CSU energy lab goes global: nonprofit spinoff develops products for the developing world.

• Author: Cote, Mike
• Position: Colorado State University

FIRST OF TWO PARTS

The Engines and Energy Conversion Laboratory at Colorado State University has a sign outside that might make you think you're at CSU. But this lab is a couple of miles from the rest of campus--a fitting locale for a research center that develops real-world applications that transcend the halls of academia.

What gets done here--from giant natural gas engines for industrial use to small cooking stoves built for the world's poorest people--spends little time on the shelf. That's what Bryan Willson envisioned when he founded the engineering lab.

"While we do a lot of publication, stopping there is not very satisfying," Willson says. "We really want to go the next step and put those discoveries into products and get those products into production. That's the point at which your work has impact."

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When the lab opened in 1992, research on how to build engines that are more energy efficient and create less pollution or alternative fuels that reduce the dependence on fossil fuels attracted little attention.

"Oil was at $ 14 a barrel and dropped down to $9 a barrel. No one really cared about energy. And, in fact, energy programs across the country were shutting down," Willson says. "We were able to build this program in the face of those low oil prices because of this solutions focus."

Over the past few years, the world has caught up to what the lab has been doing, and Willson has earned a growing international audience. By the end of our one-hour interview, he was scrambling to prepare for the next one: A contingent from Mexico was about to arrive for a tour. And the following week Willson was scheduled to travel to Chile, Argentina and Columbia.

"Now that all of a sudden energy and climate change are very large issues, we have a very large dynamic and responsive organization that is able to take advantage of a lot of these new opportunities," says Willson, who at age 50 this year earned his 20-year CSU pin, got an AARP card and hit 1 million in frequent flier miles.

FUELED BY CONSERVATION

It's no small irony that a building that once housed a coal-fired power plant is now home for a team of researchers who are studying alternative energy technologies. But while the solutions coming out of this lab reduce carbon dioxide emissions, the selling point for the eventual products rests largely with their ability to reduce fuel consumption.

That's the case for the two products the lab developed through its nonprofit...