M. Granger Morgan

• Carnegie Mellon University

Offshore wind can be a key contributor to energy system decarbonization, but its deployment in certain regions has been slow, partly due to opposition from disparate interests. Failure to sufficiently address the concerns of external stakeholders could continue to hamper deployment. Here, we use a multi criteria model to assess all possible sites i...

The expert and policy communities have invested enormous effort in debating what greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions target to aim for, or which decarbonization policies and technologies should be mandated or banned. Because multiple trajectories can achieve similar targets and timelines, some scenario analysis is useful. However, with many players invo...

The extent to which domestic industrial capabilities are essential in contributing to a Nations' prosperity and national well-being is the topic of long-standing debate. On the one hand, globalization and the outsourcing of production can lead to greater productivity, lower product costs, and gains from trade. On the other hand, national capabiliti...

PM2.5 produced by freight trucking has significant adverse impacts on human health. Here we explore the spatial distribution of freight trucking emissions and demonstrate that public health impacts due to freight trucking disproportionately affect certain racial and ethnic groups. Based on the US federal government data, we build an emissions inven...

Much of the developing world is still struggling to provide electricity to rural populations. Extending the grid is frequently not feasible or too expensive in rural and remote areas. In such situations, micro‐hydropower (MHP) can be a cost‐effective source of renewable off‐grid electricity and can be easier to implement and more reliable than a nu...

To reduce local air pollution, many ports in developed countries require berthed ships to use shore-based electricity instead of burning diesel to meet their electricity requirement for loads such as lights, cargo-handling equipment, and air conditioning. The benefits of this strategy in developing countries remain understudied. Based on government...

As modern society becomes ever more dependent on the availability of electric power, the costs that could arise from individual and social vulnerability to large outages of long duration (LLD‐outages) increases. During such an outage, even a small amount of power would be very valuable. This article compares individual and collective strategies for...

Transmission capacity expansion using existing lines and rights-of-way (ROW) is a strategy that deserves greater attention. The need to acquire siting approval and ROW for a new line can increase a project timeline by many years, and in some cases may even lead to project cancellation. Projects that use or expand an existing ROW face different regu...

We use a conjoint-based discrete choice survey to examine willingness-to-accept of different characteristics of hypothetical wind projects. Our study includes participants from two Massachusetts (U.S.) coastal municipalities (Gloucester and Rockport) that have an existing onshore wind project (n = 192). Participants were presented with several alte...

Because water is easier to store in substantial quantity than electricity, this paper examines the possibility that a U.S. domestic market for factory-manufactured small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) might be developed to use the constant output of an SMR to perform water desalination when wind or solar power are producing high output and generat...

We present a solar‐centric approach to estimating the probability of extreme coronal mass ejections (CME) using the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO)/Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph Experiment (LASCO) CME Catalog observations updated through May 2018 and an updated list of near‐Earth interplanetary coronal mass ejections (ICME). W...

Climate-induced extreme weather events, as well as other natural and human-caused disasters, have the potential to increase the duration and frequency of large power outages. Resilience, in the form of supplying a small amount of power to homes and communities, can mitigate outage consequences by sustaining critical electricity-dependent services....

The road freight sector is responsible for a large and growing share of greenhouse gas emissions, but reliable data on the amount of freight that is moved on roads in many parts of the world are scarce. Many low- and middle-income countries have limited ground-based traffic monitoring and freight surveying activities. In this proof of concept, we s...

The road freight sector is responsible for a large and growing share of greenhouse gas emissions, but reliable data on the amount of freight that is moved on roads in many parts of the world are scarce. Many low- and middle-income countries have limited ground-based traffic monitoring and freight surveying activities. In this proof of concept, we s...

Significance A sustainable electricity grid will likely need to move large amounts of low-carbon bulk power as part of a strategy to reduce emissions. That will require expansion of transmission capacity, and changes in the topology of the system, even as the use of distributed generation increases. In many cases, maximizing the capacity of existin...

Benefit–cost analysis is widely used to evaluate alternative courses of action that are designed to achieve policy objectives. Although many analyses take uncertainty into account, they typically only consider uncertainty about cost estimates and physical states of the world, whereas uncertainty about individual preferences, thus the benefit of pol...

Road freight transportation accounts for around 7% of total world energy-related carbon dioxide emissions. With the appropriate incentives, energy savings and emissions reductions can be achieved by shifting freight to rail or water modes, both of which are far more efficient than road. We briefly introduce five general strategies for decarbonizing...

