* A faculty opening in Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at the University of Massachusetts Amherst lists sustainable energy among the desired research areas. More info here (pdf, via the ENRE list).

* NICTA (National ICT Australia), which is Australia’s Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Research Centre of Excellence, is looking to fill positions within its Optimisation Research Group. Projects include infrastructure resilience (including disaster management and infrastructure security) and smart energy systems (including smart electricity grids and smart buildings). See the full listing here.

The Joint Mathematics Meetings are coming up on January 4-7, 2012 in Boston. They include sessions on Climate Change and Sustainability, organized by Mary Lou Zeeman and Chris Danforth. Chris is also one of the speakers, and having been in graduate school with Chris I would highly recommend attending one of his talks. The full list of those talks can be found here, and additional ones are here.

1. Graduate Fellowships in Wind Energy funded by the National Science Foundation IGERT Program are available at the University of Iowa. Apply at geemap.stat.uiowa.edu. They are part of the “Geoinformatics for Environmental and Energy Modeling and Prediction” program. According to the web site, Geoinformatics:
   • is the science of measuring, storing, managing, analyzing, and visualizing phenomena occurring on or near the earth’s surface
   • includes Geographic Information Science, spatial statistics, and high-performance computing
   • provides the methods and technology essential to addressing the environmental and energy-related issues of the 21st century
2. The Center for Energy, Environmental, and Economics Systems Analysis (CEEESA) at Argonne National Laboratory has an immediate opening for a Postdoctoral Appointee. From the announcement:
   

   The applicant should have research experience in optimization. A Ph.D. in IE/OR or related discipline is required. Argonne offers very competitive salary and benefits. The appointment will be one year with a possible extension. Argonne will sponsor the cap-exempt H1B visa application if needed. Senior PhD students will be also considered for internships.

   See this page for the full announcement. It looks like a great opportunity. CEEESA is described briefly on this greenOR page and this one describing their GREET vehicle modeling system.

3. IBM Smarter Cities, from the web site:
   

   Municipal leaders who run the complex network of diverse people, expected services and aging infrastructure are on a constant search for more efficient ways to analyze data, anticipate problems and coordinate resources in their cities.

   You can drill down in their solutions section to read about specific approaches to the various issues.

4. Climate Knowledge Discovery Workshop @ SC11 Conference, Seattle, 13 November 2011
5. Department of Energy Conference on Data Analysis, February 29-March 2, 2012 | Santa Fe, New Mexico | hosted by the Statistical Sciences Group at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Even inside the Obama administration, some officials say they fear any crackdown on Iranian oil exports could drive up oil prices when the United States and European economies are weak. As one senior official put it, “You don’t want to tip the U.S. into a downturn just to punish the Iranians.”

So weak economies mixed with weak foreign policy (due to reliance on oil) lead to paralysis. Luft and Korin put it plainly in Turning Oil into Salt:

[Energy] independence means not having to kowtow to the various petrodictators that sit on the bulk of the world’s oil reserves. Independence requires that oil become just not that important anymore.

See this greenOR post (scroll down) for more on the book or check out their web site.

… the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York dismissed a false advertising suit filed by a group of plaintiffs, led by New York City-based engineer Henry Gifford, against the U.S. Green Building Council. This case was closely watched by many professionals in the building industry because of its potential to be a game changing event for green buildings and the US GBC. It also highlighted a growing movement for better transparency and disclosure of building performance data

I did not follow this case, but I did look into some of Gifford’s critiques back in 2009 (see this post), and I did think there was some merit to them. A central claim of the law suit had to do with a New Building Institute study claim that LEED buildings save 25-30% more energy than standard buildings. Even beyond this suit, LEED does seem to be dogged in some quarters by the under-performance issue, with it sometimes being attributed to improper building operation. Nevertheless, LEED is still going strong and has taken up the operations challenge with its “Existing Buildings: Operations & Maintenance” rating system. See this page for more info.

Organic Industry Structure by Philip H. Howard in Journal of the New Media Caucus

The article includes interviews with a number of green CEO’s: Seth Goldman from Honest Tea, Gary Hirshberg from Stonyfield Farm, Greg Steltenpohl from Odwalla, and Jeffrey Hollender from Seventh Generation. There are some choice quotes from Hollender: “choose your investors more carefully than your employees because they are a lot harder to get rid of”, and “if you have a business that is owned by investors whose primary goal is to make money, how good can the business ever be”. There has been a lot written about corporate social responsibility, including Hollender’s own very readable book “What Matters Most” and the more scholarly “The Market for Virtue” by David Vogel. Many believe in the concept, but Hollender has come to have his doubts.

To what extent is sustainability in the “DNA” of a given company? For many of the eco-companies that started small with a strong sustainability vision, like Honest Tea, Seventh Generation, Odwalla, etc. it seems it was deeply embedded. The risk is that this will diminish with a corporate buyout, large investment of venture capital, or even partnerships with major corporations. It will not necessarily happen, but it is a challenge. Tom Szaky of Terracycle wrote eloquently about the partnering issue here and the venture capital and buyout ones here. And Goldman, Hirshberg and others make their cases in the E Magazine article.

I was thinking about the sustainability in the DNA question with regard to OR companies. An OR consultant can find some work in sustainability (I have, and as he makes clear on his blog, so has John Poppelaars). And as I mentioned in a recent post, one can certainly work on sustainability challenges at companies like Waste Management and UPS, as well as at IBM and SAP. Just check out the twitter feeds of the latter two (click on them). On a smaller scale, I’ve written about Lumina (of Analytica fame) and their work in sustainability a couple of times. In each of these cases, impressive work is being done, but often the sustainability is in concert with other goals (efficiency, lowering costs). And that is great as long as it continues. This was the issue I felt listening to the UPS talk at the INFORMS Business Analytics conference last year. I wondered to what extent going green would still find favor when its costs were high. It depends on how deep the commitment is.

