Eric Williams

• PhD
• Professor at Rochester Institute of Technology

The potential for future cost reductions in wind power affects adoption and support policies. Prior analyses of cost reductions give inconsistent results. The learning rate, or fractional cost reduction per doubling of production, ranges from −3% to +33% depending on the study. This lack of consensus has, we believe, contributed to high variability...

Capacity expansion models for electricity grids typically use deterministic optimization, addressing uncertainty through ex-post analysis by varying input parameters. This paper presents a stochastic capacity expansion model that integrates uncertainty directly into optimization, enabling the selection of a single strategy robust across a defined r...

As office workers shift to telework, office building space requirements should decrease, but this relationship has not been empirically studied. We construct a dataset describing historical office building space, number of office workers, and number of teleworkers from 2003-2019 in the US, and use linear regression to estimate the effect of telewor...

Understanding the adoption patterns of clean energy is crucial for designing government subsidies that promote the use of these technologies. Existing work has examined a variety of adoption models to explain and predict how economic factors and other technology and demographic attributes influence adoption, helping to understand the cost-effective...

The economic and policy justifications for clean energy subsidies are complex and difficult to internalize. A subsidy induces additional consumers to buy, reducing carbon emissions through reduced fossil fuel consumption. Over the long term, subsidies encourage industry investment and cost reductions. Ideally, subsidies can be removed when the tech...

Techno-economic analysis (TEA) evaluates technical performance and economic feasibility of technologies being developed. As a forecast, TEAs are inherently uncertain, and analysts use tools such as Monte Carlo Analysis to characterize this. Future prices of inputs and products are important stochastic parameters to analyze. Historical data provide...

Multiple forms of marginal and average emission factors have been developed to estimate the carbon emissions of adding technologies, such as electric vehicles or solar panels, to the electricity grid. Different methods can produce very different results and conclusions, indicating that choosing between methods is not trivial. Researchers would ther...

In this paper we develop an integrated model to identify optimal subsidy schedules for clean energy technologies that maximize social benefits less subsidy costs. The model uses historical cost, adoption, and emissions data and accounts for both environmental and technological progress benefits of the subsidy. An alternative analytical model is als...

Electric Technology Vehicles (ETVs: hybrid, electric, and plug-in hybrid) may reach price parity with incumbent internal combustion vehicles (ICEVs) in the near future. Climate policy for transportation will depend on the degree to which consumers prefer ETVs, and price parity is a key factor. In this study, we explore the interaction between futur...

The low capital cost, low lead times, and flexible operation of natural gas combustion turbines are qualitatively different from other power generation technologies and have the potential for faster investment payback. We explore this hypothesis with a retrospective analysis of natural gas combustion turbine economics in six locations, with revenue...

How do we design clean energy subsidies to deliver greater benefits to society? Analytical answers to this question are scarce. Modeling should address both direct benefits from stimulating consumer adoption the year the subsidy is paid as well as indirect benefits from lowering future technology costs. We develop a benefit-cost analysis of residen...

What are the challenges and opportunities involved in the development of circular-economy incubators in a developing economy? A grounded theory approach is used to explore these challenges and opportunities in Trinidad and Tobago. Local stakeholders, including entrepreneurs, non-profits, academics and government agencies, are interviewed and the re...

Current concerns about lack of diversity in supply of critical metals have spurred research into utilizing domestic sources, particularly from waste streams. Sustainability strategies like urban mining, industrial symbiosis, and the circular economy suggest avenues to realize new supplies of critical metals. In this work we explore the resource and...

Analyses of monetary and emissions savings from residential efficiency upgrades usually neglect behavioral differences between consumers. Variations in behavior are often large: 13% of the U.S. population sets thermostats for cooling at 20 °C (68 °F) or lower and 15% at 25.5 °C (78 °F) or higher. Efficiency analyses should account for behavioral he...

Future cost reductions in renewable generation and storage technologies hold promise for dramatic changes in the design, cost and carbon emissions from microgrids. Microgrid design depends nonlinearly on technology costs and this article analyzes this non-linear relationship by developing an analogy between phase transitions in physical systems and...