Nuclear power holds the potential to make a significant contribution to decarbonizing the US energy system. Whether it could do so in its current form is a critical question: Existing large light water reactors in the United States are under economic pressure from low natural gas prices, and some have already closed. Moreover, because of their grea...

Deep decarbonization in the U.S. will require a shift to an electrified society dominated by low-carbon generation. Many studies assume a role for nuclear power in the new energy economy, and the nuclear industry anticipates an eventual transition from light water reactors to advanced, non-light water designs. The development of these advanced reac...

Using 15 semi-structured interviews of residents in two neighboring coastal Massachusetts communities, one of which recently installed an onshore wind project, a study sought to identify the specific characteristics that drive perceptions about the existing project as well as hypothetical new onshore or offshore projects. It found that economic ben...

A number of analyses, meta-analyses, and assessments, including those performed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and the International Energy Agency, have concluded that deployment of a diverse portfolio of clean energy technologies makes...

Commercializing an emerging technology that employs an immature production process can be challenging, particularly when there are many different sources of uncertainty. In industries with stringent safety requirements, regulatory interventions that ensure safety while maintaining incentives for innovation can be particularly elusive. We use the ex...

It is hard to see how our energy system can be decarbonized if the world abandons nuclear power, but equally hard to introduce the technology in nonnuclear energy states. This is especially true in countries with limited technical, institutional, and regulatory capabilities, where safety and proliferation concerns are acute. Given the need to achie...

Using data on the coal-fired electric generating units (EGUs) in Texas we assess the economic feasibility of retrofitting existing units with carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) in order to comply with the Clean Power Plan's rate-based emission standards under an emission trading scheme. CCS with 90% capture is shown to be more economically attr...

This research assesses climate, technological, and policy impacts on consumptive water use from electricity generation in the Southwest over a planning horizon of nearly a century. We employed an integrated modeling framework taking into account feedbacks between climate change, air temperature and humidity, and consequent power plant water require...

The successful adoption of metallic additive manufacturing in aviation will require investment in basic scientific understanding of the process, defining of standards and adaptive regulation.

More than half a century ago political scientist Charles Lindblom (1) argued that a policy of “muddling through” with incremental steps is frequently superior to attempting to design and implement comprehensive policy solutions. After decades of talk the world is finally showing signs of muddling its way toward a range of policies to reduce emissio...

In October 2013, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) announced that it would put in place a market-based mechanism to cap net greenhouse gas emissions from international civil aviation at 2020 levels. This paper analyses the obligations that would be placed on real airlines under an initial draft “Strawman” proposal that was origin...

When in port, ships burn marine diesel in on-board generators to produce electricity, and are significant contributors to poor local and regional air quality. Supplying ships with grid electricity can reduce these emissions. We use two integrated assessment models to quantify the benefits of reducing the emissions of NOX, SO2, PM2.5, and CO2 that w...

Springer, Cham, 2015, hardcover, 257 pp., € 80.24—ISBN 978-3-319-11345-6

Safe, small-scale experiments build trust and road-test governance, argue Jane C. S. Long, Frank Loy and M. Granger Morgan.

Small modular reactors (SMRs) may provide an energy option that will not emit greenhouse gases. From a commercial point-of-view, SMRs will be suitable to serve smaller energy markets with less developed infrastructure, to replace existing old nuclear and coal power plants, and to provide process heat in various industrial applications. In this pape...

We employ an integrated systems modeling tool to assess the water impacts of the new source performance standards recently proposed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for limiting CO2 emissions from coal- and gas-fired power plants. The implementation of amine-based carbon capture and storage (CCS) for 40% CO2 capture to meet the current p...

The IPCC reports that climate change will pose increased risks of heatwaves and flooding. Although survey-based studies have examined links between public perceptions of hot weather and climate change beliefs, relatively little is known about people’s perceptions of changes in flood risks, the extent to which climate change is perceived to contribu...

The elicitation of scientific and technical judgments from experts, in the form of subjective probability distributions, can be a valuable addition to other forms of evidence in support of public policy decision making. This paper explores when it is sensible to perform such elicitation and how that can best be done. A number of key issues are disc...

Reducing CO2 emissions from the electricity sector will likely require policies that encourage the widespread deployment of a diverse mix of low-carbon electricity generation technologies. Public discourse informs such policies. To make informed decisions and to productively engage in public discourse, citizens need to understand the tradeoffs betw...

