department of Ethnic Studies. "It's a topic of imminent need."

With sustainability an integral part of the past, present and future of so many departments, Minnesota State Mankato stands tall in the country not only for news-making research, but as a home to faculty members committed to practicing sustainability while teaching it to a new generation.

Future fuels

By appearances, it's nothing more spectacular than a very clean auto shop, but the Minnesota Center for Automotive Research lab (MnCAR) in Nelson Hall is where lawmakers such as Gov. Tim Pawlenty and former U.S. Rep. Gil Gutknecht and even the U.S. secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns like to be seen when visiting campus. The study here of alternative fuels is exactly in line with the country's energy priorities.

Groundbreaking research here dates back to the 1970s, when the department successfully created a "50/50" car that surpassed its goal of getting fifty miles per gallon at a speed of fifty miles per hour. since becoming established as an applied research center in 1998 (the year Minnesota was designated as a national test site for ethanol), MnCAR has provided both the automotive industry and government with direct assistance in research and product development. most recently, Bruce Jones, Gary Mead and his students have been testing ethanol-fuel conversion kits for cars, a venture that Pawlenty recently praised as a step toward U.S. independence from foreign oil. Though not yet approved, the kits are designed to allow ordinary cars to run on a blend of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline as well as the standard Minnesota formula of 90 percent gas and 10 percent ethanol.

The state legislature has encouraged MnCAR to retrofit a hybrid car (primarily powered by gas with electric boosts) into a plug-in hybrid (primarily electric with a gas boost). And the Environmental Protection Agency is a champion of MnCAR's work, recently describing the fuel research as going hand-in-hand with the agency's own goals in offering alternative energy fuels.

Meanwhile, College of Science, Engineering and Technology Dean John Frey is pursuing support for developing an efficient method of producing and using switchgrass for the production of bio-fuels.

"The problem is, we're relying on corn—which is costly to raise, and what we pull out for energy doesn't go into the food chain," says Frey, who is promoting research into extracting cellulose from switchgrass as a way to produce ethanol. Benefits of harvesting switchgrass versus corn and soybeans include less erosion of farmland into the Minnesota River.

To gain energy independence—one core component of sustainability—corn and soybeans can't be the only solution. To rely on those alone would have a direct and negative impact on the nation's food supply, Frey says. A move to switchgrass would also help the health of the Minnesota River—long a topic of intense research at the University.

The University's biology faculty in 1986 established the Water Resources Center, which undertook the task of improving water quality in the area's lakes and the Minnesota River and its tributaries.

Since 1997, the Center has been a source of research on these and related topics. The Center's director, Shannon Fisher, says right now the Minnesota River is identified as one of the most polluted rivers in the state and nation. The Minnesota River Basin covers about 15,000 square miles and includes thirty-eight counties that drain into the Minnesota. The Center's mission is ambitious and relevant even to citizens who have no expressed interest in ecology or sustainability: to restore the river to a swimmable, recreational and scenic resource.

Waste management

When many think of waste management issues in the United States, they think of how best to use landfills, which tend to be tucked away in relatively remote locations. Imagine the crisis that would ensue if a community's garbage piled up by the tons on the streets—as it does in the poorer areas of Raymond Asomani-Boateng's home country.

Waste management is what Boateng, an Urban and Regional Studies professor, has been addressing in Ghana's capital and largest city, Accra.

In the low-income areas of Accra, waste dumpsters are teeming with garbage, most of which is rotting vegetables and bananas from the indigenous markets that operate throughout the city. The accumulated waste wreaks havoc on the health of the area.

"These are people who can't afford to pay for collection," he says. Rodents, snakes, flies and disease are all generated by these festering piles. Last summer, Boateng introduced the idea of turning the waste into compost, a process that would require cooperation among the market and commodities supervisors.

"The idea is if you perceive organic waste as being a resource in the framework of sustainability, then organic solid waste could be recycled into composting," Boateng says.

Accra alone has a potentially wide market for this compost, with Boateng estimating 10,000 people gardening or farming in the city in which fertilizer is a luxury few home gardeners can afford.

"If you have this waste, which is a resource, you could recycle it into compost so the families could use it in their garden."

Boateng's work to transform garbage into compost generated national media attention in Ghana. Soon he was interviewed for the national television station, and calls came in from local government officials across the country experiencing similar wastemanagement issues and seeking his advice.

