Ideas! Action! Results!

Start at home.

Tackling society’s most-pressing challenges often requires home-spun, grassroots endeavors. Throughout Southwest Florida, innovators are experimenting with solutions for energy, education and healthcare—all among the biggest problems facing the country, according to speakers at last year’s Imagine Solutions Conference.

The two-day convergence of national and international experts, presented by Naples-based Searching for Solutions Institute, was designed to get attendees talking and doing. In the year since, many local participants have joined the Institute’s I.D.E.A. (Innovative Discussions Enabling Actions) teams to take on these issues, working both independently on solutions or aligning with existing programs and initiatives. Here are some of the results.

IDEA NO. 1: ENERGY

Nature-Derived Power

Last year’s lingering Deepwater Horizon oil spill drove home the need for tapping into alternative energy sources: fuels that don’t impact air-quality or present the potential for a catastrophic environmental disaster. I.D.E.A. team members Mike Kitchen and Don Gunther think the answer lies in a combination of existing sources—solar, natural gas and nuclear power—and innovations taking place in agricultural fields throughout Southwest Florida and Florida Gulf Coast University’s fledgling research and development facility.

Solar energy and certain biomass crops could potentially harness the power of Florida’s most plentiful resources: the sun and an estimated 12 million unused and plantable acres. But solar fields, such as the 12-acre facility at FGCU and Florida Power & Light’s 180-acre Next Generation Solar Energy Center in nearby Desoto County, aren’t particularly prevalent in the Sunshine State. FPL, the state’s leading energy producer, continues to rely on mostly oil- and coal-burning plants and a smattering of nuclear facilities, each with glaring disadvantages: natural resource depletion, greenhouse gas emissions and used uranium disposal.

FGCU’s solar field generates 18 percent of the Estero campus’s electricity. Solar energy also powers an enormous trash compactor, and water—frozen during off-peak hours—provides air-conditioning to the university’s three newest buildings. Desoto’s plant, visited in October 2009 by President Barack Obama, converts sunshine into clean energy for about 3,000 homes while offsetting 575,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions.

In Felda, fourth-generation farmer Bill Vasden Jr. is growing biofuel crops that burn without a petroleum additive and don’t impact food supplies. The plants, camelina and kenaf, are ideal for unproductive citrus and cattle fields, require no water other than rainfall, and produce fuel to power jets and farm equipment, says Vasden, chairman of the Florida Feedstock Growers. The fuels also meet military mandates: a 50 percent reduction in petroleum use for the Air Force and Navy in 2016 and 2020, respectively.

“Given the right amount of government and military support, these crops could make a significant impact on fossil fuel consumption, food supply and national security,” he says.

Though not “miracle crops”—camelina does emit greenhouse gases—both are expected to help fuel FGCU’s innovation-Hub, or iHub, a 241-acre research and development facility that will attract businesses committed to developing sustainable and renewable energy sources. University President Wilson Bradshaw, who met with Imagine Solution’s Kitchen and Gunther last summer, is banking on the public-private partnership—with support from Searching for Solutions Institute—to produce “not one, but a thoughtful combination of technologies.”

The 1.2 million-square-foot research park will have its own alternative energy plant, a $12 million university research facility next to a photovoltaic lake, and a 20-megaton biomass conversion facility that Vasden says will “run on kenaf grown in surrounding farm land. This will be one of the first biojet facilities in the country, and it’s a shining example of an agricultural tie-in.”

In his keynote speech at last April’s groundbreaking, Rep. Connie Mack commended iHub’s potential. “This is much bigger than just the future of Southwest Florida,” he said. “It’s the future of the state, and frankly, it’s the future of our nation.”

FGCU will also create the John D. Backe chair, named for the former CBS executive and Southwest Florida resident who donated $1 million in seed money to attract an eminent renewable energy expert to the university.

“We also have to encourage innovation and see these projects are brought to use,” Kitchen told Bradshaw. “Who knows, we could end up with a national energy plan from discussions like this.”

IDEA NO. 2: HEALTH

Exercise, Eat Your Veggies

We all know the secret to losing weight: Reduce calories and increase exercise. But Americans haven’t
gotten the message. Obesity is now a national epidemic, fueled by our shift to a sedentary lifestyle, readily available convenience foods and a super-size mentality.

In 2009 nearly 2.4 million more adults were obese than in 2007, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Now the national norm (two-thirds of Americans are overweight or obese), the epidemic is also weighing heavily on the country’s healthcare system, adding $147 million to the national healthcare tab in 2008.

“Obesity is the second preventable contributor to death,” says Dr. Judith Hartner, director of the Lee County Health Department. “Being overweight leads to hypertension, heart disease, osteoporosis, depression. The list is quite long.”

It can also contribute to certain cancers and type 2 diabetes, the latter targeting children at exponentially rising rates and a concern for members of one I.D.E.A. team. “Being healthy improves your quality of life,” says member Gail Markham. “For businesses, having healthy employees helps financially. It reduces healthcare costs and lost time, and improves employees’ attitudes.”