Research Publications

This work provides empirical evidence of social and environmental impacts of the production phase of charcoal in Liberia, West Africa. It helps address a gap in information for stakeholders and est...

The transportation sector is undergoing a major transformation. Emerging technologies play indispensable roles in driving this mobility shift, including vehicle electrification, connection, and aut...

Plastic film waste can cause a variety of environmental impacts and pose a significant challenge for the consumer product industry. Understanding the environmental tradeoffs of various end-of-life ...

Hazardous substances are used as additives in many products. It is a challenge to monitor hazardous substance flows through complex economic systems. This study seeks to derive these hazardous mate...

Sustainable diets are an environmental, economic and public health imperative, but identifying clear intervention points is challenging. The Entry points to Advance Transitions towards Sustainable ...

Connected and automated vehicles (CAVs) are poised to reshape transportation and mobility by replacing humans as the driver and service provider. While the primary stated motivation for vehicle aut...

This study models previously unknown domestic geographical transfers of toxic substances in waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) by using the minimum distance and maximum flow (MDMF) al...

Urine diversion offers the potential to enhance the environmental performance of waste management systems by reducing the resources required to remove nutrients at water resource recovery facilitie...

This paper presents the Solid Waste Management Index (SWaMI) for Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). The main objectives are to present how SWaMI was developed, to apply the Index in three differ...

Purpose Clinical decision making regarding the use of imaging is appropriately centered on diagnostic efficacy and individual patient factors. However, health policy and imaging guidelines may in...

Beyond Meat commissioned the Center for Sustainable Systems at University of Michigan to conduct a “cradle-to-distribution” life cycle assessment of the Beyond Burger, a plant-based patty designed ...

Battery storage systems are attractive alternatives to conventional generators for frequency regulation due to their fast response time, high cycle efficiency, flexible scale, and decreasing cost. ...

Deploying large-scale wireless charging infrastructure at bus stops to charge electric transit buses when loading and unloading passengers requires significant capital investment and brings environ...

Producing, transporting, and refining crude oil into fuels such as gasoline and diesel accounts for ∼15 to 40% of the “well-to-wheels” life-cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of transport fuels. ...

The United States transportation sector consumes 5 billion barrels of petroleum annually to move people and freight around the country by car, truck, train, ship and aircraft, emitting significant ...

Freight transportation by truck, train, and ship accounts for 5% of the United States’ annual energy consumption (U.S. Energy Information Administration, 2017a). Much of this freight is transported...

Emerging online car hailing services have caused many unintended consequences in urban centers such as more congested traffic and increased vehicle travels. Those unintended consequences have signi...

Quantifying greenhouse gas emissions due to electricity consumption is crucial for climate mitigation in the electric power sector. Current practices primarily use production-based emission factors...

A large body of research has explored opportunities to mitigate climate change in agricultural systems; however, less research has explored opportunities across the food system. Here we expand the ...

In the U.S. lighting represents about 9% of the average household's primary energy consumption and 20% of the average household's energy bill. Lighting in U.S. homes is in a state of transition wit...

In life cycle assessment (LCA), collecting unit process data from the empirical sources (i.e., meter readings, operation logs/journals) is often costly and time-consuming. We propose a new computat...

This project (1) explores the economic feasibility of a 600-kW renewable energy microgrid in the city of Beni, Democratic Republic of Congo, (2) creates a survey instrument to assess local farmers’...

Due to favorable public policy and falling technology costs more and more jurisdictions around the world are adopting higher shares of variable renewable energy into their power systems. Although s...

As one of the largest energy consumers in the Midwest, Meijer is seeking opportunities to decrease its fossil fuel based electricity consumption. The SEAS MS project team worked to identify and eva...