Research Publications

Negative emissions systems differ from net-zero systems by deploying significantly more negative emission technologies. The emerging literature on negative emission power systems assumes str...

Purpose Supply chain governance constitutes the rules, structures and institutions that guide supply chains toward various objectives, including environmental sustainability. Previous studies hav...

Although causal links between tropical deforestation and palm oil are well established, linking this land use change to where the palm oil is actually consumed remains a distinct c...

As stationary hybrid energy-storage systems (HESS) for power systems applications have recently drawn interest due to their enhanced performance and decreasing cost, developing systematic approaches f...

Transportation network companies (TNCs), such as Uber and Lyft, have pledged to fully electrify their ridesourcing vehicle fleets by 2030 in the United States. In this paper, we introduce AgentX, a no...

Providing high-temperature industrial heat is a key decarbonization challenge. Nuclear small modular reactors (SMRs) could meet this decarbonization challenge, but no technoeconomic analyses...

Executive Summary  This project was conducted by six University of Michigan’s School of Environment and Sustainability graduate students (referred to as the research team) to support Meijer’s...

Advances in manufacturing technologies and materials are crucial to the commercial deployment of energy technologies. We present the case of concentrating solar power (CSP) with molten salt (MS) therm...

There is a lack of data on resources used and food produced at urban farms. This hampers attempts to quantify the environmental impacts of urban agriculture or craft policies for sustainable food prod...

The transition to electric vehicles (EVs) will impact the climate, the environment, and society in highly significant ways. This study compares EVs to vehicles with internal combustion engines for thr...

Single-use packaging generates millions of tonnes of plastic waste per year – a circular economy waste reduction strategy is to implement reusable container systems for restaurant takeout. We develope...

Plastic is a ubiquitous material that has caused major environmental impacts. Ecosystem damage from improperly disposed plastic waste is the most visible of these impacts; however, plastic also has le...

Life cycle assessment (LCA) is widely used to evaluate product environmental impacts, while detailed LCAs are missing that model the effect of design and manufacturing decisions on U.S. ductile iron c...

New approaches are needed to both reduce and reuse plastic waste. In this context, poly(vinyl chloride) (PVC) is an appealing target as it is the least recycled high-production-volume polymer due to i...

Unabated coal power in India must be phased out by mid-century to achieve global climate targets under the Paris Agreement. Here we estimate the costs of hybrid power plants—lithium-ion battery storag...

Rationale and objective: This study was conducted by The Center for Sustainable Systems at University of Michigan to provide environmental performance of replacing meat consumption with consumption of...

Over the last decade, the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology has significantly advanced to enable more realistic impact simulations and predictions with spatial and temporal considerati...

The Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED) intends to issue a Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) entitled “Regional Clean Hydrogen Hubs” (H2Hubs) in collaboration ...

Application of lake models coupled within earth-system prediction models, especially for predictions from days to weeks, requires accurate initialization of lake temperatures. Commonly used methods to...

Urban agriculture, experiencing a resurgence across the Global North, features prominently in food system sustainability and urban resilience discourse, planning, and policy. Research, however, indica...

The United States Postal Service (USPS) plans to purchase 165,000 next-generation delivery vehicles (NGDVs) between 2023 and 2032. The USPS submitted an environmental impact statement (EIS) for two NG...

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the growth of e-commerce and automated warehouses, vehicles, and robots and has created new options for grocery supply chains. We report and compare the greenhous...

The thermal modification (TM) process has been developed as an alternative to chemical treatment of wood, which increases longevity of lumber used in exterior non-ground-contact applications. In one a...

Lockdown and social-distancing policy drove U.S. workers to switch to telecommuting during the pandemic of Covid-19 in 2020. Telecommuting has been widely perceived as a sustainable way of working tha...