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

博士论文研究：通过美国可再生能源项目的生命周期评估实现可持续性

• 批准号: 1354545
• 负责人: Alastair Iles
• 金额: $ 1万
• 依托单位: University of California-Berkeley
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2014
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2014-04-01 至 2015-03-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1354545&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Making; Sustainability

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.

该奖项支持的博士论文研究重点是决定可再生能源系统，特别是太阳能和风能的可持续性意味着什么。它旨在了解关于太阳能和风能的环境和社会效益的假设是如何建立在可持续发展的最佳实践和政策中。PI将对美国的“可持续性工程”进行广泛的概念分析，旨在了解其认识论和政治根源。他还将开发加州太阳能和风能项目开发的两个案例研究。以了解可再生能源技术中生命周期评估（LCA）的政治。该项目将以环境科学与技术研究和工程研究的见解为基础。它将描绘出专业身份形成和可持续性概念化之间的联系，因为它们反映了一系列日益挑战美国工程的规范世界观。它将探讨LCA如何以及为什么在定义可持续性方面变得更占主导地位的政治问题，并将探讨社区、监管机构、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，它促使人们反思一个更广泛的问题：谁是绿色工程师？更广泛的影响这项研究的结果将通过主要的STS、工程和能源政策期刊上的出版物，以及在多学科和跨学科会议上的演讲，广泛传播。通过报告和出版物，这项研究所产生的数据将及时提供给STS、工程和政策研究人员。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研究结果。基于这些结果，他将创建一个跨学科的、互联网运营的项目，旨在从工程的角度提高对可持续性的理解。