Research Publications

In this article we consider interactions between life cycle emissions and materials flows associated with lightweighting (LW) automobiles. Both aluminum and high-strength steel (HSS) lightweighting...

Pavement systems provide critical infrastructure services to society but also pose significant impacts related to large material consumption, energy inputs, and capital investment. A life-cycle model ...

Preservation (maintenance and rehabilitation) strategy is the critical factor controlling pavement performance. A life-cycle optimization (LCO) model was developed to determine an optimal preservation...

Bioenergy has the potential to diversify the global energy portfolio, provide a viable renewable alternative that can be implemented at a large scale, and reduce carbon emissions in the energy sector....

Appropriate geographical delimitation in carbon footprints of paper is deeply challenging due to complexities of scale, largely a function of the number of actors and geographies involved in globalize...

Electrification in third world countries is a step that can highly affect other development factors of a country and improve the living standard of its people. However, normal pathways of electrif...

Projecting the extent at which a bioenergy industry will develop is a function of many variables. Quantifying the expected total source of energy is fundamental to assessing how much and in what form ...

With the introduction of a number of small and electric-powered vehicles into the marketplace, the variety of energy efficient choices available for meeting household transportation needs has increase...

The introduction of plug-in hybrid vehicles (PHEVs) to the consumer market has raised questions about how fuel economy should be calculated. The reason fuel economy is difficult to determine for a PHE...

Allocating the environmental burdens of open-loop metals recycling is a polarizing and contentious issue for the life cycle assessment (LCA) community. LCA practitioners have developed numerous approa...

A life cycle optimization of the replacement of residential central air conditioners (CACs) was conducted in order to identify replacement schedules that minimized three separate objectives: life cycl...

Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) have been identified as a mode of personal transportation that can facilitate CO2 emissions reductions while allowing users to maintain their typical travel ...

One promising technology to address peak oil, global warming, and energy security is the plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV); however, the impact of PHEVs on greenhouse gas emissions and the petrol...

One of the goals of the US Consumer Assistance to Recycle and Save (CARS) Act of 2009, more commonly known as ‘Cash for Clunkers’, was to improve the US vehicle fleet fuel efficiency. Previous stud...

A dynamic material flow analysis model is developed to quantify aluminum in-use stocks and old scrap recycling and recovery in the United States for the period of 1900 to 2007. The total in-use alum...

Photovoltaic electricity has the potential to mitigate CO2 emissions from the grid. A methodology to more accurately evaluate CO2 abatement by PV electricity is developed. We develop a capacity fac...

Aurora Organic Dairy (AOD) is a leading U.S. provider of private-label organic milk and butter, managing over 12,000 milking cows and processing over 84 million liters of milk annually.  Building...

Alleys are enigmatic, neglected features of the urban fabric. In this paper we explore the distribution, physical features, activity patterns, and resident perceptions of alleys in one major US cit...

The paper develops and illustrates a novel decentralized charging control algorithm for large populations of plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs). The proposed algorithm is an application of the so-cal...

The environmental and electric utility system impacts from plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) infiltration in Michigan were examined from years 2010 to 2030 as part of the Michigan Public Service ...

An agent-based model, the Driver Vehicle Use Decision (DVUD) model, was developed that uses simple assumptions about travel demand and statistical information on travel by U.S. drivers. From these, an...

This research investigates the supply of climate information by two NOAA RISAs and the use of that information by water managers across five states in the Pacific Northwest (PNW) and the Southwest (SW...

There is an increasing interest in adding renewables such as wind to electricity generation portfolios in larger amounts as one response to concern about atmospheric carbon emissions from our energ...