TEENS FROM 5 NATIONS PITCH CLIMATE FIX AT UTC
Global group shows building design to United Technologies.
PALM BEACH GARDENS — The combined brainpower of six teens from five countries imagined a skyscraper designed to mitigate the effects of climate change — a building they showed United Technologies engineers Monday afternoon.
Their answer to the New York Academy of Sciences challenge: a carefully designed, roughly 32-story tower of businesses and apartments with solar panels on the roof and a south-facing wall, “green walls,” a water-recycling system and a home assistant.
The solar panels are strategically positioned at angles that best capture the sun’s energy. The “green walls” are walls covered with ivy and other climbing plants that help purify the air. The water recycling system reuses water from faucets, showers and washing machines to flush toilets, water plants, wash clothes and mix cement. And the home assistant makes sure the lights are off and the air conditioning is at the right temperature when no one’s in the room.
The students are part of The Junior Academy, an elite group
of students associated with the New York Academy of Sciences. The challenge is open to all students in the Junior Academy; the six who came to the United States were the ones with the winning entry.
What’s more, the teens never met each other faceto-face until they set foot in South Florida on Sunday. They coordinated the entire project using online chats, video calls and other internet collaboration tools from their homes in Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Norway and Romania, sometimes late at night or early in the morning.
“Most of the calls took place at 3 a.m. my time,” Arunima Sen, 16, a student from Bangalore, India, said.
Solutions to sustainability may already exist, but they are often expensive, said Irhum Shafkat, 15, of Dhaka, Bangladesh.
The students’ building design included a money-saving measure, an interior-leak detection system. You lose money if you don’t know where the problem is, Bani Singh, 18, of Oslo, Norway, said.
The students proposed a contest of sorts to encourage conservation among the building’s users. Each person could be assigned a “green score” based on the energy they didn’t waste and then earn points toward perks.
The score can also help provide context, helping people know if they’re using too much water or electricity.
United Technologies sponsored the challenge, which Mary Lombardo, vice president of engineering, research and innovation and research for UTC’s Climate, Controls & Security division and Otis, helped create.
The students were coached by a UTC Aerospace Systems engineer, and engineers and executives gave them feedback and career advice after their presentation Monday.
“I was quickly impressed, just realizing their commitment and what they’ve done already to get where they’re at,” their mentor, Patrick Dietz, said.
The students said they learned the value of hearing from many perspectives through the global collaboration, and they valued the chance to work on something meaningful that could benefit future generations.
Like the other students, Darius Filip, 18, of Romania, said he enjoys solving the world’s problems with science.
“Seeing this many perspectives from this many parts of the world,” really expanded his vision, he said.
Sen said teenagers in India rarely come across opportunities like this one to advance their careers.
“I’d be happy if this solution is incorporated into buildings in India,” she said.
Sachin Dangi, 18, of Nepal, said he’s taking a gap year between high school and college to travel around the more remote parts of his country to catalog the unique local innovations people created where there is no electricity to try to make life better for them.
Ioana-Elena Tarabasanu-Mihaila, 17, of Bucharest, Romania, said she was shocked to learn from a survey that the majority of young adults in Romania did not believe in climate change. Even some of those who did wouldn’t do anything about it.
“A lot of people from my country want to leave. I want to stay because I believe I live in a country with great potential, and someone has to bring that out,” she said.