The Plant
The Plant © 2009, 2019-2023 ecobaun all rights reserved
The Plant Institute (Pat Pending)
Situated at the foot of windy coastal foothills, on the shores of the Pacific, beneath plentiful California sun and atop some of the country’s richest geothermal potential, The Plant will become the shell for studying and developing advanced power systems to harness the potentials of wind, wave, tidal, solar and geothermal energies; incubating innovation in energy production with unlimited potential.
The project and the research it sponsors will heal the sensitive coastal environments to give new life to marine and upland ecosystems through investment in marine habitats, expansion, and restoration.
Coupled with research and innovation, natural wastewater processes synched with the adjacent riparian area will recharge the aquifer and enhance animal and human habitats. An influx of intellectual capital and talented workers will enhance the vitality of the town and region, opening new educational and cultural opportunities.
The Plant sits on approximately 100 acres of waterfront.
The institute plan includes over 430,000 square ft. of
classrooms, labs and administration,designed with
LEEDS Platinum certification.
State-of-the-art industrial labs and classrooms built for
postgraduate programs dedicated to sustainable
engineering. The electrical distribution yard will continue
to be part of the national electrical grid.
Up to 12 individual universities will participate in
postgraduate programs concentrating in the fields of
mechanical, electrical and chemical engineering for
alternative energy power design, sustainable architectural
design, and water sciences. The Plant will become one of
the most unique and prominent international intellectual
think tanks in the world. This model will create a sensation
for further endowment and corporate underwriting and unique
one-of-a-kind programming reproducible elsewhere.
The most crucial benefit to the universities is the cost savings of partnering with a research facility rather than internalizing the cost to build the facility on campus. Having this research center available to offer prospective students gives universities an advantage over other postgraduate programs.
NYTimes OPED
“If American higher education is to thrive in the 21st century, colleges and universities, like Wall Street and Detroit, must be rigorously regulated and completely restructured”.
ecobaun
VISION
BOOK
The Plant will establish a strong center of research, innovation and education for regional and global power sources. Top universities and industrial enterprises will come together at Morro Bay in a spectacular coastal setting to address the entire spectrum of energy research.
Campus site is self-supporting. All fresh water and sewer is produced and treated on site and does not burden the community, becoming emblematic of the sustainable progress coming from this site.
Program Strengths
Design programming should powerfully exploit physical location. Our proposed plan details the intrinsic natural attributes that support sustainable engineering studies creating a more powerful argument and draw.
This plan has been presented to governmental agencies, city planning, state assembly, local business, coastal commission and state lands commission for extending a terminal lease agreement. In all cases, we received enthusiastic and positive support, specifically due to the limited and authentic program for clean energy and clean water research.
Due to the global importance for sustainable studies, planning approval is achievable for the supporting infrastructure of commercial mixed use, hotel, housing and retail development. At a presentation to the coastal commission, we were told this plan is exactly what they would consider.
Some universities have reached crisis levels to fund operational overhead costs. Rates have increased for UC California campuses. In August 2010, the University of California, facing an estimated $20-billion deficit in its retirement plan, released a proposal to reduce the amount it spends on employee benefits. The deficit at the 10-campus university system is a severe example of the pension crisis that threatens public colleges across the country.
A summit was held at the Goggle’s campus to discuss creating a robust pipeline extending from basic research to applied research to demonstration projects to commercial scale-up to deployment of sustainable design and energy systems. Panel included representatives from MIT, UC Berkeley and Stanford University. Ironically, Ecobaun’s development plan, echo’s what this panel has called “Next Steps”. The complete summit can be seen in our proforma.