this is moronic. if he had even the remotest interest in extreme 'sustainable living' it would be the tiny house movement.
there's PLENTY of documentation about how to build and create a tiny microhome with NO steel in the walls. this means it's both CHEAPER to build, and will serve better as a house.
what this professor is doing is pretending to be a random homeless person who doesn't have the sense, or for whatever other reason, might live in a working, or impaired, metal garbage dumpster.
this is your tax subsidies of 'academia' at work.

Do the solar panels provided 100% of the electricity needed by the AC unit?
And 24/7 in the summer?

I have a sneaking suspicion his motivations are about 25% research into sustainable living and 75% trying to live cheap enough to pay off student loans.

No wonder people get the wrong idea about Hipsters...

I just love the AC, it practically screams sustainable and bare necessity. :-)

First question: is his wife living there with him? Because he is crazy to leave her for a dumpster - and she was looking at him like he was crazy. Second: I think we all know we are in trouble. In 1953 there were 2.69 billion, in midcentury there will be 10 billion. Smaller spaces probably wont stop global warming, ocean creep and food and water shortage. So what's the point? Last question: is there something we can all do to really alleviate our world's ills short of mass suicide? I think just getting out to walk and bike will start us on the path to doing something that we can all do - and that is changing our midset about our environment and how to protect it and to inculcate habits that will lead us in the right direction - not living in 3 meters and talking about solutions but actually doing them en-mass.

If you're living under high voltage power lines it would be good as long as its grounded correctly. Not a half bad bomb shelter in its own right. :)
Also, people complain a lot. If you give the average man of our generation a 60" 4k TV, cable and a decent computer rig /console, he is more then happy to enjoy that cubicle for many seasons. And we're talking first world.
Re: Conny Söre If the solar panels can drive a small 200W DC aircon compressor, then it is very sustainable. And those are moderately priced. Though not completely inexpensive. The outlay with the panels would still be the biggest cost to this project.

It's a little worrying that this man is a university lecturer who has influence over young people, but then he is american and probably largely unaware of how huge numbers of people already exist in similar accommodation elsewhere in this world. May be he needs to get out more......

Is a dumpster what in the UK is called a skip?

In my day, that would be on it's side with the teacher trapped in it. ha ha !