The Oil Drum

Then there would be no sort of control to be able to say which designs work better. The one from cal-poly will of course work better in Pasadena (assuming that's the city the cal poly is from) than from any school in the north. Bring them all to one place for a week so they share the same environment.

While it's easy to call the move a waste, one of the problems with alternative energy is that most of them don't scale up to the sizes needed. Well, in this case it's a small scale thing. If this were every single grade school building a house and relocating it, and the knowledge/techniques that they were demonstrating we're all known (think paper model volcanoes), then it would be a big waste.

A huge number of people visit the DC mall every week who would not otherwise be exposed to this stuff.  It is a good investment.

Perhaps to maximize the investment, we could take this opportunity to contact our representatives and encourage them to take a look at what our college kids can do, and challenge them to do as well in their sustainable energy policy measures.