Meeting the challenge of climate change will require a fundamental restructuring of the energy system that transforms it from a system that is carbon intensive to one which emits little or no carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere. There are considerable uncertainties about how this can best be done, what it will cost, what ris...

To curb the risks of climate change, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change posits that global CO2 emissions from the energy supply sector must be reduced to 90% below 2010 levels between 2040 and 2070. Electricity generation is the largest contributor to emissions from the energy supply sector. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) holds the pro...

When wind or solar energy displace conventional generation, the reduction in emissions varies dramatically across the United States. Although the Southwest has the greatest solar resource, a solar panel in New Jersey displaces significantly more sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and particulate matter than a panel in Arizona, resulting in 15 times m...

Analysts and decision makers frequently want estimates of the cost of technologies that have yet to be developed or deployed. Small modular reactors (SMRs), which could become part of a portfolio of carbon-free energy sources, are one such technology. Existing estimates of likely SMR costs rely on problematic top-down approaches or bottom-up assess...

Previous work suggests if it were possible to lower sea-surface temperature using wind-wave pumps, it would sometime make sense to try to reduce the wind speed of a tropical cyclone (TC) that is likely to make landfall. While currently there is no plausible strategy to steer a TC, suppose that TC landfall location could be altered and subsequent da...

The United States produces over seventy percent of all its electricity from fossil fuels and nearly fifty percent from coal alone. Worldwide, forty-one percent of all electricity is generated from coal, making it the single most important fuel source for electricity generation, followed by natural gas. This means that an essential part of any portf...

There is growing interest in reducing emissions from electricity generation in the United States (U.S.). Renewable energy, energy efficiency, and energy conservation are all commonly suggested solutions. Both supply- and demand-side interventions will displace energy-and emissions-from conventional generators. Marginal emissions factors (MEFs) give...

Geoengineering methods are intended to reduce climate change, which is already having demonstrable effects on ecosystem structure and functioning in some regions. Two types of geoengineering activities that have been proposed are: carbon dioxide (CO(2)) removal (CDR), which removes CO(2) from the atmosphere, and solar radiation management (SRM, or...

If implementation of proposals to engineer the climate through solar-radiation management (SRM) ever occurs, it is likely to be contingent on climate sensitivity. However, modelling studies examining the effectiveness of SRM as a strategy to offset anthropogenic climate change have used only the standard parameterizations of atmosphere-ocean genera...

We investigate tropical cyclone wind and storm surge damage reduction for five areas along the Miami-Dade County coastline either by hardening buildings or by the hypothetical application of wind-wave pumps to modify storms. We calculate surge height and wind speed as functions of return period and sea surface temperature reduction by wind-wave pum...

Despite continuing efforts to make the electric power system robust, some risk remains of widespread and extended power outages due to extreme weather or acts of terrorism. One way to alleviate the most serious effects of a prolonged blackout is to find local means to secure the continued provision of critical social services upon which the health...

If hurricane modification were to become a feasible strategy for potentially reducing hurricane damages, it would likely generate public discourse about whether to support its implementation. To facilitate an informed and constructive discourse, policymakers need to understand how people perceive hurricane modification. Here, we examine Florida res...

The question of whether and to what extent global warming may be changing tropical cyclone (TC) activity is of great interest to decision makers. The presence of a possible climate change signal in TC activity is difficult to detect because interannual variability necessitates analysis over longer time periods than available data allow. Projections...

Recent dramatic increases in damages caused by tropical cyclones (TCs) and improved understanding of TC physics have led DHS to fund research on intentional hurricane modification. We present a decision analytic assessment of whether it is potentially cost-effective to attempt to lower the wind speed of TCs approaching South Florida by reducing sea...

Although the benefits of distributed cogeneration are widely cited, adoption has been slow in the United States. Adoption could be encouraged by making cogeneration more economically attractive, either by increasing the expected returns or decreasing the risks of such investments. This paper evaluates several existing and potential future mechanism...

The United States produces more than 70% of its electricity from fossil fuels and nearly 50% from coal alone [U.S. Energy Information Administration, 2009]. Worldwide, the percentages are similar, making coal the single largest fuel source (42%) for electricity generation, followed by natural gas (21%) [International Energy Agency, 2009]. Dramatic...

Inês Azevedo is Assistant Research Professor in the Department of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University and Executive Director of the Center for Climate and Energy Decision Making sponsored by NSF. Her research interests lie at the intersection of environmental, technical, and economic issues, such as how to address the challe...

In 1992, a mental-models-based survey in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, revealed that educated laypeople often conflated global climate change and stratospheric ozone depletion, and appeared relatively unaware of the role of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions in global warming. This study compares those survey results with 2009 data from a sample of...

