Research Publications

The past decade was the wettest on record for much of central and eastern North America. Near the beginning of this period of regional water abundance, however, drought conditions reinforced concer...

Although the environmental and social burdens associated with the production of beef are well-understood, due to supply chain complexities, we rarely know precisely where these impacts occur or who...

The cold chain (refrigerated supply chain) preserves the value of perishable products and it is rapidly expanding in China. The environmental impacts of cold chain expansion are of increasing concern ...

Electrifying most fossil-fuel-burning applications provides a pathway to achieving cost-effective deep decarbonization of the economy. Heat pumps offer a feasible and energy-efficient way to electr...

Climate change, public health, and resilience to power outages are of critical concern to local governments and are increasingly motivating investments in on-site solar and storage. However, design...

The authors are founding team members of a new effort to develop an Open Energy Outlook for the United States. The effort aims to apply best practices of policy-focused energy system modeling, ensu...

Urine diversion has been proposed as an approach for producing renewable fertilizers and reducing nutrient loads to wastewater treatment plants. Life cycle assessment was used to compare environmen...

This paper examines the coexistence of microgrid and central grid connections for households in India and studies the relationship between these connections and their individual contributions to so...

Carbon capture and utilization (CCU) to produce methanol is a beneficial pathway to use carbon dioxide (CO2) and mitigate climate change. Existing life cycle assessments demonstrate that CCU methan...

Since 1976, the U.S. Department of Energy's Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP) has provided state block grants for no-to low-cost energy efficiency retrofits for more than 7 million low-income...

Refrigerator ownership accompanies socio-economic development, with the potential to change human diets. Household refrigerator ownership in Vietnam has increased from 13% to 59% between 2004-2014....

Corporations, including automotive manufacturers, are increasingly exploring extended circular economy strategies as a means to enhance the sustainability of their products. The circular economy pa...

Wind and solar energy sources are climate and weather dependent, therefore susceptible to a changing climate. We quantify the impacts of climate change on wind and solar electricity generation unde...

Our food system is experiencing dramatic changes as the expansion of e-commerce, introduction of new products, and innovations in supply chain structures all pose to transform how we buy, sell, and...

Single-family residential rooftop solar adoption in the United States has not occurred equitably across the country, nor across socioeconomic and demographic groups. In response, state and local go...

The steel sector emits 25% of global industrial greenhouse gases, and the U.S. is the world’s second-largest steel consumer. In this article, we determine how CO2 emissions attributable to U.S. ste...

Efforts to eliminate anti-Black racism in academia must go far beyond superficial ticking of boxes. The academic community must create conditions for authentic, not tokenistic, Black engagement, ar...

This study fills a gap in additive manufacturing life cycle assessments to improve decision-making in plastic product manufacturing. This assessment investigated cradle-to-gate life cycle energy co...

Due to developing countries' original intention of implementing circular development, secondary resource factories should have reduced environmental pollution. However, the reality of the situation...

The coupled relationships among water, energy, and emission, i.e., water-energy-emission nexus (WEEN), are found to be spatial-temporally characterized. This research is aimed at evaluating the spa...

Copper is an essential element for electric vehicle (EV). Currently, little efforts have been directed toward understanding the EV-copper-resource-environment nexus. Autoregressive integrated movin...

As globally important forested areas situated in a context of dramatic socio-economic changes, Siberia and the Russian Far East (RFE) are important regions to monitor for anthropogenic land-use tre...

Despite increasing evidence of intensification of extreme precipitation events associated with a warming climate, the magnitude of peak river flows is decreasing in many parts of the world. To bett...

Managing plastics has become a focal issue of the Anthropocene. Developments in plastic materials have made possible many of the technologies and conveniences that define our modern life. Yet, plas...