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The stalks and husks of corn plants — the waste product left by combine harvesters — could be a key tool in the fight against climate change, and the University of Utah is putting up $500,000 to test the idea.
The U.’s Wilkes Center for Climate Science and Policy recently awarded its half-million-dollar Wilkes Climate Launch Prize to Applied Carbon, a Texas-based startup.
Applied Carbon won the prize for its mobile farm technology, which turns crop waste into a soil additive that decreases the need for fertilizer and stores the remaining carbon in the earth’s soil.
William Anderegg, director of the Wilkes Center, said one of the main selling points of Applied Carbon’s technology is its potential to be made for scale.
“The scalability is very exciting, and you can see a path for them to really scale up across many different agricultural fields in the next couple of years,” he said.
The crop waste is produced when combine harvesters sail through tall corn fields, their rotating blades slicing through the stalks, filtering them into the machine’s mouth, where its spinning cylinders rip the corn kernels from the husk and stems. The combine saves the kernels of corn in its body and spits out the stalk and husk remnants, leaving it to waste on the flattened field.
The prize, one of the largest university-run climate prizes in the world, was created in 2023 to help jump-start promising climate solution ideas. At a September reception in partnership with the Southwest Sustainability Innovation Engine, Anderegg awarded the prize money to Jason Aramburu, Applied Carbon’s CEO and co-founder.
At the reception, Aramburu said that “as a startup company … there’s often a funding gap, particularly in this sector, to get your technology to market.” He later added that the prize money will help the company produce more of their biochar machines and get them into the field.
Applied Carbon now has four mobile pyrolizers, a machine that can reach high temperatures without oxygen, and the company will apply the prize money to its field operations in Texas, Aramburu said. These operations, he said, work in partnership with the U.S. Department of Agriculture through the Natural Resources Conservation Service.
“We’ve got about 4,000 acres of corn that we’re working with. We will test our equipment [in Texas] and also test how effective the biochar is on the soil,” he said.
The yield and soil chemistry testing, Aramburu said, will determine if the process works and to measure the impact of the technology. The project, in its first multi-season trial run, is expected to remove 100,000 tons of carbon from the atmosphere by 2026, he said.
“That figure is still a bit in flux,” he added.
Biochar, a charcoal-like substance derived from biomass waste, is made through pyrolysis, a heat-driven process that uses virtually no oxygen and stores carbon in the waste product, according to Utah State University. Biochar, Anderegg added, is promising as a nature-based tool for fighting climate change because its carbon storage is stable and lasts hundreds of years.
“By contrast, a huge number of companies and governments are interested in tree planting, … but forests are at increasing risk from fire and drought and climate change,” he said. “We really worry about planting trees in one area that may be dead in 10 to 20 years.”
Darren McAvoy, an extension professor of forestry at Utah State University, said applying biochar at a global rate of 10 tons per acre over 30 years could put more carbon into the soil than has been released into the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution.
“It’s a completely academic example that will never happen, but it’s useful in that it shows that we could potentially get a handle on [climate change] with just this one approach,” he said.
In 2019, McAvoy developed Big Box biochar kilns, a low-tech method for producing biochar from timber, brush and logs. He said this “glorified dumpster” reduces hazardous fuels and preserves 35% of its carbon in the soil for hundreds of years. This method, he said, only works on wood waste, not on agricultural waste.
Applied Carbon’s technology, Aramburu said, works by moving in-field with agricultural residue, but it can also run stationary and convert wood biomass into biochar. The company, he added, is interested in expanding to Utah at some point.
“There’s a huge opportunity with forestry waste and forestry residue to process, particularly for fire prevention, and there’s also quite a bit of agriculture in the region,” Aramburu said. “So we are absolutely interested in entering Utah [and] the Mountain West in general.”
McAvoy said he sees the promise of Applied Carbon’s farm technology.
“It’s a great idea. I love the principle of it,” he said. “The big questions always are, is it economical? Will the farmer … benefit enough from the service to pay for it?”