"There are a lot of implications," Boateng says. "It requires space to compost. How are we going to provide space for this?" It will take space and management for Accra to embrace a wide-scale composting program, but the progress underway is already showing benefits—the composting process has the side benefit of killing bacteria, quelling the bad smell and not attracting fleas.

Wind power

Minnesota State Mankato physics professor Louis Schwartzkopf likes crunching numbers, particularly when it promotes alternative energy.

His interest in the topic was piqued seven years ago by an article in Scientific American. Like more articles that followed in years to come, this one addressed the idea of global oil production peaking—if not now, soon—and how the post-peak demand and price would both skyrocket and collide.

Long convinced that alternative energy would be the key to avoiding that crash, Schwartzkopf focused much of his work on establishing both a big-picture theory and a practical one.

Together with Allen, Schwartzkopf has authored an article examining pollution and energy depletion and tying it to a jump in world population —brought about by revolutions in both food production and health care availability. The premise of the article is that any solution to environmental issues requires first finding a solution to the population problem.

"The eco-system as a whole is not able to process the products of this much [population]" Schwartzkopf says. And American consumption is enormous. "We're by far the biggest users of energy," he added. "I don't know what country is second, but they're way down there."

Toward that end and closer to home, Schwartzkopf has researched a simple question and brought home answers to Minnesota. The question: How much alternative energy do we need to support our way of life?

During his sabbatical in 2005, Schwartzkopf developed a study in which he examined Minnesota's energy consumption and worked to establish how many alternative energy sources—wind turbines and ethanol processing plants—would be needed to provide the same amount of energy that's being used today. He localized much of his study to Blue Earth County, the county where Minnesota State Mankato sits.

Schwartzkopf found it would take about 170 wind turbines to provide all the electricity used in Blue Earth County.

"What they're saying is 15 to 20 percent of electricity could come from wind. What we want to do is more toward 100 percent," Schwartzkopf says. Energy consumption in Minnesota is growing faster than the population, and the vast majority of electricity in the state comes from coal-burning plants.

"If the rate of growth of electricity can be kept in line with population growth in Minnesota and we keep integrating wind power," he says, "you could eliminate the need for large coal-fired power plants to produce our electricity by 2015."

His writing partner, Allen, sees the key to sustainability as keeping the focus local. A former Fulbright Scholar for a project based on similar theories, Allen says looking at societies that have risen and fallen reveals a telling pattern—they invested themselves in non-sustainability. Generally speaking, Allen says, a society cannot survive the long run unless it is local in its energy production. The closer energy is to home, the safer the home.

Allen grew up in rural Mankato, where his early experiences on a farm—and the kinship his family had with their agricultural neighbors—forged the way he went on to study sustainable societies.

"When you're surrounded by kin you're a risk minimizer," Allen says. "If I grow up with you, see you every day, we take umbrage when someone violates our environment. Not because we're eco-freaks, but because this is our home. This is our place.

Building a future

The South African town of Karatara is just as it was during the country's apartheid era—overwhelmingly poor. Construction Management Chair Scott Fee is working on a long—range project in the city that will essentially build a university entirely on green principles—from construction to curriculum to its effect on the city's economy.

With the working name of the Eden Rural Enterprise Campus, the school will have three academies: eco-agriculture, ecoconstruction and eco-tourism. The hope is that graduates of the school will ultimately build the area's economy, Fee says. Minnesota State Mankato's involvement, if all goes as planned, will include students in Construction Management, Ethnic Studies, Geography, and Urban & Regional Studies.

Fee's research on U.S. construction focuses on the industry's willingness to implement green construction. What he's learned is that going green works out well for clients and architects, but often burdens the contractor.

"Often times the more aware a contractor is of sustainability issues, the less interested they are in participating on a sustainably designed project," Fee says. "It usually costs more in time, labor, resources, money. There's currently no inherent economic incentive for the contractor."

Yet sustainability, he says, is inseparable from any sense of responsible construction, in the United States or elsewhere. So he's determined to find a way to show the U.S. construction industry the potential long-term benefits, and the Eden Campus—in addition to the benefits it promises for Karatara —could provide that model.

"I need to show there's another way on this planet to grow a community, grow an economy and do it responsibly. It's hard to do that here. I'd like to use that example to show others."

Joe Tougas is a freelance writer and editor and an adjunct instructor in the Department of Mass Communications.