What’s new with solar?  Time for an update.  A solar farm is in development for Houston, and Tesla will tell us what their solar offering is these days. In addition, we’ll have a bit of permit data about solar installations in Houston.

Dori Wolfe, founder of Wolfe Energy, will discuss her C-40 proposal to the City of Houston to convert a brownfield landfill to a solar farm including systems thinking and recent progress in the community solar movement.  Mark Mason, market manager of Houston Metro/Mexico of TESLA, will fill you in on the various solar products offered by Tesla, such as those solar roof tiles you’ve heard about, and how those are different from the other products on the market.

The City of Houston—Public Works & Engineering Code Enforcement Green Building Resource Center presents this Education Seminar in partnership with the Texas Chapter of the US Green Building Council.  This 2019 series is generously underwritten by Rockwool.

CEUs available.  Please RSVP to steve.stelzer@houstontx.gov. Free parking.  Bus stop: Preston@Elder.

The Texas Environmental Excellence Awards is an annual awards program that honors achievements in environmental preservation and protection. There are ten diverse award categories that provide citizens, communities, businesses, and organizations an opportunity to obtain the state’s highest environmental honor and be recognized for their environmental projects. The deadline for submission is September 27th.

Since 1993, they have honored more than 250 successful environmental projects and efforts. By honoring these winners, the TCEQ hopes to encourage others to initiate like-minded projects and reinforce a spirit of environmental stewardship. These are the categories:

• Agriculture
• Civic/Community
• Education
• Environmental Educator of the Year
• Individual
• Innovative Operations/Management
• Pollution Prevention
• Technical/Technology
• Water Conservation
• Youth

The 2019 annual symposium will focus on conserving native plants in the upper Texas coastal prairies, also known as the Northern Humid Gulf Coastal Prairies in the EPA Level IV ecoregion map.

Quaternary-age deltaic sands, silts, and clays underlie much of this gently sloping coastal plain. The original vegetation was mostly grasslands with a few clusters of oaks, known as oak mottes or maritime woodlands. Little bluestem, yellow Indiangrass, brownseed paspalum, gulf muhly, and switchgrass were the dominant grassland species, with some similarities to the grasslands of the Blackland Prairies. Almost all of the coastal prairies have been converted to cropland, rangeland, pasture, or urban land uses. The exotic Chinese tallow tree and Chinese privet have invaded large areas in this region. Some loblolly pine occurs in the northern part of the region in the transition to the South Central Plains. Soils are mostly fine-textured: clay, clay loam, or sandy clay loam. Within the region, there are some differences from the higher Lissie Formation to the lower Beaumont Formation, both of Pleistocene age. The Lissie Formation has lighter colored soils, mostly Alfisols with sandy clay loam surface texture, while darker, clayey soils associated with Vertisols are more typical of the Beaumont Formation. Annual precipitation varies from 37 inches in the southwest portion to 58 inches in the northeast, with a summer maximum.

The symposium headquarters will be in League City, between Houston and Galveston. at the South Shore Harbour Resort and Conference Center, which is on the south side of Clear Lake across the lake from the Johnson Space Center. The event begins with a reception on Thursday evening for those arriving early, speakers on Friday morning with a choice of field trips in the afternoon, more speakers and breakout sessions on Saturday, and an awards banquet on Saturday night. A social event is planned for Friday night on the Kemah Boardwalk. In addition they have prepared a list of suggested side stops and field trips for those traveling on Thursday and Sunday.

Registration prices vary depending on your level of participation.

Shell Educators’ Preview: Start your evening at 4 p.m. and earn one hour of CPE credit while viewing our newly renovated George W. Strake Hall of Malacology.

HMNS’ Educator Members will have an opportunity to speak to Tina Petway, the
Museum’s Associate Curator of Malacology, during the Shell Educators’ Preview.
As a special treat, all guests will also be able to visit our newest special exhibition,
Art of the Brick until 6:00 p.m.!

The Educator Event @HMNS: Continue your evening with us starting at 5 p.m.
and earn up to three additional hours of CPE credit depending on which
programming you attend. HMNS is featuring several ways to earn CPE credit from
attending workshops to taking a guided tour to seeing a show in our Planetarium.
Educators are able to earn a total of up to 4 hours of CPE credit while attending
HMNS’, An Evening for Educators!

