News Archive
Please click on links for complete press releases and other information.
March 3, 2008: GDI student Chris Weber's paper named best policy paper for 2007 in Environmental Science and Technology
January 24, 2008: GDI professor Jeremy Michalek was awarded an NSF CAREER grant for the project "Driving Design - Modeling the Influence of Market Forces and Public Policy on Vehicle Design Decisions" [Budget $400k over 5 years, collaborator: Ford, education components: wiki and peer-to-peer student course consulting]
Nov 20, 2007: Four GDI students win national energy policy essay contest sponsored by Johnson Controls, get full page ad in USA Today.  You can read a copy of their letter.
Nov 12, 2007: GDI Research cited in Wall Street Journal article "Why China Should Blame its CO2 on the West".
Nov 3, 2007: Chris T. Hendrickson, the Duquesne Light Professor of Engineering, and Co-Director of GDI was named an honorary member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) at the 137th Annual Civil Engineering Conference, in Orlando, Fla. An Honorary Member is a person who has attained acknowledged eminence in some branch of engineering or in the arts and sciences related thereto, including the fields of engineering education and construction. He was honored for his distinguished service and leadership during more than four decades as an educator, administrator and researcher. A Rhodes scholar in 1973, Hendrickson has penned five books, hundreds of papers and was managing editor of the Journal of Transportation Engineering.
August 22, 2007: GDI Researchers publish paper on impacts of emerging uses of coal and natural gas for electricity generation. They show that liquefied natural gas (LNG) imported from foreign countries and used for electricity generation could have 35 percent higher lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions than coal used in advanced power plant technologies.   [CITATION:  Jaramillo;, P.; Griffin;, W. M.; Matthews, H. S., Comparative Life Cycle Air Emissions of Coal, Domestic Natural Gas, LNG, and SNG for Electricity Generation. Environmental Science and Technology 2007, 41, 6290-6296.]
June 29, 2007: Scott Matthews, Research Director of GDI, won the Laudise Prize from the International Society for Industrial Ecology for significant contributions to industrial ecology by a young scientist or engineer (under 36 years of age) of outstanding ability.  Scott is the first American, and the second consecutive alum of the Green Design Institute, to win (Arpad Horvath '99 won in 2005).
June 13, 2007: GDI Researchers publish paper on impacts of globalization on greenhouse gas emissions. They argue that rising U.S. trade with countries like China has major consequences for the future of global climate policy. [CITATION: Christopher Weber and H. Scott Matthews, Embodied Emissions in U.S. International Trade: 1997-2004, Vol. 41, No. 14, pp 4875 - 4881; Environmental Science and Technology, 2007. DOI: 10.1021/es0629110.]
June 10, 2007:  Mike Griffin, Executive Director of GDI interviewed for USA Today about use of switchgrass in making ethanol. Switch grass once fed vast buffalo herds on the Great Plains. Soon it may be used to feed your car. Strong demand for corn to produce ethanol has pushed up corn prices, creating demand for cheaper alternatives. Switch grass is one such alternative. Among the advantages switch grass has over corn are "reduced use of fertilizers and pesticides, less soil erosion, greater biodiversity, and the ability to produce greater amounts of ethanol per acre and more ethanol overall."
February 2007: The Green Design Institute organized and led a workshop in New Zealand in 2007 on "Research Directions and International Collaborations in Sustainability Engineering" sponsored by the National Science Foundation and working with the International Centre for Sustainability Engineering and Research, University of Auckland, New Zealand. The workshop report is here.
Nov 30, 2006: Chris T. Hendrickson, the Duquesne Light Professor of Engineering, and Co-Director of GDI, was named a fellow by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The association, which publishes the journal Science, awarded the distinction to Hendrickson for work ranging from environmental design to computer applications. The association began naming fellows in 1874.
Nov 16, 2006: Green Design Institute helps carbonfund.org implement CarbonFree shipping program. The shipping industry moves billions of units every year and accounts for more than 600 million tons of CO2, according to US government figures. The Carbonfree Shipping program has the opportunity to revolutionize how this industry deals with its carbon emissions by providing an easy and affordable offset solution. A typical package will cost just a few pennies to offset the climate impact, depending on the weight of the shipment, the method of shipment, and the distance the package will travel.
May 4, 2006: GDI researchers say the use of switchgrass could help break U.S. dependence on fossil fuels and curb costly transportation costs. They found that ethanol derived from the dry, brown switchgrass, a cellulosic ethanol, could be made in sufficient quantities to deliver 16 percent ethanol fuel to all consumers in the U.S. Researchers said this would likely lead to significant decreases and stability in the price of gasoline.