The circular economy (CE), which reimagines waste as economic opportunity, has been largely overlooked by traditional entrepreneurs. One explanation for this oversight is that limited information flow and cognitive bias limit their ability to recognize and develop CE opportunities. We propose a framework for a CE-focused incubator that removes thes...

Autonomous vehicles (AV) are poised to induce disruptive changes, with significant implications for the economy, the environment, and society. This article reviews prior research on AVs and society, and articulates future needs. Research to assess future societal change induced by AVs has grown dramatically in recent years. The critical challenge i...

We develop a new parsimonious model of residential solar diffusion that, with only two regression parameters and one independent variable, reasonably explains empirical observations. Additional solar customers resulting from an increase in Net Present Value (NPV) are modeled as a normal distribution. This leads to adoption as a function of NPV bein...

To broadly contribute to sustainable mobility, electric technology vehicles (hybrid, electric and plug-in-hybrid) must become more price competitive with internal combustion vehicles. This study assesses the economic and carbon benefits of electric technology vehicles in the U.S., accounting for household-by-household behavioral variability and geo...

Can material flow analysis (MFA) support strategic decisions necessary for the development of circular economy (CE) in a developing country? MFA can be an essential tool in providing necessary data inputs for decisions related to the development of CE. Data-poor environments in developing economies, however, e.g. lack of data on physical flows in m...

Environmental outcomes from energy storage depend on its usage patterns, the existing generation fleet, and fossil fuel prices. This work models the deployment of large, non-marginal quantities of energy storage and wind and solar power to determine their combined effects on grid system emissions. Two different grid environments are analyzed: a coa...

The economic and environmental benefits of efficiency are typically assessed assuming that all consumers use appliances in the same way. There are, however, significant differences in consumer usage patterns, as well as geographical variability in prices and environmental impacts of electricity. To explore the importance of het- erogeneity, we firs...

Can material flow analysis (MFA) support strategic decisions necessary for the development of circular economy (CE) in a developing country? MFA can be an essential tool in providing necessary data inputs for decisions related to the development of CE. Data-poor environments in developing economies, however, e.g. lack of data on physical flows in m...

Lifestyles are changing due to information technology and other socio-techno- logical trends. We study the energy effects induced by lifestyle shifts via trade- offs in time spent in performing activities. We use the American Time Use Survey to find changes in times performing different activities from 2003 to 2012. The results show that Americans...

Given increasing demand and importance of rare earth elements (REE), exploration is underway to find alternatives to ore-extracted product. With REE concentrations varying between 270 and 1480 ppm, coal ash has been deemed as one such potential source. A number of research groups are exploring tech- nologies to separate REEs from coal ash and super...

We use the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) to characterize how different consumers in the US might use Autonomous Vehicles (AVs). Our approach is to identify sub-groups of the population likely to benefit from AVs and compare their activity patterns with an otherwise similar group. The first subgroup is working individuals who drive to work with lo...

The low price of lead-acid, the most popular battery, is often used in setting cost targets for emerging energy storage technologies. Future cost reductions in lead acid batteries could increase investment and time scales needed for emerging storage technologies to reach cost-parity. In this paper the first documented model of cost reductions for l...

This study develops and demonstrates a bounding methodology to quantify uncertainty in life cycle inventory (LCI) results arising from lack of detailed information on constituent materials. The method starts with the observation that the LCI of a material can change significantly with different attributes such as country of origin and recycled cont...

Urban form, land use patterns, and the type of structures significantly influence a city's energy needs, and consequently, its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This study aims to clarify connections between urban form and its use together with the associated energy demands for infrastructure (buildings and paved surfaces) and transport. The model is...

We undertake Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of the cumulative energy demand (CED) and global warming potential (GWP) for a portfolio of 10 multi-family residences in the U.S. We argue that prior LCA studies of buildings use an inconsistent boundary for processes to be included in the supply chain: The operational phase includes all energy use in a bui...

The two main paths to power vehicles with sunlight are to use photosynthesis to grow biomass, converting to a liquid fuel for an internal combustion engine or to generate photovoltaic electricity that powers the battery of an electric vehicle. While the environmental attributes of these two paths have been much analyzed, prior studies consider the...

