The School of Geography, Development & Environment is located on the south 4th floor of the beautiful Environment & Natural Resources (ENR2) Building. Completed in 2015, the Environment and Natural Resources 2 Building (ENR2), is part of the University of Arizona's commitment to environmental sustainability and interdisciplinary research and studies that focus on earth science, environmental programs and natural resources. The building contains offices, classrooms, auditoriums and gathering rooms for public programs, in addition to a café and a stunning central courtyard that foster circulation and gathering.
The School of Geography, Development, and Environment shares the five-story structure with Arizona Institute for Resilience (AIR), the School of Natural Resources and the Environment, the Office of Sustainability and some divisions of the Department of Mathematics. The LEED platinum-certified building incorporates cutting-edge technologies that epitomize the university's dedication to sustainability in higher education.
To learn more about the building, including its innovative sustainable features, please visit the ENR2 page on the planning, design & construction website, where you can also take our self-guided tour!
News About ENR2
ENR2 Goes Platinum, Gains Highest LEED Certification
ENR2: Where Art and Science Meet
Five Facts about UA's Greenest Building
ENR2: A New Model for Sustainability
ENR2's First Avian Residents
Direct any general questions about ENR2, building tours or donations to ENR2 projects to Ilyssa Beckwith, the ENR2 Building Manager, at ilyssabeckwith@arizona.edu.
ENR2 Green Roof Project
Rooftop gardens are valuable in many ways to people and buildings. These gardens produce oxygen, reduce building energy costs, capture rainwater and reduce stormwater runoff, create habitats for wildlife, and offer beautiful natural spaces for the enjoyment of building inhabitants, among other benefits. Large rooftop gardens can even promote health and wellness by offering walking paths and other fitness opportunities.
The Environment and Natural Resources 2 Building on the University of Arizona’s main campus is LEED Platinum certified and was originally designed to feature a green roof with solar panels. In 2019, the Office of Sustainability, in partnership with Planning, Design & Construction, the School of Geography & Development, the School of Natural Resources & the Environment, the School of Landscape Architecture & Planning, the Institute of the Environment (now the Arizona Institute for Resilience) and Tucson Electric Power (TEP), received approval to move forward with a green roof and solar panel installation.
How Does It Work?
This project will couple the solar panels with hardy rooftop garden plots in a system called “agrivoltaics”. The system combines the green roof garden (“agri”-culture) with solar technology (photo-”voltaics”) to create a hybrid that maximizes the efficiency and benefits of each.
Why use agrivoltaics? Typical solar panels perform optimally at 77F, but temperatures in the Tucson area regularly exceed that threshold throughout the year, and direct solar exposure further exceeds this optimal performance temperature. Installing a living green roof below the panels allows transpiration from the plants to cool the panels, in some cases by as much as 20F, increasing the panels’ efficiency and their electrical output. In turn, shade from the panels both cools the plants and helps prevent water loss in extreme heat, increasing plant productivity by as much as 300%.
Project Updates
The construction on the green roof component of the project (Phase 1) began in November 2019, with completion at the end of January 2020. The installation of the solar panels (Phase 2) began in May 2020, with completion in January 2021. Once fully complete, the green roof will be planted with a variety of native, pollinator-friendly plants and will be maintained in a manner that provides habitat and food resources for our native pollinators.