ValJay Rigby, president of the Utah Farm Bureau Federation, said he is unaware of any farmers now using Applied Carbon’s product, but he said he supports continued efforts in research and innovation.
“The future of agriculture will always rely on innovative solutions to the challenges we face,” Rigby said via email. “... We appreciate the dedicated innovators, entrepreneurs and researchers working to come up with tools to help us be successful.”
When scaling the technology for mass production, Aramburu said one challenge includes integrating the pyrolizers without slowing down farmers’ operations. Running a combine is the most expensive time for a farmer, he said, and the mobile pyrolizer could slow them down during that “small window of time that the farmer can do his work without any interruption.”
Still, Aramburu said the technology runs an acre per hour, fast enough to be commercially viable. Farmers using the technology have responded positively, with one hay farmer increasing his yield by 60%, Aramburu added.
“That was a lot more than we would have anticipated,” he said. “But the response has been really positive. [Farmers] like the potential yield benefit of biochar, and they like that they’re doing something good for the environment.”
Applied Carbon is also among the top 20 finalists for the carbon removal XPRIZE. The company will use the Wilkes Prize funds to scale up its pyrolizers as it competes for XPRIZE’s $50 million award, Anderegg said.
Giovanni Radtke wrote this story as a journalism student at the University of Utah. It is published as part of a collaborative including nonprofits Amplify Utah and The Salt Lake Tribune. Radtke’s class partnered with the Great Salt Lake Collaborative, a solutions journalism initiative that partners news, education and media organizations to help inform people about the plight of the Great Salt Lake — and what can be done to make a difference before it is too late. Read all of the collaborative’s stories at greatsaltlakenews.org.
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We also request organizations include the following text either at the beginning or end of the story text :This story is jointly published by nonprofits Amplify Utah and [Your Media Organization's Name] to elevate diverse perspectives in local media through emerging journalism. Giovanni Radtke wrote this story as a journalism student at the University of Utah. For more stories from Amplify Utah, visit amplifyutah.org/use-our-work.
Over the past four years, the University of Utah has reduced its annual water consumption by 55 million gallons – enough to fill more than 83 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
Sustainability experts say that drastic drop is proof large institutions can play a key role in water conservation across Utah.
Water conservation “has been a really big priority on campus,” said Lissa Larson, the associate director of sustainability and energy at the U.
Larson pointed to a bill passed in the 2022 Utah Legislature, HB121, which mandates water use protections on state government facilities — such as the U campus — to swap out irrigation for water-wise landscaping that then uses drip irrigation.
HB121 requires state agencies to decrease water use by 25% by 2026. The U is on track to meet this goal by swapping out thirsty Kentucky bluegrass for more drought-tolerant plants, upgrading new irrigation systems for more controlled water use, seeking out and fixing leaks, and installing waterwise fixtures in new buildings.
The measures have reduced water use on campus from 376 million gallons in 2020 to 321 million gallons in 2023, according to the U’s sustainability office.
The U. has created a landscape master plan that includes increased water sustainability on campus and incorporates water-wise landscaping to reduce unnecessary water use, said Ali McKelvy, landscape architect at the U.
“The [plan] is something that the university does every 10 years,” she said. “It is an opportunity for entities – in our case, the university – to think about our future. How do we want to grow? How do we want to have a physical infrastructure that supports our goals as an institution?”
Over the past five years, McKelvy and her colleagues have started swapping turf that uses a lot of water with biograsses that work better with Utah’s dry, semi-arid climate, she said.
Once established with a watering schedule, the grass becomes self-sustainable with minimal maintenance.
“When we get funding available, we will identify areas that have turf that isn’t being used by students,” McKelvy said. “We’re finding those areas, and we’re replacing them with low-water use plants.”
The U. did not want to get rid of all high-traffic grassy areas, she said, because students use those spaces to relax between classes.
“[There’s a] balance of what green space looks like on campus, because having grassy areas is a part of student enjoyment,” Larson said.
In addition, the U. is saving water through its irrigation schedule, said John Walker, campus ground supervisor. The waterwise irrigation schedule encourages biograsses to go dormant, meaning campus lawns will survive Utah’s summer heat and become green and lush again with cooler temperatures and rain.
