UK Digs into Renewable Energy

According to a press release by the Lexington-Fayette Urban County givernment, the University of Kentucky Center for Applied Energy Research (CAER) broke ground yesterday in hopes to begin breaking into the renewable energy field. The university is building a $19.8 million renewable energy laboratory to help facilitate expanded research in Kentucky’s renewable energy industries, including biomass and biofuels, electrochemical power sources (such as capacitors and batteries), and distributed solar energy technologies.
The funding for the facility come from a competitive grant CAER won last year from the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) under the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act’s (ARRA) NIST Construction Grant Program. An additional award of $3.5 million in state ARRA funds has also been provided by the Department of Energy Development and Independence to achieve LEED certification.
The facility should help provide some of the award-winnning researchers employed by the UK a new environment to continue success as well as draw in new interest.