The Center for Renewable Energy and Sustainable Technology (CREST)

CREST launched Solstice at the beginning of 1994, based upon the recognition that enormous lost opportunities in fostering sustainable energy development were occurring on an almost daily basis. This waS due, in part, to a lack of access to quality knowledge and usable information resources in a timely, cost-effective manner for better decisionmaking. Moreover, numerous assessments indicate these lost opportunities are presently large and will climb precipitously in the next several decades, because of myriad institutional barriers and persistent market flaws and failures (e.g., Factor Four: Doubling Wealth, Halving Resource Use, by Ernst von Weizsäcker, Amory and Hunter Lovins - http://www.rmi.org/).

For example, as a number of global studies have indicated (e.g., Energy for a Sustainable World by Jose Goldemberg, Thomas Johansson, Amulya Reddy and Robert Williams), over the next 30 years the world economy could derive half its energy services through efficiency improvements, freeing up a staggering $10-$15 trillion from the energy sector. And diverse renewable energy resources could economically provide half of the remaining resources. However, the failure to act upon these opportunities will squander this precious capital on excessive consumption of fossil fuels and/or conversion of watersheds into large hydrodams. This, in turn, will result in losing the creation of several million net new jobs, while more than tripling greenhouse gas emissions, smog and acid rain pollutants which will cause additional hundreds of billions of dollars in health costs and public damages.

CREST realized that new communication tools were vital for making available to millions of concerned citizens and professionals the information about the challenges and opportunities before us; and doing this rapidly, thoroughly, cheaply, and with the ability for these users to follow up with questions and discussion. The declining-cost digital tools now widely available make this not only possible, but vital.

CREST’s state-of-the-art Internet server can accommodate simultaneous use by thousands of users from more than 200 nations. Solstice now routinely services two million hits each month, with users downloading some 144,000 Megabytes (MB) of files annually.

CREST has systematically focused on providing high-quality sources for a very diverse set of public needs. CREST designed Solstice to be useful for people with no understanding of sustainable energy opportunities, as well as being helpful to diverse experts in need of specific pieces of engineering, technical, product, policy or financial information. The steady traffic to Solstice bears out the value of this design strategy. Citizens, community activists, educators, librarians, students, policymakers and others with curiosity but no knowledge of energy and water efficiency, green building technologies, sustainable transport planning, solar and renewable energy options, can access basic fact sheets, introductory documents, and a wide range of overview materials.

For experts, advocates, or those citizens desiring to accelerate their learning curves, there are hundreds of full-text documents (e.g., http://www.crest.org/efficiency/irt/), databases with tens of thousands of efficient products (e.g., http://oikos.com and http://www.light-link.com/), and links to several thousand additional resources (e.g., http://gem.crest.org/), that aspire to cover virtually every facet required for fostering sustainable resource development – searching databases of available products, technically identifying and inventorying options, economically assessing and financially analyzing product viability, methods for designing and implementing programs, how to conduct performance monitoring and evaluating lessons learned, exploring market transformation efforts, and finding out about policy enhancing and enforcing mechanisms. We use the word aspire, because this is such an enormous task, and CREST is constrained in staff resources.

CREST’s 10 staff continuously network by email, phone, fax and visits with more than 50 prominent national and international non-profit groups promoting sustainable development, as well as with several thousand experts and professionals working on some aspect of sustainability. As an organization focused on offering digital communication expertise, CREST has been convincing an increasing number of these groups and individuals to post on Solstice their reports, documents, fact sheets, newsletters (e.g., http://crest.org/efficiency/cef/ or http://crest.org/renewables/sen/ or http://crest.org/sustainable/greenclips/), software programs, spreadsheet models, slide shows, product databases and other information tools so that citizens can electronically gain free access to these valuable resources (including their ability to rapidly and easily forward the electronic resources to any colleagues). CREST, for example, hosts one of the largest searchable product databases on efficient lights and building products on the Internet.

CREST initiated this process by posting all of its own products, which includes the contents of more than half a dozen interactive multimedia CD-ROM programs produced over the past four years. These include several thousand computer screens from the three CD-ROMs that were winners of the first INTERNATIONAL ECO AWARDS: The Greening of the White House (http://crest.org/environment/gotwh/), a multimedia program on green, environmentally benign technologies and design options; The Sun’s Joules (http://crest.org/renewables/SJ/), a state-of-the-art, multimedia encyclopedia on renewable energy and sustainable transport progress and opportunities; Renewable Energy Exhibit (http://crest.org/renewables/re-kiosk/index.shtml), designed for display at museums and traveling exhibitions. It also includes posting of the CD-ROMs CREST has translated into Spanish: Renewable Energy in Latin America and the Caribbean and Renewable Energy Exhibit (http://crest.org/renewables/relac/).

