Research Publications

Many state-level Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) include preferences for solar generation, with goals of increasing the generation diversity, reducing solar costs, and encouraging local solar indu...

Due to climate change and ongoing drought, California and much of the American West face critical water supply challenges. California's water supply infrastructure sprawls for thousands of miles, f...

Switchgrass is a biomass crop with no established market. Its adoption will involve a wide range of socio-economic factors, making it a particularly difficult system to analyze for environmental impac...

An examination of the environmental benefits of an expanded RPS in Michigan find that, with higher coal retirements, significantly more natural gas is displaced by the expanded RPS, thereby reducin...

Dietary behavioral choices have a strong effect on the environmental impact associated with the food system. Here, we consider the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with production of food tha...

Lightweighting is a key strategy to improve vehicle fuel economy. Assessing the life-cycle benefits of lightweighting requires a quantitative description of the use-phase fuel consumption reduction as...

To alleviate fossil fuel use, reduce air emissions, and mitigate climate change, “new mobility” systems start to emerge with technologies such as electric vehicles, multi-modal transportation enabled ...

This paper develops a political-industrial ecology to explore the urban water supply metabolism of Los Angeles (Cousins and Newell, 2015), which sprawls across the American West. Specifically, the ...

The deployment of renewable energy is considered a necessary step towards sustainability and appropriate mitigation of green house gas emissions. To be effective it must achieve a balance between a...

Although it is through commodities that we are inextricably linked to distant places, most of us know little about where the products we consume come from, to say nothing of the conditions under wh...

Grid-scale energy storage may serve as a solution to the integration challenges of high penetrations of renewable energy, reduce air pollution from the grid, and therefore yield better environmenta...

As more renewable energy sources are integrated into the power system, additional reserves are required to ensure the functionality and reliability of the system. Conventional generators provide re...

Environmentally extended input-output (EEIO) database is increasingly used in studying environmental issues in China. Many repeated efforts have been done to construct EEIO databases for China whic...

Grid-scale energy storage systems represent a potential solution for several grid applications such as renewables integration and transmission and distribution upgrade deferral. The integration of ...

Wireless charging is an alternative method for charging battery electric vehicles (BEVs) in contrast to the conventional method of plug-in charging. Wireless charging allows BEVs to charge either i...

The problem of limited accessibility to public transit is a well-documented problem in transportation theory and network literature. The lack of first and last mile specific transit services impair...

Efficient urban transportation is critical to the sustainability of any urban systems. Cities suffering from severe congestions, which not only increases energy consumption leading to decreased air...

This study examines the life cycle energy demand and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with substituting natural cellulose and kenaf in place of glass fibers in automotive components. Specific...

Energy storage may serve as a solution to the integration challenges of high penetrations of wind, helping to reduce curtailment, provide system balancing services, and reduce emissions. This study...

Wireless charging, as opposed to plug-in charging, is an alternative charging method for electric vehicles (EVs) with rechargeable batteries and can be applicable to EVs with fixed routes, such as ...

With the shift toward large-scale concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), media coverage of livestock production has focused on issues ranging from livestock-borne diseases to worker’s rights ...

In the United States, state-level Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) have served as key drivers for the development of new renewable energy. This research presents a method to evaluate emissions r...

Vehicle electrification through implementation of electric vehicles (EVs) with rechargeable batteries has the potential to significantly reduce the greenhouse gas emissions compared to a fleet of inte...

Recognizing that the pervasive use of nonrenewable energy sources negatively impacts the development of symbiotic relationships with surrounding ecosystems, the goal of our project was to assist the L...