Research Publications

Extreme water temperatures impact the ecological and economic value of freshwater systems. They disrupt fisheries habitat, trigger harmful algal blooms, and stress coastal infrastructure. This study e...

Rooftop solar photovoltaics (RPV) are vital for sustainably powering cities. However, most existing studies focus on RPV’s technical or economic potential often overlook real-world electricity consump...

Residential space heating is responsible for about 7% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. Many analysts believe that electrification with electric heat pumps, energized by clean energy, is a straightfor...

A critical consideration of the dominant vocabulary on home energy injustices around the world is overdue. We briefly unpack terms such as ‘energy poor’, ‘fuel poor’, ‘energy vulnerable’ and ‘hard to ...

Residents in low-income multifamily housing often struggle to afford energy for essential needs such as heating, cooking, and electronics. Climate change may increase these energy demands, and high en...

Electrifying buildings using heat pumps may exacerbate the trade-offs between the sometimes-conflicting objectives of building occupants, power systems, and society. To navigate these, we develop a mo...

High energy burdens challenge nearly a quarter of U.S. households, a fraction which could increase under climate change due to its impacts on space heating and cooling usage. Using detailed building m...

Legislation and standards governing the built environment are transforming in response to the climate crisis, imperatives for decarbonization, and concern for building occupants’ mental and physiologi...

Lake surface temperature extremes have shifted over recent decades, leading to significant ecological and economic impacts. Here, we employed a hydrodynamic-ice model, driven by climate data, to recon...

Water distribution systems (WDS) and power distribution systems (PDS) are strongly connected and mutually affect each other. Recently, several studies suggested accounting for this dependency to enhan...

Hydrogen, an attractive energy carrier due to its high energy content per unit mass, offers   multiple promising pathways towards significant global decarbonization efforts when produced with ren...

This review examines the potential direct and indirect (synthetic fuels) uses of hydrogen in road, rail, air, and marine transportation. Key physical properties of hydrogen (e.g., energy density) are ...

Residential and commercial buildings account for 75% of electricity and 40% of the total energy consumption in the United States, costing over $400 billion annually. Electrification and energy efficie...

Limited strategies exist for chemical recycling of commodity diene polymers, like those found in tyres. Here we apply C–H amination and backbone rearrangement of polymers to deconstruct these material...

This Assessment Update by the Environmental Effects Assessment Panel (EEAP) of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) addresses the interacting effects of changes in stratospheric ozone, sola...

Numerous life cycle assessments (LCA) have been performed on tomato production; however, results vary greatly due to different system boundaries and assumptions, tomato production methods, and geograp...

Clothes dryers emit 27 million tonnes CO2e annually in the US. Decarbonization efforts prioritize energy efficiency and electrification, overlooking effective behavioral changes like line and off-peak...

The formation of winter stratification and thermal structure in general across the Great Lakes varies in character not just between lakes, but interannually within individual lakes. Three large datase...

Low-to-moderate-income (LMI) families in the United States face disproportionately high energy costs due to inefficient housing and systemic underinvestment. Residential end-use electrification can de...

Home weatherization could reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve residents' health and comfort. However, uptake in disadvantaged communities, which could benefit the most, is low. Here we assess ...

The Michigan Institute for Data and AI in Society (MIDAS) and the Cooperative Institute for Great Lakes Research (CIGLR) hosted a summit in Ann Arbor, Michigan, from 22 to 23 July 2024. The event brou...

There is a growing interest in hydrogen for decarbonizing hard-to-abate industries. However, determining which industries to target, the scale of the opportunity, and how to meet the hydrogen demand o...

Expanding reusable takeout container systems using a returnable model may be accomplished through a city-wide centralized collection, washing, and redistribution system. We constructed an LCA model an...

ContextThere are urgent calls to transition society to more sustainable trajectories, at scales ranging from local to global. Landscape sustainability (LS), or the capacity for landscapes to provide e...