Troy Hottle

• PhD Sustainable Engineering
• Analyst at Eastern Research Group, Inc.

The energy system is the primary source of air pollution. Thus, evolution of the energy system into the future will affect society’s ability to maintain air quality. Anticipating this evolution is difficult because of inherent uncertainty in predicting future energy demand, fuel use, and technology adoption. We apply Scenario Planning to address th...

This review examines the use of life-cycle assessments (LCAs) to compare different lightweight materials being developed to improve light-duty vehicle fuel economy and reduce CO2. Vehicle manufacturers are designing passenger cars and light-duty trucks using lighter weight materials and design optimization techniques to meet the EPA's GHG emissions...

This paper presents an attributional life cycle assessment of biopolymers and traditional plastics using real world disposal methods based on collected data and existing inventories. The focus of this LCA is to investigate actual disposal methods for the end of life phase of biopolymers and traditional fossil-based plastics relative to their corres...

This study evaluated seven different waste management strategies for venue-based events and characterized the impacts of event waste management via waste audits and the Waste Reduction Model (WARM). The seven waste management scenarios included traditional waste handling methods (e.g. recycle and landfill) and management of the waste stream via com...

Bio-based polymers have become feasible alternatives to traditional petroleum-based plastics. However, the factors that influence the sustainability of bio-based polymers are often unclear. This paper reviews published life cycle assessments (LCAs) and commonly used LCA databases that quantify the environmental sustainability of bio-based polymers...

Concrete is a primary material in infrastructure projects and is a significant contributor to global climate emissions. However, there is a lack of readily available cement and ready-mix concrete inventory data for evaluating the environmental performance of the industries. This study describes the development of cradle-to-gate inventories for U.S....

This report describes the background and creation of a comprehensive list of resources and emissions in the standard life cycle assessment data type of elementary flows called the Federal LCA Commons Elementary Flow List. It was created to serve as a foundational data component for use by Federal agencies and others that are sharing LCA data via th...

This study updates the Petroleum Refinery Life Cycle Inventory Model (PRELIM) to provide a more complete gate-to-gate life cycle inventory and to allow for the calculation of a full suite of impact potentials commonly used in life cycle assessment (LCA) studies. Prior to this update, PRELIM provided results for energy use and greenhouse gas emissio...

Overview As emissions reductions are desired in end-use sectors-commercial/residential technologies and light-and heavy-duty vehicles-the corresponding changes in fuel use and technologies can lead to shifts in the upstream production processes. These "upstream" emissions can be associated with changes in fuel production, transport and distribution...

According to the American Heritage Dictionary, an attribute is “a quality or characteristic of a person or thing.” There is strong emphasis in the marketplace on environmentally-related attributes of materials, as evidenced by product labels that promote the recycled content, recyclability, compostability, or bio-based composition of a product and...

Background While petroleum-based plastics are extensively used in health care, recent developments in biopolymer manufacturing have created new opportunities for increased integration of biopolymers into medical products, devices and services. This study compared the environmental impacts of single-use disposable devices with increased biopolymer c...

I contributed to Project Drawdown and this book as a Research Fellow.

While many institutions express interest in integrating sustainability into their civil engineering curriculum, the engineering community lacks consensus on established methods for infus-ing sustainability into curriculum and verified approaches to assess engineers' sustainability knowledge. This paper presents the development of a sustainability r...

This research evaluates the addition of alkaline amendments to enhance the degradation of polylactic acid polymers (PLA) in compost conditions. The use of compostable biopolymers is increasing in part because they are advertised as compostable. However, PLA degrades slowly compared to the organic wastes in compost and even when processed in commerc...

Fossil resources have enabled the development of the plastic industry in the last century. More recently biopolymers have been making gains in the global plastics market. Biopolymers are plastics derived from plants, primarily corn, which can function very similarly to fossil based plastics. One difference between some of the dominant biopolymers,...

The factors that influence the sustainability of bio-based polymers are not simply related to renewability of feedstocks. Biopolymers can be produced with the added features of compostability and biodegradability, but it is not clear what benefits these methods of disposal may have over traditional waste management. Different end of life scenarios...

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that the United States healthcare system accounts for four billion tons of waste on an annual basis, where most of the waste is attributed specifically to medical device supply chains. While certain studies present potential strategies for driving sustainability in medical device supply chains, these...

Current research policy and strategy documents recommend applying life cycle assessment (LCA) early in research and development (R&D) to guide emerging technologies toward decreased environmental burden. However, existing LCA practices are ill-suited to support these recommendations. Barriers related to data availability, rapid technology change, a...

The goal of guiding innovation toward beneficial social and environmental outcomes – referred to in the growing literature as responsible research and innovation (RRI) – is intuitively worthwhile but lacks practicable tools for implementation. One potentially useful tool is life-cycle assessment (LCA), which is a comprehensive framework used to eva...

While commonly associated with aerosolized water, species of the bacterial genus Legionella are native to soil and can be responsible for legionellosis transmission, particularly in potting soil, compost, and mulch, with the soil-borne L. longbeachea being the most common causative agent of Legionnaires’ disease in certain countries. This study aim...