As coastal communities around the globe contend with the impacts of climate change including coastal hazards such as sea level rise and more frequent coastal storms, educating stakeholders and the ...general public has become essential in order to adapt to and mitigate these risks. Communicating SLR and other coastal risks is not a simple task. First, SLR is a phenomenon that is abstract as it is physically distant from many people; second, the rise of the sea is a slow and temporally distant process which makes this issue psychologically distant from our everyday life. Virtual reality (VR) simulations may offer a way to overcome some of these challenges, enabling users to learn key principles related to climate change and coastal risks in an immersive, interactive, and safe learning environment. This article first presents the literature on environmental issues communication and engagement; second, it introduces VR technology evolution and expands the discussion on VR application for environmental literacy. We then provide an account of how three coastal communities have used VR experiences developed by multidisciplinary teams—including residents—to support communication and community outreach focused on SLR and discuss their implications.
As a result of a partnership between the University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC) and a Hispanic-serving Institution, Hartnell College, a micro-grid and test bed facility are being constructed at ...Hartnell's Alisal campus. The facility will provide a real-world student training center on renewable energy technologies where students can participate in research to develop new, experimental renewable energy generation systems. Over the next several years, Hartnell's Sustainable Engineering laboratory courses will be transitioned to focus on the microgrid and test-bed. Related courses and lab modules developed at UCSC will also be integrated into the program. An early outcome of this collaborative partnership was the internship support of teams of high school and community college students working with UCSC graduate students on several different sustainable energy projects over the summer of 2012. Program mentors and interns all reported a high degree of satisfaction with their internship experience.
The small wind energy market has experienced uneven growth over the past three decades in California. Drawing on a combination of engineering, institutional economics, and marine ornithology, my ...dissertation focuses on one of the most common reasons cited for small wind energy's uneven growth: local government permitting regimes. Local regulatory agencies aim to interpret existing public policy during the permitting process so that outcomes balance the costs and benefits of those interested in installing small wind turbines with the interests of stakeholders and the environment. Because of the relative inexperience with permitting small wind energy systems in the California coastal zone, and gaps in current public policy pertaining to the small wind energy permitting process, transaction costs can accumulate – making small wind energy permits difficult to obtain. Agencies can also impose conditions on permits that require ongoing investments in time and expertise. I use institutional analysis to address the following questions: (1) How can different small wind energy permitting outcomes in two coastal California case studies be explained by transaction costs? (2) Is coastal California small wind energy development compatible with existing regulatory governance structures? And, (3) What can California learn from Denmark's governance of small wind energy permitting? I find that high permitting transaction costs make small wind energy permits less easy to obtain. California permitting governance regimes, particularly in the coastal zone, are maladapted to the small wind energy transaction, resulting in many transaction costs. However, as demonstrated by the more efficient Danish permitting experience, there are feasible and practical state and local government remedies that can be implemented to lower transaction costs. I also studied a small wind turbine's risk to surrounding avifauna, a post-permitting condition that created high transaction costs for one of the case studies, and find negligible impact of a small wind turbine's rotation on bird ecology.
At the University of __________, a course on renewable energy sources was complemented witha real-world project. The course was designed for engineering and non-engineeringundergraduate students and ...did not require any advanced mathematics or physics
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