With an ever-growing population in city, suburban, and rural areas, the Beehive State and region’s economic potential is growing.
But the climate challenges Utah and neighboring states face pose dire consequences for the environment and the region’s residents and businesses. The exposed lakebed of the Great Salt Lake; droughts causing water shortages and shrinking lakes; and vast air pollution from wildfire smoke are just some of the challenges being seen.
The climate challenges Utah and the region face are a threat, but these challenges can also drive innovation and create a robust workforce.
Recently, the University of Utah hosted the Southwest Sustainability Innovation Engine (SWSIE) Site Visit highlighting the achievements of the first year of this project. SWSIE is a new National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded program which includes academic, community, nonprofit and industry partners across Arizona, Nevada and Utah to establish the region as a leader in water security, renewable energy, and carbon management, and develop a workforce to support those high-wage industries.
The multi-day site visit showcased Utah’s efforts to make the state and the region a hub of green innovation. Some of the highlights of the event included field trips that spanned the watershed, examples of regional collaboration, partner engagement, building an ecosystem throughout the region, and workforce development, among other topics.
A key component of the NSF Engines program is to leverage existing partnerships and coordinate efforts among researchers, industry, and government to accelerate the pace of sustainability innovation and prepare a regional workforce.
“With SWSIE, we are able to accelerate the speed that things are happening,” said Dr. Brenda Bowen, Co-PI on the SWSIE project and serves as the University of Utah lead. “Even though we are acting so fast, it needs to be faster. There’s this urgency to it, and that so aligns with the urgency of the issues that we’re facing around climate. That’s an exciting thing that SWSIE can bring, that additional incentive to really accelerate things.”