I gave several lectures and led a number of discussions on readings. This was mostly on background material such as defining sustainability, energy/environment basics, early sustainability thinkers (including John Muir, Theodore Roosevelt, JC Kumarappa, Rachel Carson, etc.), and climate change. I incorporated a few quantitative assignments such as basic linear regression on global temperature data and solar panel system cost calculations (with and without the use of discounted cash flows, to highlight an omission in many of the online calculators out there). We took a couple of tours of local facilities including an impressive home outfitted with a geothermal system and solar panels. And we also spent some time in the decision analysis realm, with an exercise on criteria for a sustainable ship. This was based in part on material I was exposed to at the Soft Skills workshop at the most recent INFORMS Business Analytics conference.

Bob Day from U Conn and I created a carbon trading game that we played in class. The game, while fairly straightforward, led to some interesting results. Essentially, players were competing utilities, each with a fossil fuel and renewable energy plant. Any electricity generated at their fossil fuel plants required offsetting carbon credits, which were available via auction. Depending on the auction price, it could either be cheaper or more expensive to generate electricity with fossil fuel versus renewables. I hope to post more about the game at some point.

The heart of the course to my mind was a series of about a dozen guest lectures from individuals most of whom work on sustainability on a daily basis and have experienced concrete successes. Here are a few examples (with apologies to the many other excellent lecturers I am omitting for the time being):

Anne Korin from the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security (IAGS) gave a highly compelling presentation about energy security. Her basic premise is that oil is a strategic commodity because of its essential role in transportation. And because much of its supply is controlled by a cartel (OPEC) that is generally unfriendly to US interests, this is a threat to US security. Solutions proposed by IAGS include flex-fuel vehicles, trade modifications and electrification of transportation. I would highly recommend her very interesting and readable book written with Gal Luft also of IAGS. If I teach the course again I will most likely use it.

Captain John Hickey, the Coast Guard’s sustainability “czar” delivered a tour-de-force lecture via web-conference. He highlighted an array of issues from environmental to economic in the opening half of his talk and followed this up with some of the things the Coast Guard has done to be more sustainable, many of those initiatives being ones he led (see this post for more on that).

Majora Carter of Sustainable South Bronx fame delivered a moving and inspiring talk on “Hometown Security”. To get an idea of what she spoke about, track down her TED talk on the subject. In a nutshell, it addresses the intertwined issues of sustainability and socio-economics, with an eye towards gainfully employing people to work in their local communities.

We used many sources including the books Cradle to Cradle, Cape Wind, and the Skeptical Environmentalist. The last of those is a controversial book written by Danish statistician Bjorn Lomborg. Lomborg attempts to get a fix on the “true” state of the world, in contrast to the pessimistic take he finds in the work of most environmental commentators. Given his statistical background and the quantitative basis of most environmental claims, on the surface, this sounds like a good plan. At times, Lomborg’s critiques are incisive and refreshing. Other times, they are strange or misleading. Lomborg has generated a huge deal of controversy, which a google search will turn up. As an aside, Lomborg has a new movie entitled Cool It. J. Eric Bickel of the University of Texas worked with Lomborg on the film and also happens to be featured in a recent INFORMS podcast: Will Geoengineering Rescue Us from Climate Change?

It may not be easy to measure the impact of the course, if any. But one student who has since moved on to her ship is now working on developing a sustainability plan for it. So we will see what happens going forward.

There is a lot more I could say about the course. I encourage you to post any questions you might have in the comments or email me and I will follow up.

Analytica has gotten some good use in sustainability areas including modeling of renewable portfolio standards and green purchasing with clients such as NOAA and NREL. See this page for examples.

On Thursday, August 25 2011, Lumina is hosting a web analytics webinar (thanks to Nick K for the heads up). The abstract from the webinar home page reads:

Paper or plastic? Solar or wind? These are surprisingly hard questions. Analytica is an ideal tool for clarifying and quantifying environmental as well as economic costs and benefits. Power companies are using Analytica to select the best mix of technologies to meet renewable portfolio standards. The US Department of Energy uses Analytica to evaluate its R&D in energy efficiency and renewables. In this webinar series, you will build valuable insight and skills for applying Analytica to issues of energy and environment modeling.

See this page for more information. It sounds interesting, maybe I will see you there.

From time to time, I also post green jobs on this blog, ones with some connection to O.R. (or O.M. or other related fields). Here are a couple:

1. “High-performance computing in energy systems” positions are available in Warren Powell’s PENSA lab at Princeton. See the annoucement here. PENSA specializes in the development of models and algorithms for a wide range of stochastic optimization problems arising in energy systems. Powell spoke at a Computational Sustainability conference I attended, described in an earlier post.

2. Researcher positions on Life Cycle Assessment and Environmentally Extended Input-Output Analysis of Energy Systems at NTNU (Norway) are available. See this page.

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On another note, here are a couple of relevant upcoming conferences:

1. Industrial Ecology Conference 2011 – Sustainable Production and Consumption,
Occidental Grand Xcaret, Xcaret, Mexico 11/11-11/15 2011.

2. The 11th IEEE International Symposium on Communications and Information Technologies IEEE ISCIT 2011 – “Green and Cognitive Communications for the Future”, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China, October 12-14, 2011.