Once we arrived at the BRIT (Botanical Research Institute of Texas), our tour guide was explaining the huge wall of cyprus wood that was salvaged from the bottom of an East Texas bayou and had been resting there for about a 100 years. Evidently, there was a lot of cyprus wood that fell off merchant ships a century ago that has been discovered in good condition. You can see this amazing wall in the below picture.
I was hooked from this beginning. The BRIT serves two purposes. They are an information hub for sustainment, by example, and a research center of plants. There is valuable information botanists use looking at the plant's DNA from pharmaceuticals to tracking global warming. Their main function, which would really interest my wife with her law enforcement background, is crime scene analysis.
There are literally tons of plants preserved in the facility that are studied. Most of the area is filled with living plants, which makes it not only beautiful, but refreshing.
The BRIT's sustainable structure we were in seemed to be as LEED as you can get. The grand windows flooding the rooms with daylight reminded me of the Bedford Library's low energy usage of artificial light. Also, in common with the Bedford library, BRIT has a geothermal system. Here is a display in the BRIT's wells below the surface:
The outside of the building has a living roof tilting in the southern direction insulating the building in the summer as well as the winter. There are several more benefits from this living roof, but I feel this is the main one.
Their solar panels take about 6,000 square feet and cover a large percentage of their electricity. They are actually a series of tubes that allow the sunlight to be collected from above, but also collects from below and from the side off the reflection of the roof. Also, because they are tubes, they are not effected by updrafts from wind. That was something I never considered. After intense windstorms, apparently it is common to find flat solar panels blown off the roof if they are not screwed down. The tubes are literally not screwed down. Another advantage is that you do not have to clean them as they do not have a flat surface that collects dirt. Also on the outside are vines growing and planned to eventually cover the outside walls getting the full effect of insulation. After learning about the vines, it was time to head back to campus and hear our guest speaker for the day.
Once back, Mark Thompson from Green Ox Energy, was there to fill our minds with more green. Mark Thompson is the Director of Sales for Green Ox Energy Solution. Mark was well spoken and an advocate for renewable energy. I wish I could absorb more information in an hour because there was a mass quantity of it.
He first informed us about de-regulation or the ability to choose your phone or electricity and that not all areas have this. “Coal, nuclear, and natural gas are the main sources of energy,” he continued. The coal plants are the bread and butter in Texas, but have been lobbied not to expand and the nuclear plants have restrictions to the point where it is almost impossible to build new ones. This seems to have made an opportunity for renewable energy.
I was interested to hear that Texas is the lead wind producer in the US. I was surprised that so much wind energy is produced in Amarillo. There is actually a surplus of wind energy from Amarillo that it goes right back into the ground. It is exciting to hear that a medium is being built to carry the excess energy to other cities in Texas. Another topic Mark focused on was solar panels. A couple of interesting points that came up were there are tax incentives for home owners to purchase solar panels, and most panels are most effective on the southeast locations. Mark was well informed and has jumped on this opportunity of renewable energy in Texas, and I believe it has a promising future that the government is backing up. My main concern is how the market will react to this shift from the well-entrenched energy producer giants that currently exist.
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