The Scholarly Format Appropriate For The Field - 1322 Words

Topic and Project Description (a thorough description of the topic and project, written in the scholarly format appropriate to the field): Grinnell College students, faculty, and staff have, for years, tried to make Grinnell College and its community more sustainable. Whether it has been through sourcing food grown locally and without fossil-fuel based fertilizers, advocating for LEED-certified buildings that conserve energy and water, or altering the College’s energy profile through the implementation of large-scale wind turbines, the College has focused on reducing harmful emissions while preserving standard of living (BMUB 2014). With the help of Professors Liz Queathem and Lee Sharpe, as well as Chris Bair and Rick Whitney from†¦show more content†¦German policy encourages building structures that are both efficient and that often produce their own energy, by allowing the government to directly pay property owners a fair market value for any renewable energy prod uced, versus Iowa’s standard of low-rate utility payouts (AIA) (Database of State Incentives for Renewables and Efficiency). This is but one example of the differences in policy that I plan to investigate in my research. Through careful analysis of policy at the local and national level in Germany, I will work to identify the areas in which policy and attitudinal changes could have the greatest effect on energy consumption. Energy savings can be found in the embodied energy of a structure, as well as through the inputs of energy into buildings and outputs of waste that require energy to treat (e.g. sewage, trash). For example, in Germany, laws requiring companies to implement â€Å"cradle-to-grave† waste controls sharply contrast with U.S. policy that puts the onus on the consumer to make sure waste is disposed of— and emissions are accounted for—properly (JWNET 2010). As I will be working in conjunction with several other students—each of us exam ining some aspect of Holistic Sustainability—we will work together to simultaneously answer the broader question of what a new Center for Sustainability at Grinnell College should look like. With my area of research, I hope to identify whether the Center should be a new or renovated