Dustin R MulvaneySan Jose State University | SJSU · Department of Environmental Studies
Dustin R Mulvaney
PhD
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67
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Introduction
Publications
Publications (67)
Utility-scale solar energy (USSE) development is an emerging cause of land use change across the American Southwest. Many proposed projects in the region have encountered resistance from environmental groups because of concern about endangered, threatened, and special status species. Projects have also faced resistance from impacted local communiti...
This paper explores the political economy of the ‘just transition’ to a low carbon economy. The idea of a ‘just transition’ increasingly features in policy and political discourse and appeals to the need to ensure that efforts to steer society towards a lower carbon future are underpinned by attention to issues of equity and justice: to those curre...
This paper explores a tension between environmental justice and green jobs. Photovoltaic (PV) manufacturing processes involve hazardous chemicals similar to those found in the electronics industry, where impacts such as groundwater contamination, worker exposures to chemicals, and other air and water emissions overlap with environmental inequality....
A new report, The Potential Greenhouse Gas Emissions of U.S. Federal Fossil Fuels, written by
EcoShift Consulting on behalf of the Center for Biological Diversity and Friends of the Earth, estimates
the volume and potential life-cycle greenhouse (GHG) emissions of non-federal and publicly owned
federal fossil fuels. Federal fossil fuels are broken...
The past decade has seen a renewed focus on innovations in solar energy research, development, and deployment. Solar energy offers the promise of transitioning away from carboniferous stocks of energy toward renewable energy resources. Publics around the world are increasingly demanding that governments— particularly across Europe, North America, a...
Governments, utilities, and energy companies are increasingly looking towards energy storage technologies to extend the availability of variable renewable power sources such as solar and wind. In this Perspective, we examine these fast-shifting developments by mapping and analyzing landscapes of renewable energy storage emerging across the Western...
The magnitude of renewable energy deployment needed to meet the challenges of climate change means localities are pursuing large-scale projects – often in more remote and rural areas, and in oceans and waterways. Although these facilities produce much ‘greener’ energy sources than fossil fuel power plants, their siting often poses conflicts with wi...
Renewable energy is human civilization’s most rapidly growing form of energy. New energy sources, fuels, and generation devices have supply chains that differ from conventional energy sources, raising new questions about environmental impact and justice considerations when scaling up renewable energy deployment. The differential ways that these pro...
Over 90% of the global economy continues to use natural resources unsustainably. The linear “take-make-toss” approach to materials use still prevails over circular economy and industrial ecology ideas in practice. The shift to renewable energy is one step towards building an economy on more circular material flows. But the materials needed to decar...
Shifting from stocks of finite resources to flows of renewables can minimize many of the major impacts from energy systems. This chapter reviews the key concepts to evaluate electricity systems on energy production, economics, and minimize their impacts. Students will learn the geographies of renewable energy resources, supply chains, and generatio...
The goal of this chapter on energy and the environment is to review the basic impacts of human civilization’s quest for natural resources and energy and how these developments impact socio-ecological systems. Each of the major fossil fuel sources—natural gas, petroleum, coal, tar sands, and oil shale—is described in terms of major impacts, current...
This chapter describes energy resources that are low carbon and renewable. The fossil fuels mentioned in chapter 4 could be made low carbon in some cases, but these here mostly avoid carbon altogether. In 2020, these technologies comprise 20–30% of global energy demand depending on how it’s measured. Globally, power demand is on the order of 20 ter...
A tremendous amount of energy is used for getting us and our stuff around. Humans have always been a mobile species, always on the go. But the advent of cheap energy coupled with our new transportation technologies let humans move farther, faster, and more often. As we described earlier, cheap modes of transportation have resulted in deleterious en...
The way energy is extracted, transported, used, and disposed of, is changing right before our eyes, again. Many say we are witnessing a major energy transition to renewable energy, or maybe several energy transitions at the same time. It is not the first time. Energy transitions recur throughout human civilization. For much of human history, energy...
This chapter reviews keywords, concepts, and calculations used in the energy sciences. The first entry point into conversations in the energy sector is an understanding of the underlying physics, chemistry, and other key concepts, definition, principles, and metrics used in energy science. The chapter reviews how energy flows from the sun through n...
This chapter introduces key concepts in sustainability science and engineering. The tools in this chapter include life-cycle assessment, industrial ecology/metabolism, risk and alternatives assessment, vulnerability analysis, and land-use science. Building on what readers have read in previous chapters about the fundamentals of energy science and t...
Here, we investigate the underlying key concepts in energy efficiency, energy conservation, and green design that could help shape energy systems in the use of energy in the production of commodities, residential and commercial buildings, and other critical infrastructure and industries. These sectors use a lot of energy for heating and cooling, so...
This conclusion offers an opportunity to synthesize the key features of sustainable energy transitions. Case studies of various elements of the energy transition can inform how we think about and plan for society’s future energy infrastructures and resource base. Of critical importance is understanding the technical and biophysical dimensions of en...
