Students design CMU’s clean energy future

Demand for energy is rising around the world, driven by everything from expanding computing infrastructure to the growing adoption of electric vehicles, and CMU’s campus is no exception. As the university’s research and technology footprint grows, so does the need for reliable, low-carbon energy; and, in a Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering classroom, undergraduate students were tasked to solve that problem.

The department’s junior-year project course divided students into teams to investigate technology that could help reduce emissions while meeting the university’s increasing energy needs. With support from an energy industry professional mentor, each group focused on a different approach, such as solar paired with battery storage, geothermal heat pumps, nuclear, or carbon capture. Over six weeks, the student teams analyzed how these technologies could be implemented at CMU, developing proposals that examined their feasibility, cost, and potential environmental impact.

“This course is about taking real-world problems and applying engineering, design, and communication skills to build the energy systems of today and the future,” said Joe Moore, assistant teaching professor and course instructor. 

The semester began with research and analysis as students looked at how energy is currently used across campus and how it changes over time with seasonal fluctuations or peak usage periods. Using those data, they estimated how much energy their proposed system could generate and how much carbon emissions they could reduce. In field trips to local facilities, such as the Bellefield Boiler Plant, students saw up close the scale, complexity, and the logistical challenges behind integration of large-scale energy infrastructure.

From there, the teams began to translate their ideas into designs. Using computer-aided design software and guidance from their assigned industry mentors, students created drawings of their proposed systems, where they could realistically live on campus, and how they might connect to existing buildings and infrastructure. By estimating size, construction requirements, costs, and other constraints, the juniors got a look inside the planning process that practicing engineers follow when evaluating new infrastructure projects.

Weekly meetings with their industry mentors helped the groups refine their proposals, incorporating feedback and insights from working engineers at leading firms like Coho Climate Advisors, GAI Consultants, SmithGroup, and Rizzo International. Will Elmore, an alum of the department and now Director of Client Services at Coho, mentored the team studying carbon capture technology. In his current role helping companies evaluate decarbonization strategies, Elmore often analyzes both the climate and financial impacts of adopting new technologies, a perspective he brought to the classroom. Eddie Guerra, Senior Vice President of the Civil Infrastructure Development at Rizzo, who guided the geothermal team, brought a similarly grounded perspective to his group’s work.

“I think an experience like this helps the students see the complexity of civil engineering energy projects, and how they’re systems of systems undertakings,” Guerra said. “It was a great experience for the students to see that in action.”

That big-picture thinking extended across every team. Elmore’s carbon capture group navigated the kinds of nuance that rarely appear in textbooks.

“They were asking practical questions like, what is the best location? What approvals would we need? What environmental regulations apply? Where would employees park?” He said. “The project was really at the cutting-edge of climate solutions and very similar to the type of work we do at Coho.”

But, the course wasn’t just about crunching numbers. Elmore also encourages his team to think carefully about how they told the story of their solution, a skill just as critical in the professional world as the technical analysis itself. One carbon capture approach involved using captured emissions to extract fossil fuels, a tradeoff that put students face-to-face with the kind of ethical dilemmas that don’t have a clear answer in the real world, either.

The course was intentionally open-ended, pushing teams to define their own scope, track down their own data, and make their own engineering decisions. The direct air capture group found reliable technical information hard to come by, leading them to reach out directly to companies working on that technology.

“My biggest takeaway from the course was creative problem solving,” said Carmen Ting, a junior studying civil engineering. “I really enjoyed being able to do our own research and come up with something that was unique and truly our own.”

The independence was by design. Moore wanted his students to leave with more than technical knowledge; he wanted them to have a clearer sense of what a career in energy and climate might actually look like. The proposals students developed, complete with cost estimates, emissions calculations, and site layouts, represent the kind of early-stage analysis that could genuinely inform CMU’s path toward its sustainability goals.

For the students, the most lasting lessons may have been the ones that don’t show up in a technical report: working alongside industry professionals, managing a team, and wrestling with imperfect solutions.

“I’m going to bring the communication skills I learned and the importance of working with a team with me,” said Natalie Collier, an environmental engineering junior. “You have to be able to communicate with other people to complete the bigger mission in the end.”

As the semester wrapped up and teams presented their final posters, the room was full of ideas that could shape the future of energy on campus. And for Elmore, the experience reinforced just how much this kind of course can offer.

“I wish I’d had an opportunity like this when I was a student,” he said.