All right, welcome back to class.
Chris Wedding here again.
As a faculty member here at Duke University,
I'd like to welcome you to the Nicholas School of the Environment.
I'm standing in front of the School's Environment Hall.
70,000 square foot state of the art facility, completed in 2014.
This is a building that exceeds the US Green Building Council's Third Party
Certification for Green Buildings at the Platinum Level.
That is the highest level for this Green Building Standard.
In this video, my goal is to make renewable energy and
green building entrepreneurship more real and tangible.
So let's start big picture.
The Nicholas School of the Environment is one of the world's leading schools on
environmental management.
With 150 faculty, 180 PhD students, 360 professional students,
280 undergraduate students and over 3000 living alumni, a budget
of 45 million dollars per year and 300 research projects per year as well.
So faculty and students like ours are great at identifying environmental and
public health problems and the solutions.
And that is a great place to start.
Naming problems is a great way to begin
a list of possible businesses worth launching.
It's often said that businesses are created to solve problems.
And I believe that's the case.
However, environmental expertise is not enough.
There are other essential elements to starting new companies.
These include finance, marketing, policy, business strategy, engineering, and
law among many other specialties.
As I like to say, we have become multi lingual.
And while I love learning foreign languages, in this case I'm talking about
environmental managers becoming more fluent in finance.
Or marketing professionals becoming more savvy in climate change science.
To that end we have partnerships with other schools on campus.
And we encourage students to get out into the real world, talking to stakeholders,
customers, and competitors, those who stand to win and those who stand to lose.
It's for the same reason that I'm also a faculty member at
UNC Chapel Hill Business School and at the Institute for Defense and
Business which provides executive education to U.S. military leaders.
Most importantly it's the reason that I founded and now service managing partner
for Iron Oak Energy, a financial advisory firm focused on renewable energy.
Okay, now let's get more granular and take a look at some of the renewable energy in
green building futures of environment hall.
We're now standing in what looks like a normal hallway, albeit one that is
showered in natural daylight with refreshing views to the outdoors.
However, the space between the exterior wall and the interior rooms also serves as
a thermal corridor that provides natural insulation for offices and laboratories.
And some windows in the building will open automatically to allow natural ventilation
and lower energy use when outdoor temperature and humidity are conducive.
This highlights an important point in the world of renewable energy and
green building.
Sometimes you see the innovation and sometimes you don't.