This chapter introduces the social and behavioral sciences into our understanding of energy systems. Geographer Mike Pasqualetti argues that energy challenges are social problems with the technical component and not the other way around. This is one of the motivations of this textbook: to broaden the horizons of our understandings of energy transit...
Public health measures implemented during the coronavirus pandemic have had significant global impacts on energy systems. Some changes may be ephemeral: as industries go back to work and supply chains relink once production resumes, energy use and emissions have and will continue to rebound. Some may be more durable, such as reductions in commuter...
Policy coordination is needed for global supply chains
The strategic engineering of solar energy technologies—from individual rooftop modules to large solar energy power plants—can confer significant synergistic outcomes across industrial and ecological boundaries. Here, we propose techno–ecological
synergy (TES), a framework for engineering mutually beneficial relationships between technological and e...
1. Solar energy could become the largest energy source by 2050. There is a new model for engineering solar energy systems that maximizes both technological and ecological benefits. 2. Scientists call this type of installation a "techno-ecological synergy," and there are over 15 different types of these installations that can be developed, including...
Although deployments of grid-scale stationary lithium ion battery energy storage systems are accelerating, the environmental impacts of this new infrastructure class are not well studied. To date, a small literature of environmental life cycle assessments (LCAs) and related studies has examined associated environmental impacts, but they rely on a v...
In this important new primer, Dustin Mulvaney makes a passionate case for the significance of solar power energy and offers a vision for a more sustainable and just solar industry for the future. The solar energy industry has grown immensely over the past several years and now provides up to a fifth of California’s power. But despite its deservedly...
Global production networks (GPNs) refer to activities and organizational structures that transform labor, nature, and capital across disparate geographies into commodities and services. The framework is often used to understand economic development and the socio-ecological transformation of natural resources. This chapter describes elemental concep...
In this analysis we projected the “production horizons”- the number of years’ worth of remaining production - from currently leased federal fossil fuels based on the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) 2016 “reference case” for fossil fuel production.1 We then compared these production horizons to the dates by which the global carbon bud...
Solar panels glimmering in the sun are an icon of all that is green. But while generating electricity through photovoltaics is indeed better for the environment than burning fossil fuels, several incidents have linked the manufacture of these shining symbols of environmental virtue to a trail of chemical pollution. And it turns out that the time it...
Background/Question/Methods
This presentation will describe efforts to integrate research on the controversies over solar and wind energy deployment into educational activities that foster learning about the social and ecological impacts of renewable energy transitions, and possibilities to make socioecological systems more resilient. Too many ed...
he purpose of this testimony is to respond to Rocky Mountain Power’s (RMP or the Company) proposals to (1) impose a net metering facilities charge for residential customers participating in net metering,1 and (2) increase the current fixed customer charge from $5.00 to $8.00 per month. My testimony reports on my team’s findings that demonstrate how...
California has been an important site of governance on risks from genetically engineered (GE) organisms. This paper reviews California's efforts to govern the ecological and food safety risks from GE salmon and GE pharmaceutical rice. We explain how a political constellation of actors emerged to pursue precautionary policies, and we discuss the pro...
The technical complexities of the renewable energy challenge will require more technical expertise. Such technical challenges cross disciplinary and institutional boundaries and often involve matters beyond the realm of technics. In this essay the authors argue that broad training in the social and environmental dimensions of new technologies in th...
The California Rice Certification Act mandates specific planting and handling protocols for rice varieties, including transgenic rice, that may pose economic risks to California rice growers. Based on a literature review and extensive inter-views, we describe this policy's evolution as a system for identity preservation and explain how it shapes th...
The California Rice Certification Act mandates specific planting and handling protocols for rice varieties, including transgenic rice, that may pose economic risks to California rice growers. Based on a literature review and extensive interviews, we describe this policy’s evolution as a system for identity preservation and explain how it shapes the...
Support for these activities was provided by two grants from the NSF Grants: NSF CCLI No. 0817589: Renewable Energy and Engaged Interdisciplinary Learning for Sustainability (REELS) PI‐Shakouri; NSF CCLI 0837151: SEED‐LP. PI Lipshutz. Bacon thanks the S.V. Ciriacy‐Wantrup Postdoctoral Fellowship for support. Tim Galarneau, James Proctor, and Max Bo...
This paper explores the opportunities for a ‘just transition’ to low carbon and sustainable energy systems; one that addresses the current inequities in the distribution of energy benefits and their human and ecological costs. In order to prioritize policies that address energy poverty alleviation and sustainability concerns, national action and hi...
This paper describes a role for rural sociology in linking agrifood system vulnerabilities to opportunities for encouraging
sustainability and social justice. I argue that the California rice industry is particularly vulnerable for two reasons. First,
a quarter of rice growers’ revenues derive from production-based subsidies that have been recently...
Pesticide applications to agricultural lands in California, USA, are reported to a central data base, while data on water and sediment quality are collected by a number of monitoring programs. Data from both sources are geo-referenced, allowing spatial analysis of relationships between pesticide application rates and the chemical and biological con...