A new approach for quantifying the net environmental impact of a 'community' of interrelated products is demonstrated for consumer electronics owned by an average U.S. household over a 15-year period (1992-2007). This consumption-weighted life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology accounts for both product consumption (number of products per household...

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) for coal power plants reduces onsite carbon dioxide emissions, but affects other air emissions on and offsite. This research assesses the net societal benefits and costs of Monoethanolamine (MEA) CCS, valuing changes in emissions of CO2, SO2, NOX, NH3 and particulate matter (PM), including those in the supply chain....

Urban water systems face sustainability and resiliency challenges including water leaks, over-use, quality issues, and response to drought and natural disasters. Information and communications technology (ICT) could help address these challenges through the development of smart water grids that network and automate monitoring and control devices. W...

Informal recycling of electronics in the developing world has emerged as a new global environmental concern. The primary approach to address this problem has been command-and-control policies that ban informal recycling and international trade in electronic scrap. These bans are difficult to enforce and also have negative effects by reducing reuse...

Until recently, the main environmental concerns associated with information and communication technologies (ICTs) have been their use-phase electricity consumption and the chemicals associated with their manufacture, and the environmental effects of these technologies on other parts of the economy have largely been ignored. With the advent of mobil...

Subsidy programs for new energy technologies are motivated by the experience curve: increased adoption of a technology leads to learning and economies of scale that lowers costs. Geographic differences in fuel prices and climate lead to large variability in the economic performance of energy technologies. The notion of cascading diffusion is that r...

The management of electronic waste (e-waste) presents new sustainability challenges, prominent among these is informal electronic recycling in the developing world fed by both international and domestic sources. There is a need to mitigate environmental impacts of informal recycling while maintaining social and economic benefits of refurbishment an...

The landscape of electronic waste, e-waste, management is changing dramatically. Besides a rapidly increasing world population, globalization is driving the demand for products, resulting in rising prices for many materials. Absolute scarcity looms for some special resources such as indium. Used electronic products and recyclable materials are incr...

The scenario approach is a key tool in futures analysis. The likelihood of scenarios is evaluated by subjective judgment of analysts. In order to assert futures with higher certainty this article explores the notion of bounding scenarios. Making an analogy to the notion of mathematical bounds, bounding scenarios aim to exclude what will not occur r...

Consumer perception could play an important role in the adoption of renewable energy technologies. This study aims to explore the role of consumer acceptance and model its effect on residential photovoltaic (PV) adoption. A survey was conducted to understand consumer perceptions of the technology (perception variables), such as perceived cost, perc...

While some of this volume has addressed the future, it is worth concluding with a long-term, high-level perspective. This chapter attempts such, first identifying key drivers, trends, and challenges for the future of electronic scrap. This leads to a development of qualitative scenarios of the future. The chapter concludes with recommended strategi...

Prior LCA studies take the operational phase to include all energy use within a residence, implying a functional unit of all household activities, but then exclude related supply chains such as production of food, appliances, and household chemicals. We argue that bounding the functional unit to provision of a climate controlled space better focuse...

The digital revolution affects the environment on several levels. Most directly, information and communications technology (ICT) has environmental impacts through the manufacturing, operation and disposal of devices and network equipment, but it also provides ways to mitigate energy use, for example through smart buildings and teleworking. At a bro...

Institutions both public and private face a challenge to develop policies to manage purchase, use, and disposal of electronics. Environmental considerations play an increasing role in addition to traditional factors of cost, performance and security. Characterizing current disposition practices for end-of-life electronics is a key step in developin...

There is growing need for effective and efficient environmental assessment tools for information technology (IT) products. This paper presents a streamlined life cycle analysis (LCA) methodology using a screening and triage approach. The methodology is applied to the case study of liquid crystal displays (LCDs). Global warming potential uncertainty...

Introduction The notion that technological progress leads to reduced demand of materials and energy to manufacture products and deliver services is known as dematerialization [1]. The conventional conception of dematerialization views products and services as static, and from this perspective technological progress can but mitigate the impact per p...

