Research Publications

This paper presents the Solid Waste Management Index (SWaMI) for Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). The main objectives are to present how SWaMI was developed, to apply the Index in three differ...

Purpose Clinical decision making regarding the use of imaging is appropriately centered on diagnostic efficacy and individual patient factors. However, health policy and imaging guidelines may incorp...

Beyond Meat commissioned the Center for Sustainable Systems at University of Michigan to conduct a “cradle-to-distribution” life cycle assessment of the Beyond Burger, a plant-based patty designed to ...

Battery storage systems are attractive alternatives to conventional generators for frequency regulation due to their fast response time, high cycle efficiency, flexible scale, and decreasing cost. ...

Deploying large-scale wireless charging infrastructure at bus stops to charge electric transit buses when loading and unloading passengers requires significant capital investment and brings environ...

Producing, transporting, and refining crude oil into fuels such as gasoline and diesel accounts for ∼15 to 40% of the “well-to-wheels” life-cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of transport fuels. Red...

The United States transportation sector consumes 5 billion barrels of petroleum annually to move people and freight around the country by car, truck, train, ship and aircraft, emitting significant gre...

Freight transportation by truck, train, and ship accounts for 5% of the United States’ annual energy consumption (U.S. Energy Information Administration, 2017a). Much of this freight is transported...

Emerging online car hailing services have caused many unintended consequences in urban centers such as more congested traffic and increased vehicle travels. Those unintended consequences have signi...

Quantifying greenhouse gas emissions due to electricity consumption is crucial for climate mitigation in the electric power sector. Current practices primarily use production-based emission factors...

A large body of research has explored opportunities to mitigate climate change in agricultural systems; however, less research has explored opportunities across the food system. Here we expand the ...

In the U.S. lighting represents about 9% of the average household's primary energy consumption and 20% of the average household's energy bill. Lighting in U.S. homes is in a state of transition wit...

In life cycle assessment (LCA), collecting unit process data from the empirical sources (i.e., meter readings, operation logs/journals) is often costly and time-consuming. We propose a new computat...

This project (1) explores the economic feasibility of a 600-kW renewable energy microgrid in the city of Beni, Democratic Republic of Congo, (2) creates a survey instrument to assess local farmers’...

Due to favorable public policy and falling technology costs more and more jurisdictions around the world are adopting higher shares of variable renewable energy into their power systems. Although s...

Use phase fuel consumption is responsible for the majority of an automobile's life cycle energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Lightweighting is an important strategy to reduce use...

Water insecurity, broadly understood to be a lack of access to safe, reliable, and affordable drinking water and wastewater services, is a pressing, but frequently hidden issue in Southeast Michigan. ...

As one of the largest energy consumers in the Midwest, Meijer is seeking opportunities to decrease its fossil fuel based electricity consumption. The SEAS MS project team worked to identify and eva...

Human food systems are a key contributor to climate change and other environmental concerns. While the environmental impacts of diets have been evaluated at the aggregate level, few studies, and none ...

Although recent studies of connected and automated vehicles (CAVs) have begun to explore the potential energy and greenhouse gas (GHG) emission impacts from an operational perspective, little is known...

Existing studies focus on either direct emissions of each province in China using production-based accounting (i.e. direct emitters) or emissions caused by the final consumption of each province using...

Door-to-door fast food delivery service has become increasingly popular in cities due to the fast development of e-commerce and the fast-paced life in China. This in turn has resulted in significan...

This paper assesses consumer valuation of different attributes of electricity supply to elucidate the conflict between solar microgrids and the centralized utility grid in India, as well as to provide...

Connected and autonomous vehicles are anticipated to transform food distribution systems. The food distribution industry is a likely early-adopter of this technology, with resulting changes affecti...