Registration Information
Educators: Free
Non-Educators: $10.00

(Pricing includes entry to the George W. Strake Hall of Malacology and Art of the Brick)
Registration begins Tuesday, July 30th and ends Wednesday, October 2nd.
Please complete the online form at hmns.org/eveningforeducators to reserve your spot. For questions, contact educatorevent@hmns.org.

The Woodlands G.R.E.E.N. is sponsoring a FREE Going Green Sustainability lecture: “Mycophile or Mycophobe–we all need mushrooms” with guest speaker, Teri MacArthur, Certified Texas Master Naturalist. This event is free and open to the public.

RESET® Air, the world’s first sensor-based and performance-driven Building Standard and Certification Program, comes to Houston for an Introduction and Discussion Forum followed by a RESET Air Accredited Professionals (AP) Education Intensive and Practicum Exam. RESET Air Certification helps Building Owners attract businesses that understand that employee health and comfort directly connect to their prosperity and attract and retain the best and brightest employees through transparent independent assurance that the health of their environment is continuously verified.

UH Energy invites you to attend the second event in the 2019-2020 Energy Symposium Series | Critical Issues in Energy, “Future of Plastics: Designed Sustainability or Recycling.”

The production and use of plastics has defined the modern era and since the early 1950s they have substantially grown to be the material of choice in diverse applications. The production of plastics was projected to grow by a factor of five over the next twenty five years and the chemicals industry has been preparing for this by expanding production facilities worldwide. However, most plastics have their origins are in fossil based oil and gas and they have increasingly come under public scrutiny because of the preponderance of single use plastics in consumer products, their poor recycling rates (less than 10% globally) and their high-profile observation in unexpected parts of the ecosystem due to their improper disposal. The future of plastics is being formulated and issues of designed-in sustainability, bio-based replacements, and improved recycling are at the core and will be discussed in this symposium.

Speakers

Nichole Fitzgerald, Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO) Technology Manager, U.S. Department of Energy

Jill Martin, Global Sustainability Fellow, Dow Chemical Company

Ganesh Nagarajan, Associate Director for Polymers Business Development and Projects, LyondellBasell Industries

Susannah Scott, Distinguished Professor, University of California – Santa Barbara

Moderator

Dr. Megan Robertson, Associate Professor, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of Houston

For more information about our speakers and moderator, please click here.

CELF Citizen Science: Inquiry to Action is a semester-long program that engages educators and students in project-based STEAM learning outside of the classroom. Tailored to each school and community location, we offer professional learning workshops for teachers paired with on-site support to implement a project-based learning module that  connects students to real-world challenges in their own neighborhoods. The program culminates in a Spring 2020 Student Symposium, bringing together all participating schools to present their findings and pollution-prevention plans to community members and real-world policy makers. The program combines the development of 21st century skills with the motivation and creativity generated by solving a problem in one’s own community.

Participants in the program will:

• Implement a project-based STEAM learning unit.

• Participate in professional learning workshops paired with on-site educator support.

• Collect data with AirBeam monitoring technology combined with HabitatMap crowd-sourced data sharing platform.

• Focus on air-quality while learning pedagogical principles that apply to a range of citizen science learning opportunities.

• Engage with local concerns through student-led inquiry.

This opportunity is grant-funded. Join one of the workshops, connect with our educators for on-site support, and come together with other classes implementing this program at our 2020 Spring Student Symposium.

If you attend one of these two professional development opportunities you can attain 2-hours of Continuing Professional Education credit, receive an air quality monitor, connect with local environmental partners, and enjoy a free lunch with fellow educators. You will also gain access to the 2020 Student Symposium, the culminating event for the program.

Interested in Urban Forestry? Come join Texas A&M AgriLife Extension, HAUFC and ISA-TX for a great day of education. Topics include: Emerald Ash Borer – Coming to a City Near You, Using Tree Growth Regulators to Reduce Pruning Costs, and Greening the Houston Region – Partnerships and Projects that Support the Urban Forest.