MARICOPA, Ariz. - Cooling a building in the Arizona desert - and doing it efficiently - seems about as possible as getting water from a stone.
At the U.S. Arid-Land Agricultural Research Center, located here, engineers designed a cooling system for not one but nine buildings, totaling 98,000 square feet and varying from greenhouses to laboratories to office space. They met the efficiency goal so well that the facility received a 2003 Federal Energy Saver Showcase award from the U.S. Department of Energy.