Schumer, Gillibrand Secure Key Committee Approval of Over $1.5 Million for CUNY Energy Institute
Project Aims to Help Promote and Expand Green Economy and is Expected to Create as Many as 500 New Jobs in Brooklyn
Today, U.S Senators Charles E. Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, a member of the Senate Green Jobs & New Economy Subcommittee, announced that the Senate Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development has allocated $1,550,000 in grant funding to City University of New York's (CUNY) Energy Institute. This grant will allow CUNY to develop advanced, sustainable and economical energy technologies with low carbon footprints. This sustainable energy strategy will match the federal goals of the new Administration to promote and expand the Green Economy. The center would also create immediate employment for 50 professionals with the potential for adding 500 jobs as a result of spinoff projects.
"This funding is great news for both CUNY and Brooklyn," Schumer said. "It is critical to the environment and the economy that we decrease our dependence on traditional energy sources. By providing federal funding to the CUNY Energy Institute, we will be able to accomplish this goal by developing sustainable energy technologies that can be applied throughout Brooklyn."
"The best way to stem the tide of global climate change is to end America's dependence on carbon-based energy and invest in clean, homegrown energy sources," said Senator Gillibrand. "This investment will not only address global climate change, but spur economic growth, create hundreds of green collar jobs right here in Brooklyn and move America forward on a path to energy independence."
The Institute will focus on the establishment of two complementary system-level test beds that could demonstrate the substitution of energy produced from domestic resources other than oil and include electrochemical storage of sufficient electricity from excess night-time capacity and ‘renewable' sources to provide all the on-demand peak-power needed for a large CUNY building that would demonstrate the potential for reduction in hydrocarbon use in the residential, commercial sector without incurring significant economic penalties. It will also include high-performance electrochemical electricity storage to provide sufficient range for largely-electric vehicles to enable family transportation and function as mobile electricity storage assets for utilizing off-peak and renewable generating capacity that would demonstrate the potential for reduction in hydrocarbon use to meet the needs of the transportation sector without significant economic penalties.
The sustainable energy strategy that the CUNY Energy Institute is expected to advance envisions electricity generated from renewable but intermittently available resources, such as sun, wind, and waves; low carbon emitting electricity generation, such as nuclear, fossil fuels/carbon sequestration; and excess off-peak capacity being efficiently stored and regenerated to power the needs of largely-electric, energy-efficient transportation, industrial and residential sectors. This would enable domestic energy sources to be substituted for imported oil and create substantial reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions thereby reducing the use of fossil fuels and better utilizing generation capacity by improved and more efficient demand-side energy management. This offers a viable alternative to the previous national focus on hydrogen as an energy storage and distribution medium, proposing instead to capitalize on enhancement and development of the existing infrastructure for electricity production, storage and distribution.
The CUNY Energy Institute was established by The City University of New York (CUNY) Board of Trustees to aggregate expertise of the CUNY Colleges in developing advanced and sustainable energy technologies with low carbon footprints. The Energy Institute grew out of the CUNY Clean Fuels Institute, which in its earliest stages investigated clean coal combustion in fluidized beds and evolved to include thermal-storage technologies for solar-thermal plants. The Clean Fuels Institute was incorporated into the newly-formed Energy Institute this year to cover a broader range of energy technologies. Approximately 20 science and engineering faculty drawn from various CUNY colleges such as CCNY, Hunter College, Brooklyn College, Queens College, College of Staten Island and Queensborough Community College are affiliated with the Institute and will serve as principal investigators for the program's proposed activities. The Institute's investigators will also collaborate with other US universities and the Brookhaven National Laboratories, giving the program a national dimension.
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