Establishment of the Richard G. Lugar
Center for Renewable Energy

Raging wildfires, punishing drought, choking air pollution, melting ice sheets, muggy winters, searing summers - has Earth reached its climate tipping point?

The questions surrounding the impact of humans on our planet's environment have are receiving intense scrutiny from researchers around the world, and Indiana University is no exception.

In spring 2007, the Richard G. Lugar Center for Renewable Energy was established at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis to address needs for clean, affordable, and renewable energy sources; improve the nation's energy security; and reduce global warming.

With funding from industry, government, and the university, IU researchers from engineering, science, public and environmental affairs, medicine, and more are studying fuel cell technology, renewable hydrogen, clean combustion of renewable fuels, and bio-fuels.

"One of things we are looking at is the conversion of renewable fuels like ethanol into gasoline, which will be needed until automobiles are equipped to use multiple fuels," says Andrew Hsu, associate dean for research and graduate programs in the School of Engineering and Technology at IUPUI, who is also director of the Lugar Center. "If we can convert ethanol into gasoline, then we have a 100 percent renewable energy source for vehicles."

In one of the Lugar Center's projects, faculty participants including Hsu and Eric Nordgulen, a sculptor from IUPUI's Herron School of Art and Design, are collaborating to create a regenerative fuel cell system. The system starts with sunlight collected in photovoltaic panels, which generate electricity. As that electricity powers devices, it also produces hydrogen gas through electrolysis of water. The gas is collected and stored, then directed through a hydrogen fuel cell where it is converted to water producing electricity. That electricity is then used for power at night, when sunlight is unavailable. The objective of their project, the collaborators say, is to demonstrate the possibilities of renewable energy technology available today.

Of course climate change is as much a matter of politics as science, as Matt Auer, an IU professor of public and environmental affairs, knows well. An expert in the international politics of environmental policy, Auer recently edited Restoring Cursed Earth: Appraising Environmental Policy Reforms in Eastern Europe and Russia. In a recent editorial on U.S. energy independence, Auer called on Congress to pass forward-looking energy legislation: "Congress should realize that the politics of war, elections, and energy are bundled together," Auer wrote. "An America that gets its energy from domestic and renewable resources and that is zealous about conservation doesn't have to fight wars in the Middle East or cozy up to petrocrats."