Summary Technological progress and adoption are fundamentally interconnected with environmental challenges faced by society. At the product level, researchers often explore the interplay between technological change and the environment by tracking trends in impacts per unit functionality—for example, gasoline consumed per distance traveled by a veh...

This paper advances the life cycle assessment (LCA) of photovoltaic systems by expanding the boundary of the included processes using hybrid LCA and accounting for the technology-driven dynamics of embodied energy and carbon emissions. Hybrid LCA is an extended method that combines bottom-up process-sum and top-down economic input-output (EIO) meth...

Summary Smart irrigation controllers (SICs) can save water by adapting watering schedules to climate and soil conditions. The potential benefit of SICs is particularly high in southwestern U.S. states, where the arid climate makes water scarcer and increases watering needs of landscapes. A number of studies have tested the ability of SICs to save w...

In society’s quest to mitigate climate change it is important to consider potential trade-offs in climate solutions impacting other environmental issues. This analysis explores the life cycle water consumption of alternative low-carbon energy sources for transportation. Energy sources analyzed include both biofuels used in internal combustion engin...

As the largest exporter of electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) and importer of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE, also called e-waste) around the world, China plays a key role in the global life cycle of electronics. This paper reviews the existing framework for e-waste management in China including regulatory policies and pilot...

Owing to booming mobile phone ownership and a short product innovation cycle, waste mobile phones are flooding China. In 2008, about 560 million mobile phones were produced and 634 million users subscribed to a mobile phone plan in China. These large numbers mean that the charging and disposal of mobile phones has the potential to have significant...

Ownership of private swimming pools in the U.S. grew 2 to 4% per annum from 1997 to 2007. The environmental implications of pool ownership are analyzed by hybrid life cycle assessment (LCA) for nine U.S. cities. An operational model is constructed estimating consumption of chemicals, water, and energy for a typical residential pool. The model incor...

The purpose of this study is to understand the importance of personal computers (PCs), new and used, as well as post-consumer management options in the residential sector in developing countries using Peru's capital, Lima, as a case study. Part of this study aims to understand how the growth of secondary markets for PCs satisfies demand of computer...

This scoping study takes a broad look at how information technology-enabled monitoring and control systems could assist in mitigating energy use in residences by more efficiently allocating the delivery of services by time and location. A great deal of energy is wasted in delivering services inefficiently to residents such as heating or cooling uno...

Several pressures have led to unprecedented corporate interest in "carbon footprinting" or life cycle assessment (LCA) of products. These pressures include historically high energy prices, climate change regulation, corporate sustainability efforts, and announcements from several major retailers that environmental data will be required from supplie...

Electronic waste (e-waste) has emerged as a new policy priority around the world. Motivations to address e-waste include rapidly growing waste streams, concern over the environmental fate of heavy metals and other substances in e-waste, and impacts of informal recycling in developing countries. Policy responses to global e-waste focus on banning in...

The article illustrates the historical patterns of energy use and social and economic development as a context for informing contemporary trends. It will begin with a timeline of human population estimates and the associated energy sources and quantities harnessed. It will then explore the social and economic impacts of two technology waves that we...

Life cycle assessment (LCA) is increasingly being used to inform decisions related to environmental technologies and polices, such as carbon footprinting and labeling, national emission inventories, and appliance standards. However, LCA studies of the same product or service often yield very different results, affecting the perception of LCA as a r...

Previous studies on environmental impacts embodied in trade have paid little attention to the impacts of labor input, or environmental overhead of labor input (EOLI). EOLI occurs to support lifestyles both in the purchase of goods and services and in the consumption of fuels and electricity by workers. This research investigates both supply chain m...

Our goal is to characterize future trends in the generation of obsolete computers in the U.S. Starting from historical sales data on new computers and assuming a plausible first lifespan distribution, we extrapolate the historical sales trend to the future using a logistic model. The major challenge is that the personal computer is still in an earl...

This paper considers the importation of used personal computers (PCs) in Peru and domestic practices in their production, reuse, and end-of-life processing. The empirical pillars of this study are analysis of government data describing trade in used and new computers and surveys and interviews of computer sellers, refurbishers, and recyclers. The U...

