Research Publications

Gasoline and diesel automobiles dominate current personal transportation in the United States. The automotive industry has been developing PHEVs (plug in hybrid electric vehicles) in response to incre...

Personal transportation accounts for 17 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions in the United States and must be a major component of any climate change mitigation plan. While technological advancem...

 Temporal and regional variability in the technological characteristics of primary aluminum smelters affect life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions embodied not only in the production but...

This paper develops new methods to model and control the aggregated power demand from a population of thermostatically controlled loads, with the goal of delivering services such as regulation and loa...

Organic agriculture has sustained consistent growth in the U.S. over the past decade, but very little systemic environmental impact benchmarking has been performed.  This study is the first life ...

Vehicle capability is one of the factors that constrain the set of transportation options available for personal transportation. The capacity for carrying passengers and cargo is of particular interes...

Primary aluminum ingot is a globally traded commodity, and large regional differences in technology and electricity fuel mixes exist among the industry's smelters. A life cycle assessment model is dev...

A country-level stock and flow model for cement, an important construction material, was developed based on a material flow analysis framework. Using this model, the contemporary cement cycle of the U...

This study uses life-cycle assessment (LCA) methodology to quantify life-cycle energy use, greenhouse gas emissions, solid waste generation and water use for delivering drinking water to consumer h...

Pavement systems provide critical infrastructure services to society but also pose significant impacts related to high material consumption, energy inputs, and capital investment. A new pavement asset...

Many studies that examine the impact of renewable energy installations on avoided carbon-dioxide utilize national, regional or state averages to determine the predicted carbon-dioxide offset. The appr...

Models and frameworks to guide "sustainable mobility" of personal transportation lack definitive quantitative targets. This paper defines sustainable mobility targets for US light-duty vehicles (LDVs)...

"The Provision of adequate fresh-water resources for people and ecosystems will be one of the most critical and potentially contentious issues facing society and governments at all levels during the 2...

This study examines the benefits of optimal spatial diversification of wind capacity as an option to reduce wind curtailment and, therefore, to increase the utilization of wind capacity. Wind generati...

In April 2008 the University of Michigan and the University of Zambia signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that approved a cooperative agreement to foster the development of a collaborative rese...

The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) is pleased to support Accenture in releasing Sustainability and its Impact on the Corporate Agenda. Accenture is one of over 200 global c...

Increased renewable deployment is necessary to reduce environmental impacts, and improve the sustainability of the U.S. electricity sector. This dissertation explores implications of increased photovo...

The sustainability of the built environment is increasingly coming to the forefront of infrastructure design and maintenance decisions. To address this, development of a new class of more sustainab...

This paper examines the impact of battery sizing on the performance and efficiency of power management algorithms in plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs). Existing studies examine this impact f...