The Council for Sustainability at SCAD

From the Savannah Morning News:

When Scott Boylston began hearing about nuclear power as a clean, safe and cheap solution to global warming, he knew it was a great topic for his graphic design students.

“Poster design is all about generating a public dialogue,” said Boylston, professor of graphic design at the Savannah College of Art and Design. “Every project in the class focuses on socially relevant material.”

Making the subject even more pressing locally is a plan to expand the nuclear power plant closest to Savannah - Georgia Power’s Plant Vogtle on the Savannah River near Augusta.

In Alison Johnson’s poster, poker chips stack up in the shape of cooling towers. The poster reads: “Nuclear bets … the risks aren’t worth it.”

Read more of Mary Landers’ story here.

MIT just announced what may be one of the most important breakthroughs of all time in the field of alternative energy. They have demonstrated how to use solar power to split water into hydrogen and oxygen to be stored inside a fuel cell:

Inspired by the photosynthesis performed by plants, Nocera and Matthew Kanan, a postdoctoral fellow in Nocera’s lab, have developed an unprecedented process that will allow the sun’s energy to be used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gases. Later, the oxygen and hydrogen may be recombined inside a fuel cell, creating carbon-free electricity to power your house or your electric car, day or night.

The key component in Nocera and Kanan’s new process is a new catalyst that produces oxygen gas from water; another catalyst produces valuable hydrogen gas. The new catalyst consists of cobalt metal, phosphate and an electrode, placed in water. When electricity — whether from a photovoltaic cell, a wind turbine or any other source — runs through the electrode, the cobalt and phosphate form a thin film on the electrode, and oxygen gas is produced.

Combined with another catalyst, such as platinum, that can produce hydrogen gas from water, the system can duplicate the water splitting reaction that occurs during photosynthesis.

This process (known as electrolysis) is normally very expensive and thus is not useful for home storage of solar energy. If this pans out, Al Gore’s vision will become a reality. It is now distinctly possible that within 10 years time all residential electricity in the U.S. could be generated using this method. If our cars were all electric or electric/solar fuel hybrids (totally speculating on that latter part), there’s the other part of the equation.

Check out the video on MIT TechTV.