Research Publications

The Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED) intends to issue a Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) entitled “Regional Clean Hydrogen Hubs” (H2Hubs) in collaboration ...

Urban agriculture, experiencing a resurgence across the Global North, features prominently in food system sustainability and urban resilience discourse, planning, and policy. Research, however, indica...

The United States Postal Service (USPS) plans to purchase 165,000 next-generation delivery vehicles (NGDVs) between 2023 and 2032. The USPS submitted an environmental impact statement (EIS) for two NG...

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the growth of e-commerce and automated warehouses, vehicles, and robots and has created new options for grocery supply chains. We report and compare the greenhous...

The thermal modification (TM) process has been developed as an alternative to chemical treatment of wood, which increases longevity of lumber used in exterior non-ground-contact applications. In one a...

Lockdown and social-distancing policy drove U.S. workers to switch to telecommuting during the pandemic of Covid-19 in 2020. Telecommuting has been widely perceived as a sustainable way of working tha...

Urban agriculture provides a range of ecosystem services (as well as potential disservices). This study examines the spatial extent, physical characteristics, and residents' perceptions of community a...

Urban green space is conducive to the physical and mental health of residents. However, exposure to green space is often highly unequal. This research addresses a major gap in the green space literatu...

Food systems literature has shifted towards interdisciplinarity and the use of systems lenses but can still be disjointed and unconnected. To bring together disciplinary knowledge and establish a comm...

Cold chain infrastructure is vital in the modern food system, yet the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of cold warehouse construction and operation are unclear. This article fills the gap by presenting ...

Eco-driving benefits and automation energy use burdens are important factors impacting the energy consumption of connected and automated vehicles (CAVs). However, challenges exist ...

Life cycle assessment (LCA) is used widely to compare the relative impacts of different packaging materials for a specific food product, but few studies evaluate how a single packaging material contri...

Growing global demand for natural rubber is driving deforestation due to the expansion of rubber plantations, with consequences for biodiversity, carbon storage, and local communities. There has been ...

This project was conducted to address recommendations from the University of Michigan’s President’s Commission on Carbon Neutrality by footprinting the institution's Scope 3 purchased goods and servic...

Despite extensive literature on the socio-cultural services of urban open spaces, the role of food-producing spaces has not received sufficient attention. This hampers advocacy for preserving and grow...

According to the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, the Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Accounting and Reporting standard, Scope 3 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions constitute emissions that result from indirect a...

Plastic materials have become pervasive in 21st century economies, yet 60% of all plastics ever produced globally have been discarded either in landfills or elsewhere in the environment.This represent...

Aluminum and steel represent the two most dominant metals in light-duty vehicles, yet the flows of these materials into the American automotive industry have not been well characterized. This study...

Electrification of delivery vehicles will play an important role in decarbonizing the transportation sector. As electricity-generating technologies vary regionally and temporally, where electric ve...

Automated long haul trucking is being developed for commercial deployment in the United States. One possible mode of deployment for this technology is a “transfer-hub” model where the operationally...

The design and techno-economic performance of a compact additively manufactured (AM) molten salt (MS)-to-supercritical carbon di-oxide (sCO2) primary heat exchanger (PHE) for solar thermal application...

Electrification can reduce the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of light-duty vehicles. Previous studies have focused on comparing battery electric vehicle (BEV) sedans to their conventional internal co...

Residential energy use represents roughly 17% of annual greenhouse gas emissions in the United States (U.S.). Studies show that legacy housing policies and financial lending practices have negatively ...

Ride sharing or pooling is important to mitigate negative externalities of ride-hailing such as increased congestion and environmental impacts. However, there lacks empirical evidence on what affec...