Thursday marked the end of the West Lafayette Farmers Market for the season, but for the Sustainability Energy Club at Purdue, the day was just a beginning for a more sustainable future.

Founded last spring semester, the SEC is a club made up of mostly freshmen, but the spirit of its members more than makes up for their lack of experience. Being the only club at Purdue advocating for sustainable energy, their mission is to educate people and to make a bigger push for sustainable energy at Purdue.

The SEC set up eight pairs of solar panels central to the farmers market, each one generating power for one tent at the market: KNOW Eatery, a vegan restaurant with an emphasis on sustainability consciousness.

But KNOW Eatery is only the start for the SEC. Their goal is to power the entire farmers market, and eventually, Purdue, with sustainable energy.

Andrei Kudinov, a junior in mechanical engineering, is co-president of the club.

“If the roof of every building on Purdue campus is covered with solar panels, we can produce most of the energy, if not all, to run the campus,” Kudinov said. “With just this array, in one hour, we’ll probably save six pounds of carbon emissions.”

While the goal of a fully sustainable energy-run campus is far away, the members of the SEC work on smaller projects that make a big impact around campus.

The SEC is planning on implementing wind turbines on campus during the winter months, a time when it’s not as sunny for solar panels to be effective. The SEC also does research with Hydroponics, plants that are grown without soil, as research for plant growth in space.

Another project that the SEC is working on is a DC house, or a house that is run completely off of solar power. The DC house, located near Armstrong, will help the club research energy savings with their own data and observations.

“We’re starting off small, but it’s the first step in creating bigger projects that help the community,” said Alexis Fornero, a member of the SEC’s fundamentals branch and a sophomore in civil engineering. “Even just powering one booth at the farmers market is taking that first step.”

One of the SEC’s goals is to educate people on how simple and accessible sustainable energy can be.

“I wish people knew how feasible (sustainable energy) is,” said Eddie Petrenko, the operations manager for the club. “Everything we got here was ordered off Amazon. The solar panels are $60, and we trained a bunch of freshmen to set them up in a few weeks.”

In educating people about sustainable energy, the SEC combats stigmas that many people hold towards clean energy, which especially affects nuclear energy.

The SEC also works to influence Purdue’s plan, or lack thereof, for sustainability.

“Our poly branch is working on a climate action plan for Purdue, because we’re the only Big 10 school that doesn’t have one,” said Abhitej Kanuri, the SEC secretary. “That’s one of the big focuses right now.”

But the main focus of the SEC rests in the future.

“There’s a huge cultural and business shift right now,” Kanuri said. “Sustainable and renewable energy is going to be the future. When technology is at the point where sustainable energy is the most important form of energy, Purdue needs to have systems in place to produce engineers who know how to work with that kind of energy.”

The impending shift towards sustainable energy has piqued the interest of many students at Purdue, which is something that excites the members of the SEC. The SEC welcomes people from every field to learn more about sustainable energy and get hands-on with the processes.

“Anybody can join, you don’t have to know anything,” said Sammie Van Hoose, an FYE student and outreach coordinator for SEC. “You don’t need any experience; you can learn something and help out the community. It’s simpler than it looks.”

The enthusiasm of the members themselves also acts as a motivator for the club to continue its hard work and dedication to implementing sustainable energy at Purdue.

“It’s easy to stay positive when we are seeing so much of a positive impact from our work,” Van Hoose said. “We have a lot of people that, because of their hard work, we’re able to see our impact firsthand, and we get a lot of positive results. A lot of our members are very passionate about this.”

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