Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
an associate professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace
Engineering (MAE). Socolow's principal responsibility would be to articu-
late and lead the research program of a new Center for Energy and Envi-
ronmental Studies (CEES), which the University was forming in the
School of Engineering and Applied Science. In addition to Goldberger,
four senior Princeton professors would guide the effort: the physicist
George Reynolds, the electric propulsion expert Robert Jahn, the com-
bustion expert Irvin Glassman, and the economist William Bowen.
At Yale, senior professors had raised the funds to sponsor Socolow's
research.At Princeton, proposal writing was Socolow's responsibility, and he
began reading successful proposals from various departments. One from the
School of Architecture described a sociological study of a New Jersey
planned-unit housing development called Twin Rivers. “In an 'aha!'
moment,” Socolow remembers,“I thought,'What if I study the same com-
munity, with energy flow questions in mind, to understand what deter-
mines the energy used in the most common kinds of housing?”' Richard
Grot, another member of MAE, quickly responded to the idea, pointing
out that the replicated units of the development provided a research
opportunity.
Over the next 7 years, Socolow, Grot, David Harrje (a rocket engineer),
some colleagues in statistics and psychology, and several graduate students
made extensive studies of the units at Twin Rivers.They monitored energy
use and experimented with ways to reduce it by modifying the building
shell.They showed that savings in annual heating of up to 75 percent were
possible. The team published its findings in a topic titled
Saving Energy in
the Home: Princeton's Experiments at Twin Rivers.
Their discoveries about
common construction practices and the importance of small details for
energy efficiency stimulated the practice of retrofitting, which became
widespread by the 1980s.
Socolow's decision to study middle-class housing was deliberate, he says:
“I'm interested in the environmental impact of the way we live.That's dom-
inated by middle class consumption. . . . Decisions that determine middle-
income housing are replicated millions of times.”
At Princeton, in the wake of the 1973 oil crisis, Socolow ran the Amer-
ican Physical Society 1974 summer study on energy use. The meeting
helped legitimate the study of energy efficiency by physicists. Socolow,
along with Marc Ross at Michigan, Arthur Rosenfeld at Berkeley, Robert
Williams then at Michigan and later a colleague at CEES, and quite a few