Product lifespan is a fundamental variable in understanding the environmental impacts associated with the life cycle of products. Existing life cycle and materials flow studies of products, almost without exception, consider lifespan to be constant over time. To determine the validity of this assumption, this study provides an empirical documentati...

Along with the rapidly increasing number of personal computers, the energy consumption associated with a computer has attracted increasing attention. However, different Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) studies of computers report qualitatively different results. This analysis estimates the energy needed to manufacture a laptop computer using hybrid LCA....

It was our goal to study the evolution of personal computer lifespan and to identify methods by which this aspect of technological progress could be quantified and integrated into life cycle assessments and other environmental assessment studies. This approach was operationalized through a case study of computer adoption and life cycle parameters i...

As the amount of waste printed circuit boards (PCBs) increases dramatically, methods to recycle them become increasingly important not only for economic reasons but also for environmental ones. PCB recycling methods include mechanical, pyrometallurgical, hydrometallurgical and biometallurgical processes. By comparing the different technologies avai...

China plays an important role in waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE, also known as e-waste) recycling around the world. Over 0.7 million people were employed for e-waste recycling industry in 2007, and 98% in the informal recycling sector. These informal e-waste recycling activities pose significant threats to the environment as well p...

There are more than 8 million private swimming pools in the U.S.. Though known to be prodigious consumers of water and energy, apparently there has been no systematic analysis of their environmental impact to date. Additional impacts arise from pool chemical use and pool construction. Phoenix, Arizona, has one of the highest concentrations of pools...

The value in identifying current trends and viewing them in a historical light is that the results can be used to inform ongoing policy and investment decisions. This paper highlights historic and current patterns in human population, energy use, and culture, with technological development as both a facilitating and resultant factor. It is shown th...

This article explores concepts and methods to characterize long-term limits on the capacity of technology to deliver energy services based on thermodynamics, or more generally, physical laws. Carnot's law, for example, places an upper limit in the ability of a heat engine to deliver useful work. The framework developed starts with characterizing di...

Previous studies on environmental impacts embodied in trade have paid little attention on the impacts of labor, or environmental overhead of labor (EOL). In particular, EOL can occur in both the household consumption of fuels and electricity by workers and in the delivery of products and services consumed by workers. This research defines EOL and q...

Photovoltaics (PV) are regarded as a clean source energy technology and their use has expanded dramatically in recent years for both commercial and residential sectors. Learning curve studies show that PV modules have experienced very rapid reductions in commercial prices.This paper proposes to develop a new method to estimate lower bounds on asymp...

Life cycle assessment (LCA) of photovoltaic (PV) electric power generation investigates the energy requirement over the whole manufacturing and operational phases. Existing LCA results of PV have been based on process LCA method which considers the material and energy flow on physical level. This method has an obvious shortcoming of limited boundar...

Summary form only given: Personal computers have become an important part of society with people depending on them for activities from business to entertainment or education. Access to technology, especially to personal computers (PCs), has shifted from privilege to necessity in many parts of the world. Is in this context residential PC ownership h...

The looming challenges of global warming and peak oil have begun to spur the development of alternatives to our current petroleum based transportation system. However, before these alternatives are implemented on a significant scale, it is important to assess these technologies with a broad lens and ensure that they will not introduce more problems...

This paper assesses the forward and reverse supply chain of computers in developing countries by using Peru as a case study. The aim is to develop more sustainable post-consumer management. The Peruvian forward supply chain of non-mobile personal computers (nmPCs) is a combination of domestically assembled, imported new and imported used machines,...

We attempted to design and assess an example of a sustainable networked delivery (SND) system: a hybrid business-to-consumer book delivery system. This system is intended to reduce costs, achieve significant reductions in energy consumption, and reduce environmental emissions of critical local pollutants and greenhouse gases. The energy consumption...

The files contained in this zip file contain information and data from an Internet survey carried out in January 2009. The survey was implemented by e-Rewards Market Research, reflect a random sample of their cohort of U.S. households. The sub-files within this zip file are: 1. Key.doc – contains the survey questions and numerical coding to inte...