Doctoral Dissertation Research: Making Sustainability Through Life Cycle Assessment of U.S. Renewable Energy Projects

项目概述该奖项支持博士论文研究，重点是决定可持续发展在可再生能源系统中意味着什么的政治，特别是太阳能和风能。它旨在了解有关太阳能和风能的环境和社会效益的假设如何纳入可持续发展的最佳做法和政策。PI将对美国的“可持续发展工程”进行广泛的概念分析，旨在了解其认识论和政治根源。他还将开发两个加州太阳能和风能项目开发的案例研究-S西羚羊谷，以了解可再生技术中生命周期评估(LCA)的政治。该项目将建立在环境科学与技术研究和工程研究的见解基础上。它将描绘职业身份形成和可持续发展概念化之间的联系，因为它们反映了一系列日益挑战美国工程学的规范世界观。它将探索LCA如何以及为什么在定义可持续发展方面变得更加主导的政治，它将探索社区、监管者、活动家-工程师和非政府组织对LCA提出不同观点的潜力。最后，它促使人们思考更广泛的问题：谁是绿色工程师？更广泛的影响这项研究的结果将通过在领先的STS、工程和能源政策期刊上的出版物以及通过在多学科和跨学科会议上的陈述来广泛传播。通过报告和出版物，这项研究产生的数据将及时提供给科学、技术和工程研究人员和政策研究人员。PI计划与联邦、州和地方机构合作，以对政策制定者有用的格式分析他的结果。基于这些结果，他将创建一个跨学科、由互联网运营的项目，旨在从工程角度提高对可持续发展的理解。

Project OverviewThis award supports doctoral dissertation research focuses on the politics of deciding what sustainability means in renewable energy systems, particularly solar and wind energy. It aims to understand how assumptions about the environmental and societal benefits of solar and wind energy are built into sustainability best practices and policies. The PI will provide a broad conceptual analysis of "sustainability engineering" in the US that aims to understand its epistemological and political roots. He will also develop two case studies of solar and wind project development in California?s West Antelope Valley, to understand the politics of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) in renewable technologies.Intellectual Merit The project will build on insights from Environmental Science and Technology Studies and on Engineering Studies. It will map the connections between professional identity-formation and conceptualization of sustainability as they reflect a spectrum of normative worldviews that increasingly challenge American engineering. It will explore the politics of how and why LCAs have become more dominant in defining sustainability, and it will explore the potential for different views of LCA to be advanced by communities, regulators, activists-engineers, and NGOs. Finally, it prompts reflection on the broader question: Who is a green engineer?Broader ImpactsThe results of this study will be disseminated broadly through publications in leading STS, engineering, and energy policy journals and through presentations in multi and interdisciplinary conferences. Through reports and publications, the data generated by this study will be made available in a timely manner to STS, engineering and policy researchers. The PI plans to partner with federal, state, and local agencies to analyze his results in formats useful to policy makers. Based on these results, he will create an interdisciplinary, internet-run project, aimed at improving the comprehension of sustainability from an engineering perspective.