“We rely on an awesome irrigation team to make sure the work gets done, make sure [sprinkler] heads get fixed, make sure the system’s running how it’s supposed to be running,” Walker said. “The irrigation techs out in the field are checking on it, making sure it’s running how it should be, getting that feedback from them so we can make those tweaks in the software, and … we save water where we can.”
The U., he added, also implemented a smart irrigation system, called WeatherTrak, in 2018 that reduced outdoor water usage by 25% while saving on labor and maintenance costs.
“We can see this flow sensor is reporting this amount of water used,” Walker said. “We didn’t have that kind of capability before. Things talk to each other a little bit better and work together better with our irrigation system.”
The system, Larson said, sends automatic alerts when a sprinkler breaks or another water-related issue occurs on campus.
“That is the beauty of having these automatic shutoff valves,” she said. “It can … send tickets immediately to irrigation staff saying, ‘Hey. Come fix this.’”
Water savings on campus have come from both outdoor and indoor conservation, Larson said. Construction uses a considerable amount of water due to activities like mixing concrete, suppressing dust and cleaning equipment. If not managed efficiently, this can stress water conservation, according to Bluebeam, a construction software company.
According to the University of Utah, student enrollment increased by 5% in 2024 over the 2023 fall semester, leading to the need for more housing. The campus is expected to grow by 5,000 new student housing units by 2030 for incoming first-year students, according to @theU, bringing with it more construction.
Larson said her team is working to make those new buildings more water-wise.
“There are water-sense fixtures that are required, and toilets [that] flush less with water. So, as … the university grows and buildings are installed or torn down, things naturally become more efficient,” she said.
Since Gov. Spencer Cox signed HB121 into law in March 2022, the U. has decreased water use by 15%, and is on track to meet the goal of 25% by 2026, as the law requires. But officials want to continue conserving water on its campus and would like the Salt Lake community to adopt the same mindset, Larson said.
McKelvy said her team wants students to be involved and heard regarding water conservation on campus and Utah in general.
Larson said the future of water conservation lies in students actively participating or sharing their ideas.
“Supporting that big picture of sustainability on campus is also addressing our community,” she said. “Our choices around pollution, energies, et cetera, also impacts all of Salt Lake Valley.”
Caitlyn Homolya wrote this story as a journalism student at the University of Utah. It is published as part of a new collaborative including nonprofits Amplify Utah and The Salt Lake Tribune. Homolya’s class partnered with the Great Salt Lake Collaborative, a solutions journalism initiative that partners news, education and media organizations to help inform people about the plight of the Great Salt Lake — and what can be done to make a difference before it is too late. Read all of the collaborative’s stories at greatsaltlakenews.org.
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We also request organizations include the following text either at the beginning or end of the story text :This story is jointly published by nonprofits Amplify Utah and [Your Media Organization's Name] to elevate diverse perspectives in local media through emerging journalism. Caitlyn Homolya wrote this story as a journalism student at the University of Utah. For more stories from Amplify Utah, visit amplifyutah.org/use-our-work.
Salt Lake Community College is stayng focused on its commitment to sustainability efforts with renewable energy, transportation, and water conservation.
Among some of the more visible efforts are the solar panels installed across campuses. Clint Gardner, co-chair of the SLCC Sustainability Committee, highlighted current installations.
“We have several,” Gardner said. “There’s a parking structure [at Redwood] by the [Academic and Administration Building] that has solar panels on it."
Garder said there is also a larger parking structure at Jordan Campus.
“I believe there are solar panels on top of the science building, that’s an industry building here at the Redwood campus,” Gardner added.
According to Gardner, plans for additional solar parking structure panels are planned for the Redwood Campus and Jordan Campus, as well as other campuses.
Jacob Toone, a solar panel designer from Intermountain Wind and Solar, emphasized the improvements in solar panel technology.
“Wattage per square foot of solar panels has almost doubled in recent years,” Toone said. “A similar-sized panel that once produced 300 watts now generates closer to 590 watts, making solar energy more cost-effective without increasing installation costs.”