CREST also has posted the INTL ECO AWARD-winning floppy diskette-based interactive software program for free downloading, School Energy Doctor (http://crest.org/efficiency/sed/), and a derivative, Back to School (http://crest.org/efficiency/bts/). These programs enable students in middle and high schools to perform lighting and water efficiency inventories, and solar hot water assessments in their schools, homes and community buildings. The students-as-engineers learn their science and math by calculating energy and financial savings, and reductions in greenhouse gases, landfill waste, smog, acid rain pollutants, and radioactive wastes. The annual utility bill of U.S. schools is $7 billion, and efficiency improvements can save several billion dollars of this amount with a very robust several year payback. There are more than 10 million computers now in schools, and two out of three schools have at least one Internet connection.

To spur use of school savings, CREST has set up a Web site (www.crest.org/efficiency/sed) for students to upload their results, and participate in discussion groups with other students to learn how to actually get their school retrofitted, and overcome barriers to achieving this. Moreover, CREST has linked the page to other, more powerful, free auditing and engineering software. The goal of this online effort is to get students to see every community building as a "textbook" and "learning lab" to study in – but with the profound addition that their "hands-on" research can lead to sizable energy, financial and pollution savings. Communities in the United States, for example, could save more than $100 billion per year through efficiency upgrades with several year paybacks. CREST is helping students and other interested citizens learn how to identify and capture these benefits.

CREST has also posted for free downloading a powerful engineering tool called, SolarSizer (http://crest.org/software-central/html/sizer.html), co-developed with Solar Energy International, one of the nation’s premier solar training groups. SolarSizer enables engineers to size photovoltaic electric systems for residences. The software is very user-friendly because it is based on colorful drag-and-drop icons. The software was designed for easy customization to virtually any country in the world, particularly for easy use in the tens of millions of villages with no likelihood of ever getting grid-connected electricity. SolarSizer is also being promoted to schools for teaching students science, math and technology literacy. CREST is encouraging students to inventory all the buildings within their communities that could become solar roofs, as part of President Clinton’s newly announced Million Roofs Initiative.

Over the past several years CREST has been developing CD-ROMs for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Federal Energy Management Program (FEMP) that can be used by the thousands of plant facility managers geographically dispersed across the country and around the world. The first interactive multimedia CD-ROM, FEMP Successes and RE Selector, showcased multi-million dollar energy efficiency savings achieved in a select number of federal buildings. More recently, CRESTE completed the Federal Greening Initiative CD-ROM, which showcases not only efficiency and renewables, but other "green," eco-friendly technologies being installed at federal facilities as a result of a Presidential Executive Order. A more expansive version of FEMP Successes is forthcoming any day now (September, 1997) (http://crest.org/software-central/).

CREST has half a dozen additional interactive multimedia software productions underway that will be released between the fall of 1997 and the summer of 1998. These include:

Office Energy Checkup and Home Energy Checkup -- two floppy diskette-based applications that enable users to audit their offices or homes for energy efficiency upgrade opportunities. They are designed for the North American market. The audit results provide monetary savings and greenhouse gas reductions. Upgrades are based upon the Energy Star Program recommendations (jointly run by U.S. EPA and U.S. DOE). They are not engineering tools, but highly engaging, colorful icon driven programs to engage general citizens in moving towards decisons to invest in efficiency options. CREST is co-developing the programs with the Alliance to Save Energy (http://www.ase.org/).

Environmental Knowledge Database CD-ROM -- a powerful tool that combines artificial intelligence and hypermedia software components to enable builders, developers, architects, product specifiers, and other professionals interested in designing, constructing and operating environmentally friendly, "green" commercial and institutional buildings. CREST is co-developing the tool with Environmental Building News and noted green architect Gail Lindsey of Design Harmony, based upon an earlier software version developed by SHAI.

Green Real Estate CD-ROM -- developed to accompany the book written by Amory Lovins and his colleagues at Rocky Mountain Institute. A series of case studies indicate how commercial properties can not only save energy, money and pollution, but enhance worker productivity, attract more satisfied customers, increase the resell value of properties, and greatly improve businesses’s bottom lines.

Energy Efficiency CD-ROM -- an educational program for middle and high school students, that covers energy efficiency opportunities, successes, science and technology, history, case studies, economics, challenges, and environmental benefits. Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy.

Fuel Cells CD-ROM -- an educational program that explores the opportunities for using different stationary and mobile fuel cell technologies for delivering energy services more cleanly.

