Energy

Selected Recent Publications

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Abdulla, A., Azevedo, I.L., Morgan, M.G. (2013). "Expert assessments of the cost of light water small modular reactors." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 110(24): 9686-9691. We developed detailed technical descriptions of two SMR designs and then conduced elicitation interviews in which we obtained probabilistic judgments from 16 experts who are involved in, or have access to, engineering-economic assessments of SMR projects.

Azevedo, I. M. (2014). "Consumer end-use energy efficiency and rebound effects." Annual Review of Environment and Resources 39: 393-418. Rebound effects are likely to depend on the specific attributes of the policies that trigger the efficiency improvement, but such factors are often ignored. Implications for welfare changes resulting from rebound have also been largely ignored in the literature until recently.

Azevedo, I.L., Morgan, M.G., Morgan, F. (2009). "The Transition to Solid State Lighting." Proceedings of the IEEE. 97(3): 481-510. White light emitting diodes offer efficient use of electrical energy and lower lighting / costs as well as reduced atmospheric pollution.

Bradford, K.; Abrahams, L.; Hegglin, M.; Klima, K. A Heat Vulnerability Index and Adaptation Solutions for Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Environmental Science & Technology. 2015. PMID: 26333158. For Pittsburgh, a researcher could apply the same factor analysis procedure to compare heat vulnerability data sets for different locations and times.

Canfield, C., Bruine de Bruin, W., & Wong-Parodi, G. (2016). Perceptions of electricity-use communications: effects of information, format, and individual differences. Journal of Risk Research, 1–22. We built on the health communication and graph comprehension literature to inform electricity bill design, with the goal of improving understanding, preferences for the presented communication, and intentions to save electricity.

Canfield, C.; Klima, K., Dawson. J.T. Using Deliberative Democracy to Identify Energy Policy Priorities in the United States. Energy Research and Social Science. 2015, 8, pp. 184-189. We describe the effect of a deliberative democracy forum to identify energy policy priorities.

Glasgo, B., Azevedo, I.L., Hendrickson, C., (2016). How much electricity can we save by using direct current circuits in homes? Understanding the potential for electricity savings and assessing feasibility of a transition towards DC powered buildings, accepted in Applied Energy. We assess the technical and economic feasibility of DC circuits using data for 120 traditionally-wired AC homes in Austin, Texas to understand the effect of highly variable demand profiles on DC-powered residences.

Hallinan, K., Enns, H., Ritchey, S., Brodrick, P., Lammers, N., Hanus, N., & Rainsberger, T. (2012). Energy information augmented community-based energy reduction. Sustainability, 4(7), 1371-1396. This paper illustrates the impact of providing tailored energy information to building occupants and their peers to strengthen community energy reduction efforts.

Horner, N., Azevedo, I.L., (2016). Power usage effectiveness in data centers: overloaded and underachieving, the Electricity Journal, 29, 61-69. We suggest that the “power usage and effectiveness” metric is incomplete, failing to address hardware efficiency, energy productivity, and environmental performance. 

Horner, N., Shehabi, A., Azevedo, I.L. (2016). Known unknowns: indirect energy effects of information and communication technology, accepted in Environmental Research Letters. This review suggests several guidelines for improving research quality in the area of information and communication technology.

Israel, A. L., Wong-Parodi, G., Webler, T., & Stern, P. C. (2015). Eliciting public concerns about an emerging energy technology: The case of unconventional shale gas development in the United States. Energy Research & Social Science, 8, 139-150. An elicitation of public concerns reveals how engagement with interested and affected parties can elucidate key issues for risk governance in shale gas issues.

Krishnamurti, T., Davis, A., Wong-Parodi, G., Canfield, C., & Wang, J. (2013). Creating an in-home display: experimental evidence and guidelines for design, Applied Energy, 108, 448-458. We present an approach to in-home display design that uses research on customer preferences to determine which features to experimentally examine for customer comprehension.

Krishnamurti, T. Schwartz, D., Davis, A., Fischhoff, B., Bruine de Bruin, W., Lave, L., & Wang, J. (2012). Preparing for smart grid technologies: A behavioral decision research approach to understanding consumer expectations about smart meters. Energy Policy, 41, 790-797. On the heels of a U.S. presidential commitment to a new approach to energy production and transmission, we use methods from behavioral decision research to understand consumer beliefs about smart meters, including in-depth mental models interviews and a follow-up survey with a sample of potential smart meter customers of a major U.S. mid-Atlantic electricity utility.

Lamy, J., Jaramillo, P., Azevedo, I.L., Wiser, R., (2016). Should we build wind farms close to load or invest in transmission to access better wind resources in remote areas? A case study in the MISO region, Energy Policy, 96, 341–350. We present a conceptual model to estimate the economics of accessing high quality wind resources in remote areas to comply with renewable energy policy targets, and apply the model to the Midwestern grid (MISO) as a case study.

Long, L., Branstetter, L., Azevedo, I.L., (2016). China’s wind electricity and cost of carbon mitigation are more expensive than anticipated, accepted in Environmental Research Letters. Using data from the Clean Mechanism Development project database between 2004 and 2012, this study shows that while China made progress in bringing down the levelized cost of wind electricity and cost of carbon mitigation, costs are still higher than expected.

Siler-Evans, K., Azevedo, I.L., Morgan, M.G. (2012). "Marginal emissions factors for the US electricity system." Environmental science & technology 46(9): 4742-4748. This paper presents the first systematic calculation of MEFs for the U.S. electricity system.

Thomas, B. A. and I. L. Azevedo (2013). "Estimating direct and indirect rebound effects for US households with input-output analysis Part 1: Theoretical framework." Ecological Economics 86: 199-210. This is the first part of a two-part paper providing an analytical model of the indirect rebound effect, given a direct rebound estimate, that integrates consumer demand theory with the embodied energy of household spending from environmentally-extended input-output analysis.

Wong-Parodi, G., Krishnamurti, T., Davis, A., Schwartz, D., & Fischhoff, B. (2016). Integrating social science in climate and energy solutions: A decision science approach. Nature Climate Change, 6, 563569. We discuss how to apply behavior and decision research to climate issues.