To help cut pollution, SLCC provides free UTA transportation passes to all active students, faculty and staff, enabling access to buses, TRAX, and FrontRunner.
According to SLCC’s sustainability plan, the school supports electric vehicle (EV) users by offering 19 EV charging stations across campuses and plans for more. These stations have already prevented over 26,000 kilograms of greenhouse gas emissions — the equivalent of planting 667 trees.
As part of its sustainability efforts, SLCC has installed EV charging stations at several campuses, including South City Campus, pictured. (Courtesy of ChargePoint)
Belen Leon, a general studies major, has a positive outlook on the SLCC initiatives.
“I love the idea of solar panels. It’s a great idea,” Leon said. “The cost of power is much lower afterward. It helps with climate change, and I think that’s great.”
However, not everyone shared the same sentiment regarding schools shouldering the burden of reducing emissions.
“I think it’s everyone’s responsibility to try and minimize their own carbon footprint, so I don’t think it [should be] required for schools,” said Keegan Stout, a journalism and digital media major.
Water conservation is another priority at the college. The Redwood Campus uses a WeatherTrac system to adjust irrigation based on real-time weather data. Xeriscaping projects, which require minimal water, are in progress across SLCC properties, according to SLCC’s sustainability plan.
Through these efforts, SLCC aims to lead by example in reducing its environmental impact. With continued plans for renewable energy, sustainable transportation, and efficient water use, the college encourages the community to participate in building a greener future.
Nearly every day during the fall semester, collegiate runners tightened their laces for morning runs in the shadow of the mountains that span the Wasatch Front. As the Salt Lake valley’s inversions bring thick smog, some college athletes said they have been forced to train indoors or breathe in toxic air that threatens their respiratory health.
Ty Davis, a track and cross-country runner for Weber State University, said the unpredictable air quality has become a regular topic of training discussion.
“Almost every day before our runs, our coaches and even some of my teammates … talk about the air quality and decide if we are going to — or if we should — move our practice indoors,” Davis said. “It has become a normal thing to take some kind of precaution with the air quality.”
For Davis and other Utah residents, the state’s natural beauty is often overshadowed by the Great Salt Lake’s shrinking footprint, stirring up dust that adds to the Wasatch Front’s worsening air quality.
Utah’s deteriorating air quality, exacerbated by the drying lake, poses risks to the respiratory health of collegiate track and cross-country athletes. Researchers and medical experts warn that exposure to fine particulate matter and harmful pollutants can hinder lung function and long-term endurance. As the lakebed continues to expose more dust that’s laden with arsenic and metals, the health stakes rise, raising questions and concern from collegiate athletes about the future of outdoor running in the region.
(Kurt Ward) Ty Davis leads his Weber State University teammates in a cross-country race at the Riverside Golf Course in Pocatello, Idaho.
For collegiate track and cross-country teams in Utah, these challenges have turned air quality into a year-round consideration. Coaches and athletes must balance the need to build endurance and strength with the realities of fluctuating air pollution levels, sometimes moving to indoor facilities or scheduling practices during times of lower pollution. However, these adaptations can only go so far, leaving many athletes to face the cumulative effects of training in compromised environments.
“There are definitely days when I notice the smog and air quality, especially since we run on the Bonneville Shoreline Trail,” Davis said of the path from North Salt Lake to Parleys Canyon. Davis is in the engineering program at Weber State, he said, so “I am also aware of the arsenic and other particles from the Great Salt Lake.”
Sprinter Nick Pembroke said he has trained from the green hills near Utah State University in Logan to the red rocks of Cedar City — and has noticed the air quality in northern Utah sends him indoors to train more frequently. Pembroke, a senior at Southern Utah University, also attended USU for several semesters, and said the air quality in Cache and Salt Lake counties seems to be worse than what he experienced in Iron County.
“I definitely am able to tell the difference on how it affects my breathing,” he said. “If it’s bad, … then I notice my lungs feel heavy, and I don’t do as many reps because I tire quicker.”
