Jul 27 - Houston Chronicle


Like countless people before her, Chandani Rajapaksha came to Houston to work in the energy business.

But she's not interested in oil or natural gas. Rajapaksha, a graduate student in physics, is working on the next generation of solar cells at the University of Houston, attracted by the possibility of safeguarding the planet.

"You're not going to damage the environment with this," she said.

People on campus have talked about UH as an "energy university" for a decade or more. With the purchase of a nearby 69-acre business park and efforts to engage researchers in fields ranging from petroleum engineering to history, the talk is moving closer to reality.

Renu Khator launched UH Energy last year, soon after she was hired as president of the central campus and chancellor of the four-university UH system. It aims to engage the school's engineers and scientists, as well as its social scientists, business professors and legal experts, in questions about the creation, delivery and use of energy.

"Its time is clearly here," said Joe Pratt, an oil industry historian and interim dean of the college of liberal arts and social sciences.

Efficiencies sought

Leaders of the city's traditional energy companies will play a role through a 10-member advisory board, filled with industry heavyweights, including Exxon Mobil Exploration Co. President Tim Cejka and BP America President and Chairman Lamar McKay, and intended to help speed research into the marketplace.

Work already under way ranges from more efficient methods of extracting fossil fuels to the production and transmission of alternative energy. Other researchers are involved in the evolving areas of energy law, green architecture and consumer attitudes.

Advisory board member John Hofmeister, former president of Shell Oil Co. and founder and CEO of the gras-roots Citizens for Affordable Energy, said the addition of the research park is a crucial piece of the effort.

"That physical space is critically important," he said. "People want to see and touch and feel."

UH Energy involves both the laboratory and the classroom -- the business school offers classes in carbon trading, a new undergraduate program in petroleum engineering starts this fall and there are plans for a multidisciplinary minor in energy -- and both will have a place at the former industrial park a half-mile east of campus, tentatively dubbed the University of Houston Energy Research Park.

The university is scheduled to complete a $27.5 million deal next month for the former Schlumberger Wells Service property. Some UH programs already are there, and non-UH tenants will continue to lease space, said Carl Carlucci, executive vice chancellor for administration and finance.

A symbolic home

While energy-related work will continue on campus and beyond, including a wind energy facility near Corpus Christi, the park will provide a symbolic home, as well as space for bigger projects.

"A lot of other things are needed, but it starts with space," Carlucci said.

The initiative's success will be determined, in part, by the funding it produces.

UH researchers now have about $28 million in energy-related grants. Don Birx, vice chancellor for research, said that needs to double within the next seven years.

Energy research is hot right now, as the Obama administration pushes sustainable energy and everyone talks about energy independence.

Translational research

The University of Texas at Austin has launched an Energy Institute, seeking to unite its researchers across the spectrum, and Birx said he expects UH and UT, as well as other schools, to find common ground.

But UH also will focus on translational research, converting basic science into commercial products.

Effective commercialization requires early input from industry, and Birx said the ability to draw upon Houston's private sector will be pivotal.

"You have to be thinking about it while you are doing basic science, so you have a higher probability of getting results," he said.

Other fields of research are unlikely to yield immediate financial rewards, but will try to influence public policy and attitudes.

"We're trying to understand how we came as a nation to use so much more energy than other industrial nations, and how that might be changed," Pratt said.

jeannie.kever@chron.com

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