Rice University
AC-9: Academic Research

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In order to complete the research inventory, we referred to previously developed inventories and web-based research. We also sent an email to the department chairs asking them to identify faculty/staff in their departments who conduct sustainability research.

There have been a number of notable accomplishments during the previous three years. To highlight just a few: (1) In November of 2012, Rice University scientists unveiled a revolutionary new technology that uses nanoparticles to convert solar energy directly into steam. The new “solar steam” method from Rice’s Laboratory for Nanophotonics is so effective it can even produce steam from icy cold water. The inventors of solar steam steam said they expect the first uses of the new technology will be used for sanitation and water purification in developing countries. (2) An article published June 3, 2014 discusses a new breakthrough in sustainable technology developed at Rice University: Rice University scientists have created an Earth-friendly way to separate carbon dioxide from natural gas at wellheads. A porous material invented by the Rice lab of chemist James Tour sequesters carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, at ambient temperature with pressure provided by the wellhead and lets it go once the pressure is released. The material shows promise to replace more costly and energy-intensive processes. Natural gas is the cleanest fossil fuel. Development of cost-effective means to separate carbon dioxide during the production process will improve this advantage over other fossil fuels and enable the economic production of gas resources with higher carbon dioxide content that would be too costly to recover using current carbon capture technologies, Tour said. (3) The Center for Energy and Environmental Research in the Human Sciences (CENHS) is a notable accomplishment for Rice’s sustainability research. It is the newest part of Rice University’s landmark Energy and Environment Initiative (E2I), the first effort to involve all the intellectual resources of a major research university in addressing today’s most pressing energy and environmental challenges. CENHS is likewise a first-of-its-kind: the only research center in the world specifically designed to sponsor research on the energy/environment nexus across the arts, humanities, and social sciences. CENHS builds upon over two years of work by the Cultures of Energy Faculty Working Group at Rice, which helped to pioneer the field of interdisciplinary energy humanities in conjunction with a Sawyer Seminar grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. (4) An article published March 13, 2014 discusses research conducted on renewable energy in Mexico: For Mexico’s Isthmus of Tehuantepec to successfully transition to such renewable energy forms as wind power, its government must more fully engage constituents in implementation, execution and profit strategies, according to a new report by Rice anthropologists. In the National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded project “The Political Culture of Wind Power Development in Southern Mexico,” Cymene Howe, assistant professor of anthropology, and Dominic Boyer, professor of anthropology, examined wind power development in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec region of Oaxaca, Mexico. The authors said that while Mexico is heavily dependent on both fossil-fuel production and consumption, it has set one of the most ambitious targets for clean-electricity generation — 35 percent by 2024 – of any nation. The authors conducted 16 months of fieldwork between 2009 and 2013 and focused on wind-power development in Oaxaca. Howe and Boyer found that Oaxaca’s wind sector has developed very quickly, resulting in a 1,467 percent increase that has made Mexico the second-biggest wind-power producer in Latin America after Brazil.