Research Publications

The promotion of circular economy activities presents a much-needed focus for engaging long-established industrial ecology principles. The goals of decoupling economic growth from natural resource ...

Cities account for over 70% of greenhouse gas emissions and consume over two-thirds of the world’s energy. With the continued rise of urbanization, 68% by 2050 as projected by the UN, cities must b...

The effects of global warming are becoming more apparent in major cities and are requiring adaptive and mitigative efforts. Many cities across the country are working towards becoming more efficien...

Lighting waste represents a significant source of rare earth elements (REE) and critical metals (CM), which are vital to low-carbon technologies. This research examines the environmental impacts of...

Achieving a U.S. circular economy would reduce environmental impacts and increase material independence. This article calculates maximum recycled contents (RCs) and recycling rates (RRs) in an inde...

Residential and commercial buildings represent 39% of global energy carbon emissions. In the U.S., buildings consume 40% of the total energy consumption and thus represent a substantial energy savi...

Background Healthcare systems in the United States have increasingly turned toward the use of disposable medical equipment in an attempt to save time, lower costs, and reduce the transmission of ...

Residential energy use accounts for roughly 20% of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the United States. Using data on 93 million individual households, we estimate these GHGs across the contiguous ...

Evaluating potentially hazardous effects of chemicals on ecosystems has always been an important research topic traditionally studied using laboratory or field experiments. Experiment-based ecotoxi...

Decarbonization may require the efficient electrification of applications, like natural gas furnaces for space heating, that currently involve burning fossil fuels. The environmental consequences o...

Context Urban sprawl typically consists of low-density urban development dominated by single-family housing and automobile-oriented land use patterns. Sprawl impacts landscape structure and compo...

Resource multiple-life-cycle (MLC) recycling process is a complex system with closed-loop and open-loop recycling interwoven with each other, which has recieved vast attention in recent years. Reso...

Weight, computing load, sensor load and possibly higher drag may increase the energy use of automated electric vehicles relative to human-driven electric vehicles, although this increase may be off...

Community-based nongovernmental organizations have emerged as leaders in local economic development, with a growing capacity for undertaking community sustainability projects in distressed neighbor...

Accurate accounting of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions considering interregional trade are important for developing regional-specific strategies for climate mitigation in countries like China where ...

As technological advancements progress, the automotive industry is getting closer to producing Level 4 connected and automated vehicles (CAVs). Market trends show personal vehicle sales moving towa...

Increasing renewable energy penetrations and low natural gas prices have increased the reliance of U.S. power systems on natural gas-fired generation. Increased reliance has sparked concerns over a...

Current lithium-ion battery (LiB) recycling infrastructure is limited for strategic metals such as lithium and cobalt, despite projections that millions of electric vehicles (EVs) will hit the road...

Purpose The environmental impact of a product may change according to who adopts it, where it is adopted, and how it is used. Market forces are an inherent part of consequential LCA and the pract...

There are a number of U.S. cities making and implementing ambitious commitments to transition to 100% renewable energy; however, many of them are unsure of how to meet their commitments. This resea...

Developing localized climate mitigation strategies needs an understanding of how global consumption drives local carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions with a fine spatial resolution. There is no study tha...

With cities producing 80% of global GDP and housing more than half of the world's population (United Nations Human Settlements Programme UN-Habitat 2016, p. 264), urban processes now drive global f...

In the aftermath of Hurricane Maria and other natural disasters, an environmental community organization, Casa Pueblo, in Adjuntas, Puerto Rico decided to increase their social and economic resilie...

This project focused on identifying carbon emission abatement strategies for Meijer, specifically addressing lighting, space cooling and heating, and refrigeration, which constitute Meijer’s larges...