Research Publications

Use phase fuel consumption is responsible for the majority of an automobile's life cycle energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Lightweighting is an important strategy to reduce use...

Human food systems are a key contributor to climate change and other environmental concerns. While the environmental impacts of diets have been evaluated at the aggregate level, few studies, and no...

Although recent studies of connected and automated vehicles (CAVs) have begun to explore the potential energy and greenhouse gas (GHG) emission impacts from an operational perspective, little is kn...

Existing studies focus on either direct emissions of each province in China using production-based accounting (i.e. direct emitters) or emissions caused by the final consumption of each province us...

Door-to-door fast food delivery service has become increasingly popular in cities due to the fast development of e-commerce and the fast-paced life in China. This in turn has resulted in significan...

This paper assesses consumer valuation of different attributes of electricity supply to elucidate the conflict between solar microgrids and the centralized utility grid in India, as well as to prov...

Current trends of urbanization, population growth, and economic development have made cities a focal point for mitigating global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The substantial contribution of food...

Connected and autonomous vehicles are anticipated to transform food distribution systems. The food distribution industry is a likely early-adopter of this technology, with resulting changes affecti...

Cost of battery energy storage systems (ESS) has reduced significantly in recent years resulting in a marked increase in its use for power grid applications. Regulations by grid operators and state...

There is an increasing global interest in scaling up urban agriculture (UA) in its various forms, from private gardens to sophisticated commercial operations. Much of this interest is in the spirit...

Automated Fault Detection and Diagnosis (FDD) systems depend entirely on the reliability of sensor readings. This paper fills an important gap in the literature by pinpointing the distinction betwe...

Objectives and Scope of This Report Food system stakeholders need to better understand, integrate, and create action related to food systems and climate change, beyond just agricultural product...

Accounting for 10% of the electricity consumption in the US, artificial lighting represents one of the easiest ways to cut household energy bills and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by upgrading to ...

The bioenergy mandate under Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA 2007) will result in large scale land-use changes in the US if it is ever fully realized. Energy crops such as switchgrass (Pa...

Policy and market conditions remain the primary barriers to stacking energy storage services, reducing its cost-competitiveness with traditional technologies. This article explores two cases that s...

The human toxicity impact (HTI) of electricity produced from shale gas is lower than the HTI of electricity produced from coal, with 90% confidence using a Monte Carlo Analysis. Two different impac...

This is a set of eleven reports based on a review and summary of existing literature.  The set includes seven specific foods, two overaching issues, and two background documents. Tomat...

Ancillary services are required to balance supply and demand in electric power systems. Demand response may provide attractive options for these services, through means such as varying the power co...

Despite the shared focus on nature-society relations, until recently, industrial ecology and political ecology have not substantively engaged each other. This is curious given that both fields stud...

Despite our declared era of ‘Big Data,’ we lack information on the flows of energy, water, and materials that support modern societies. These data are essential to understand how ecologies and the ...

Increasing urbanization places cities at the forefront of achieving global sustainability. For cities to become more sustainable, however, the infrastructure on which they rely must also become mor...

Pewabic is a not-for-profit ceramic studio and pottery school in Detroit, Michigan.  The organization employs full- and part-time ceramic artists and technicians to produce a variety of vessel...

International trade separates the consumption of goods and services from their production as well as human health impacts associated with production-based environmental emissions. It is one of the ...

Estimating the embodied emissions in electricity has been a challenge due to the interconnectedness of electrical grids. Previous studies use a variety of methods that are often inaccurate or diffi...