From the start, CREST realized that the power of the Internet was two-fold: 1) accessing and distributing information; 2) communicating with peers and experts. Any report provides a snapshot in time, but real-time discussion enables up-to-date story swapping of how to do things better, differently, at less cost and time, and how to avoid mistakes and failures. CREST hosts more than a dozen moderated discussion groups that offer fora for cross-fertilization between engineers, community advocates, environmentalists, regulators, financiers, builders, developers, educators, librarians and concerned citizens. These include:

• Bioenergy To Subscribe: <bioenergy-request@crest.org>
  

• Biomass Power: Topics on Bioconversion To Subscribe:<bioconversion-request@crest.org>
  
• Biomass Power: Topics on Digestion To Subscribe:<digestion-request@crest.org>
  
• Biomass Power: Topics on Gasification To Subscribe:<gasification-request@crest.org>
  
• Biomass Power: Stoves To Subscribe: <stoves-request@crest.org>
  
• Conversation Mailing List Center for a New American Dream To Subscribe: <conversation-request@newdream.org>
  
• EEBA Energy Efficient Building List To Subscribe: <ee-building-request@eeba.org>
  
• EV (Electric Vehicle) List To Subscribe: <listserv@sjsuvm1.sjsu.edu>, type: subscribe EV [Your Name ] in the message body.
  
• Greenbuildings To Subscribe: <greenbuilding-request@crest.org>
  
• IPMVP Lists: (Overview) Construction, - Emissions, - General , - IEQ , - Policy , - Renewables Technical , - Water , -
  
• PVusers To Subscribe <pvusers-request@crest.org >
  
• Strawbale Construction To Subscribe: <strawbale-request@crest.org>
  
• The GreenClips Journal To Subscribe: <GreenClips@aol.com>
  
• Critical Mass Energy Project To Subscribe: <listproc@essential.org>, type:SUBSCRIBE CMEP-LIST [Name - Organization - Home state]in message body.
  

CREST routinely archives these discussions, so that users can keyword search the repositories for valuable insights. These discussion groups also provide immense feedback from users to CREST, which guides us in adding new resources.

While efficiency and renewable energy options comprise the majority of CREST’s focus, its efforts to promote sustainable technologies encompasses the wider sweep of resource efficiency and pollution prevention opportunities useful to revitalizing communities. Our work in green building technologies includes indoor air pollution, reuse and recycling, source reduction, landscaping and gardening without pesticides, hazardous waste reduction, using sustainably harvested timber products, and sustainable transport options like transit, bicycling and pedestrian friendly city designs.

These issues and opportunities are further promoted through the nearly 50 groups CREST hosts on Solstice (http://crest.org/orgs.htm) that include trade associations (e.g., http://www.seia.org/ or http://www.psic.org/), advocacy groups (e.g., http://www.ase.org/ or http://www.iiec.org/), training groups (http://www.solarenergy.org/), policy analysts (e.g, http://www.aceee.org/ or http://www.repp.org/), and national award winners (for example, Renew America’s Environmental Success Index and the National Awards for Environmental Sustainability (http://crest.org/environment/renew_america/index.html).

CREST also freely hosts groups like Ecology Action, whose biointensive micro-farming methods get food yields two to 10 times those of agribusiness, yet use no pesticides, petrochemical fertilizers, fueled machinery, and consume only a tiny fraction of water compared to typical irrigation practices (http://crest.org/sustainable/ecology_action/index.html).

In summary, we believe Solstice is creating and providing, in a modest but important way, a new set of powerful advocacy, education, training, and enhanced decisionmaking tools and information resources. We believe these digital tools are absolutely vital to inspire and sustain citizen involvement in and support for realizing these enormous benefits and values. We are helping to inspire with case studies and success stories the next generation of young people, who take to electronic communication and computer tools like fish take to water, and to get them engaged in sustainable resource development opportunities.

We are helping cash-strapped community groups access tens of thousands of dollars of free documents and putting them within electronic reach of experts who normally charge hundreds to thousands of dollars for consulting, but often provide such information freely through electronic discussion groups. And, we are helping policy makers, regulators, legislators, and consumer and environmental advocates at the local, state, national and international levels learn about successful ways to save energy, accrue monetary benefits, and preserve natural resources and secure a cleaner environment.

Most of our efforts have been done on relatively limited budgets. We are well aware of more powerful ways to use digital tools, but this will either take increased funding, waiting for a drop in the cost of software tools, or looking for partners and joint projects. To cite one among a number of interesting partnerships we are exploring, look at the work of Dr. Roger Schank and his colleagues at the Institute for the Learning Sciences (http://www.ils.nwu.edu/) and Learning Sciences Corporation (http://www.ils.nwu.edu/info/lsc.html). They are producing very exciting software programs that appear to help greatly enhance and accelerate the learning process. Schank’s Engines for Educators (http://www.ils.nwu.edu/~e_for_e/nodes///I-M-NODE-4121-pg.html#NODE-68) offers a provocative alternative to conventional teaching and training methods.