Public perceptions of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) and other low-carbon electricity-generating technologies may affect the feasibility of their widespread deployment. We asked a diverse sample of 60 participants recruited from community groups in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to rank 10 technologies (e.g., coal with CCS, natural gas, nuclear,...

Concerns about the slow pace of climate mitigation have led to renewed dialogue about solar-radiation management, which could be achieved by adding reflecting aerosols to the stratosphere. Modelling studies suggest that solar-radiation management could produce stabilized global temperatures and reduced global precipitation. Here we present an analy...

There is uncertainty about the response of the climate system to future trajectories of radiative forcing. To quantify this uncertainty we conducted face-to-face interviews with 14 leading climate scientists, using formal methods of expert elicitation. We structured the interviews around three scenarios of radiative forcing stabilizing at different...

To date modeling studies suggest that, while significant hydrological anomalies could result from the artificial addition of reflecting aerosols in the stratosphere for the purpose of solar radiation management (SRM), even at the regional level such a geoengineered world would bear a much closer resemblance to a low CO2 world, than to an unmodified...

Author's Viewpoint.

Lay people's ability to respond to an environmental hazard is determined, in part, by their understanding of the physical, chemical, and biological processes that govern its creation and control. A general methodology is offered here for studying that understanding. It attempts to characterize people's mental models of a hazard—i.e., the sets of pr...

Geologic sequestration (GS) of carbon dioxide (CO2) is contingent upon securing the legal right to use deep subsurface pore space. Under the assumption that compensation might be required to use pore space for GS, we examine the cost of acquiring the rights to sequester 160-million metric tons of CO2 (the 30-year emissions output for an 800 megawat...

Geoengineering studies of solar-radiation management should begin urgently, argue David W. Keith, Edward Parson and M. Granger Morgan - before a rogue state decides to act alone.

Lighting constitutes more than 20% of total U.S. electricity consumption, a similar fraction in the European Union, and an even higher fraction in many developing countries. Because many current lighting technologies are highly inefficient, improved technologies for lighting hold great potential for energy savings and for reducing associated greenh...

Some 1,976 sites at closed military bases in the United States are contaminated with unexploded ordnance (UXO) left over from live-fire weapons training. These sites present risks to civilians who might come into contact with the UXO and cause it to explode. This paper presents the first systems analysis model for assessing the explosion risks of U...

Subjective probabilistic judgments about future module prices of 26 current and emerging photovoltaic (PV) technologies were obtained from 18 PV technology experts. Fourteen experts provided detailed assessments, including likely future efficiencies and prices under four policy scenarios. While there is considerable dispersion among the judgments,...

America seems to have decided that a "smart grid" is what we need to solve the problems of our electric power system. But, what exactly is a "smart grid"? The answer is that it is many different things. Some of the things that get talked about are relatively inexpensive and can go a long way toward solving key problems. Others will likely be very e...

A variety of decision makers need projections of future energy demand, CO2 emissions and similar factors that extend many decades into the future. The past performance of such projections has been systematically overconfident. Analysts have often used scenarios based on detailed story lines that spell out “plausible alternative futures” as a centra...

Structured interviews using `expert elicitation` methods drawn from decision analysis were conducted with 16 leading U.S. climate scientists. We obtained quantitative, probabilistic judgments about a number of key climate variables and about the nature of the climate system. We also obtained judgments about the relative contributions of various fac...

The price of delivered electricity will rise if generators have to pay for carbon dioxide emissions through an implicit or explicit mechanism. There are two main effects that a substantial price on CO2 emissions would have in the short run (before the generation fleet changes significantly). First, consumers would react to increased price by buying...

Governments worldwide should provide incentives for initial large-scale GS projects to help build the knowledge base for a mature, internationally harmonized GS regulatory framework. Health, safety, and environmental risks of these early projects can be managed through modifications of existing regulations in the EU, Australia, Canada, and the U.S....

Stabilizing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels at acceptable levels will require a dramatic de-carbonization of the electric generation sector in the U.S. One increasingly discussed way to meet this policy goal is to put an explicit price on carbon emissions, either through a tax or a trading scheme. Increasing demand response has also been discusse...

This paper summarizes key findings from climate science to make the case that the United States (and ultimately the world) will need to dramatically reduce carbon dioxide emissions from the energy system over the next few decades. While transportation energy is an important consideration, the focus of this paper is on electric power. Today, the Uni...