Sprinter Nick Pembroke said he has trained from the green hills near Utah State University in Logan to the red rocks of Cedar City — and has noticed the air quality in northern Utah sends him indoors to train more frequently. Pembroke, a senior at Southern Utah University, also attended USU for several semesters, and said the air quality in Cache and Salt Lake counties seems to be worse than what he experienced in Iron County.
“I definitely am able to tell the difference on how it affects my breathing,” he said. “If it’s bad, … then I notice my lungs feel heavy, and I don’t do as many reps because I tire quicker.”
(Nick Pembroke) Nick Pembroke, a sprinter at Southern Utah University, sets himself in the starting block for the 4x400m at the Aztec Invitational in San Diego, California, in March 2024.
Kerry Kelly, associate professor in chemical engineering at the University of Utah, measured these particles to try to answer some of these questions. Kelly was lead author in a study published in November in the journal Atmospheric Environment, in which researchers found high levels of reactivity and bioaccessiblity (how well a substance is absorbed into the body) in comparison to other sediments from spots around Utah. There was a noticeably higher level of manganese, iron, copper and lead.
“Lead is a concern for developmental reasons,” Kelly said. “Manganese, iron and copper — these are transition metals and are known to be very irritating to your lungs. Once you get irritation, that can lead to this whole inflammatory response … and its adverse health effects, like asthma.”
Other research shows air quality significantly damages runners’ respiratory health and performance. Pollutants like ozone, particulate matter, nitrogen dioxide and carbon monoxide are particularly harmful during exercise, as deeper and more frequent breathing allows these pollutants to bypass natural nasal filtration and reach the lungs directly, according to researchers at the University of Birmingham and the Canal and Rivers Trust.
Kevin Perry, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Utah, said more exposed lakebed at Great Salt Lake also leads to more dust storms. Utahns living along the Wasatch Front and near the lake’s shoreline, he said, tend to experience, on average, four to five dust storms a year.
(BYU Media) Elyse Jessen, a middle-distance runner for Brigham Young University.
Battling ‘track hack’Elyse Jessen, a middle-distance runner for Brigham Young University, said she is more familiar with visible air quality issues, such as polluted winter inversions and smoke from summer wildfires, but was unaware of the challenges facing Great Salt Lake.
“Whenever we are pulled inside for training at BYU, I am always under the understanding that’s it is only due to [the] temperature or if it’s snowing,” said Jessen, “Obviously, there are days when I go outside, and I can see smog in the air, but I have never had conversations with my teammates or my coaches concern about air quality.”
Jessen added that she sometimes experiences “track hack,” a term runners use for throat irritation after intense training. It’s medically known as exercise-induced bronchostriction, or EBI. The American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology notes “track hack” is a common condition among competitive and elite athletes — a side effect of breathing in dry or polluted air during periods of exertion.
“I have been running since I was 15, but I don’t think I have personally experienced any health issues from the air quality,” she said. “I don’t have asthma, and the only time I really have issues breathing are after really hard workouts or when it’s scorching hot outside.”
Now, Jessen said, she is starting to understand how environmental factors unique to northern Utah can affect her training and performance and plans to research mitigation strategies.
“I never knew that I was breathing in so many harmful things in the air,” she said. “But now I want to learn more about how to adapt for my health and performance.”
Gabe Haymore wrote this story as a journalism student at the University of Utah. It is published as part of a collaborative including nonprofits Amplify Utah and The Salt Lake Tribune. Haymore’s class partnered with the Great Salt Lake Collaborative, a solutions journalism initiative that partners news, education and media organizations to help inform people about the plight of the Great Salt Lake — and what can be done to make a difference before it is too late. Read all of the collaborative’s stories at greatsaltlakenews.org.
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We also request organizations include the following text either at the beginning or end of the story text :This story is jointly published by nonprofits Amplify Utah and [Your Media Organization's Name] to elevate diverse perspectives in local media through emerging journalism. Grabe Haymore wrote this story as a journalism student at the University of Utah. For more stories from Amplify Utah, visit amplifyutah.org/use-our-work.
