Engineering
and Public Policy
Energy and Environmental Systems
[Research
Overview] [Department
Overview] [List
of References]
The department
has assembled one of the strongest groups in the world
engaged in policy studies of energy and environmental
systems. While some of the work involves single investigators
or small groups, much of it is conducted as part of
the activities of various research Centers affiliated
with the Department. These include:
•
The
Center for Climate Decision Making, directed by
Granger Morgan. This NSF Center is focused on Characterizing
irreducible uncertainties about the future climate
and energy systems and developing strategies for decision
making in the face of those uncertainties. Specific
decision contexts include high artic village planning;
forrest and fisheries; resource management in the
Pacific North West; decision making in the insurance
and re-insurance industries; and electricity utility
capital expansion planning. In addition to Carnegie
Mellon, other participating organizations include:
Stanford; U.C. Berkeley; The Wharton School; PNWL
and the University of Maryland; University of British
Columbia; University of Calgary; and the Potsdam Institute
of Climate Research.
•
The Green Design Initiative, directed by Prof. Lester
Lave. Chris Hendrickson serves as co-Director and
Mike Griffin is Executive Director. This campus-wide
effort addresses a wide variety of issues related
to life-cycle analysis, green design and environmentally
sustainable economic activity. One recent set of studies
has involved a systematic evaluation of alternative
motor vehicle fuels and propulsion systems. The Center
has developed a new analysis tool that couples a 500x500
sector input-output table of the U.S. economy to sectorial
energy use and toxic release data. This tool can be
accessed on the web via the Department’s web
site. It avoids many of the "boundary problems"
that arise in conventional life-cycle analysis.
•
The Carnegie Mellon Electricity Industry Center (CEIC)
co-directed by Lester Lave and Granger Morgan. Jay
Apt serves as Executive Director. Core funding for
this Center comes jointly from the Alfred P. Sloan
Foundation and from EPRI. CEIC's primary mission is
to work with industry, government and other stakeholders
to address the strategic problems of the electricity
industry. In the process of doing so CEIC is producing
a cadre of well-trained researchers, most of who will
continue to address the industry's problems during
their subsequent professional careers. Areas of research
include: Markets and Investment; Distributed Energy
Resources; Advanced Generation, Transmission, and
Environmental Issues; Reliability and Security; and,
Demand Estimation.
•
The Center for the Study and Improvement of Regulation
(CSIR), directed by Paul Fischbeck. David Gerard serves
as Executive Director. This Center is devoted to finding
ways to improve the operation of systems for health,
safety and environmental regulation. Traditional command-and-control
approaches to health, safety and environmental risks
have helped create a healthier, safer and cleaner
world. However, many of the risks we face in the future
are more complex and subtle. Traditional approaches
to regulation will not work as well as they have in
the past. This Center is working to find and promote
ways to improve regulations by making them more adaptive,
democratic, efficient, equitable and scientifically
sound.
•
The Center for the Integrated Study of the Human Dimensions
of Global Change, directed by Prof. Baruch Fischhoff.
This competitively awarded NSF Center's principal objective
is to develop and demonstrate new approaches to the
integrated study of issues of global change. It focuses
heavily on the roles of human agency and human values
in shaping global change and on the analysis of large,
non-marginal changes. In addition to problems involving
climate change, it addresses many other topics such
as local and regional pollution, environment and health,
land use and desertification, and the transition to
new "clean" energy systems. One major research
product has been the large integrated assessment model,
ICAM-3, which can be examined via the Center's web site.
Under an
unofficial Center for Energy and Environmental Studies,
Ed Rubin and a group of Research Staff and Ph.D. students
have built and extensive set of engineering-economic
models of conventional and advanced coal-to-electric
conversion systems. Currently much of their work is
focused on modeling advanced systems for carbon capture
and deep geological disposal of carbon dioxide. In
addition, Rubin and David Hounshell have recently
supervised a series of Ph.D. s and PostDocs exploring
the relationship between environmental regulation
and innovation in air pollution control technology
for stationary and mobile sources.
Carnegie
Mellon and EPP house one of the nation's leading programs
in air pollution science and policy. As the result
of a large EPA super-site observational program, faculty
and graduate students in air quality have made major
gains in understanding the processes that control
particulate air pollution.
Recent
work of the air quality group involves extensive research
on local and regionally distributed air pollution.
For example, Spyros Pandis conducts modeling, laboratory,
and field studies on transformations of atmospheric
gases and particles as they are carried from sources
to receptor sites. His textbook with John Seinfeld
Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics: From Air Pollution
to Climate Change is widely used across the country
and abroad. Recent work that he, Paul Fischbeck, and
their graduate students have done on air pollution
from ocean shipping has demonstrated that this source
of pollution is much more important than previously
thought; the work is having important impacts on international
marine policy. Peter Adams studies the effects of
airborne particles on climate change by incorporating
size-resolved aerosol microphysics and thermodynamics
into global atmospheric models. Working with Spyros
Pandis, he has developed advanced atmospheric chemistry
models that predict concentrations of ozone and particulate
matter on local and regional scales. These models
are computationally efficient and allow predictions
over periods of years for various scenarios of source
emissions. Cliff Davidson conducts field and wind
tunnel studies on the interactions of particles with
natural surfaces such as vegetation, and with human-made
surfaces such as the exterior walls of historic buildings.
He also works with the Green Design Institute in studying
flows of metals through the environment. Together
with Peter Adams, he and coworkers have developed
a national emission inventory for ammonia that is
currently in use by EPA and several state agencies.
Allen Robinson is an expert in combustion. He has
conducted a variety of experimental studies with biomass
fuels, addressing issues such as the build-up of ash
and slag and co-firing of biomass with coal. Along
with the other air quality faculty members, including
those outside of EPP, he is leading an effort to measure
emissions from mobile and stationary sources employing
fossil fuels with the use of a state-of-the-art dilution
sampler designed in his laboratory.
Environmental
economics has been a frequent focus in the department's
research programs. For example, Lester Lave has worked
on market-based approaches to environmental control.
This research played an important role in developing
the ideas for market-based approaches to emissions
control and alternative motor vehicle fuels (methanol),
which appeared in the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments.
Scott Farrow, Benoît Morel, Alex Farrell and
others are working on a variety of issues related
to emissions trading and the application of the theory
of "options" to problems in environmental
control.
As part
of the Green Design Initiative, Francis McMichael,
Lester Lave and others have done extensive work on
product recycling. They have performed life-cycle
analyses of a number of existing and proposed products.
For example, they have demonstrated that the use of
lead-acid batteries in electric automobiles would
result in massive releases of lead into soil and ground
water as a result of mining, smelting and leaks in
the process of recycling the half ton of lead that
each car would carry.
V. S. Arunachalum,
Rahul Tongia and others are addressing a variety of
energy and environmental problems in India. Recent
energy-related studies have included an examination
of the Indian electric power system, engineering-economic
assessments of the Indian civilian nuclear power program
and of a gas pipeline across Pakistan from the Middle
East, and a large demonstration project of distributed
biomass fueled micro-turbines. Environmental work
includes an assessment of storm impact in the Bay
of Bengal and studies of local and regional air pollution.
There is also analysis being performed of the Indian
science-policy infrastructure for coping with energy-related
local and global environmental problems.
Keith Florig
and several colleagues are addressing problems in
environment, energy and risk in China, including assessments
of air pollution health effects, technical innovation
and new energy technologies, and the safe management
of civilian nuclear power.
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