Engineering speaker: get ready for ‘green’

By Josh Holderbaum
Western Herald

A guest speaker in the engineering department wants students to be ready for a very “green” job market when they get done with college.

Chris Comperchio, district manager for the heating, ventilation and air conditioning company Trane, discussed “The Key to ‘Greening’ Our Communities’ Monday at the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences Parkview Campus.

The lecture, part of the WMU’s Custer Workplace Lecture series, encouraged students to use the shift to environmentally friendly and sustainable construction to their advantage.

“The issue here is ‘green,’” Comperchio said. “Global warming may be real or not real, but we have to reduce inefficiency. The problem is that more efficient systems tend to be more expensive to start up. They require different processes and more exotic materials. The opportunity for engineers is to come up with new and different systems.”

Even owners who don’t want to explore green building will have to if the market forces them to, which it slowly has for many years, Comperchio said.

“Ten years ago, Ingersoll Rand never would have paid for guys like me to go around to campuses and talk about green jobs,” Comperchio said. “Companies want shareholders and consumers, and if they want to go green, so will the company. More and more people are aware of the environment, and I would suggest that your generation has a better understanding of the environment than mine.
Anyone heading into construction should know about Leadership in Environmental Energy and Design, or LEED, certification, the new standard in the construction industry, Comperchio said.

Certification depends on getting points in six areas: the site of the building, water efficiency, environment and atmosphere, building materials, indoor air quality, and innovation in the design.

“In the past, we thought of buildings as you build it and that’s the way it is,” Comperchio said. “That’s not true anymore. The idea of buildings now is to be recycled. I think that’s what you’ll see in your careers.”

Cities like Chicago and Fort Knox, Ky., have already taken steps to go green on a citywide scale.

Chicago wants to cut the city’s greenhouse gas emissions 25 percent by 2020 and 80 percent by 2050 as part of the Chicago Climate Action Plan, while the federal government stepped in to reduce emission levels at Fort Knox, a worst-case scenario for the government, Comperchio said.

Possible ways to improve energy efficiency include geothermal pumping, with heat pumped from the ground instead of the air or bodies of water, more efficient ventilation systems, and new air conditioning systems powered by water that gets frozen at night when work isn’t going on, then burnt back into water the next day.

Comperchio encouraged students to get involved with student versions of the U.S. Green Building Council, the body that oversees LEED certification, and be ready to come up with new ideas for the future.

“That’s going to require a tremendous amount of talent,” Comperchio said. “That’s where you come in.”

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Posted by heraldstaff on Feb 17 2010. Filed under Campus, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

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