School Notes: School of the Environment
January/February 2017

Students help New Haven confront climate threats

Student projects from a course offered at F&ES last spring helped guide the city of New Haven’s new strategy to confront the future challenges of climate change. The course, Cities in Hot Water, enabled students to develop practical responses to the biophysical threats and social impacts of climate change in the city. Their policy recommendations were used in the city’s new Hazard Mitigation Plan, which was submitted to the Federal Emergency Management Agency in October. “Programs like these benefit us immensely because we are typically under time constraints dealing with multiple tasks at the same time,” said Susmitha Attota, assistant director of comprehensive planning for the city of New Haven, “so there is not enough time to conduct in-depth research on best practices in the field on one specific topic. Also, it helps us get an outside perspective on the plans we develop.” The course was cotaught by Xuhui Lee, the Sara Shallenberger Brown Professor of Meteorology, and Brad Gentry, associate dean for professional practice.

Widening access to residential solar

Over the past three years, an F&ES-led project supported by the US Department of Energy (DOE) yielded key insights into the kinds of incentives that will make solar more competitive in the household energy market, and into the valuable role of peer groups in influencing wider adoption. A new, $1.35 million grant from DOE will extend the project, allowing partner organizations to explore how to further broaden the appeal of solar power to a mass market, including low- and moderate-income households. The SEEDS-2 program, led by Assistant Professor Kenneth Gillingham, will specifically examine the potential value of adding solar power in places where the power grid faces the greatest challenges to accommodating demand, and devise strategies to make solar a more accessible option for lower income communities. It will involve several partner organizations, including the Yale Center for Business and the Environment; SmartPower, a social marketing firm; the Connecticut Green Bank; Duke University; and MySunBuddy, an online marketplace—cofounded by Kathryn Wright ’13MEM—that connects solar owners with solar buyers.