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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 37 records · Page 2
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2023

Evaluating and Countering the Insider Threat to the Radioactive Source Supply Chain

The modern supply chain is a global enterprise and little drove this home more than the global COVID-19 pandemic which sent economic shockwaves throughout the world. Many goods became scarce, as products were delayed, in limited supply, or simply not available. The suddenly diminished supply collided with still high demand and led to greatly increased costs. This was particularly true for the radioactive source supply chain. The pandemic introduced extensive delays for construction projects, slowed the transport of radiological materials to facilities, interrupted treatment deliveries, and impaired the mobility of contractors across the industry. All of these concerns not only adversely affected the economy, but also impacted the safety and security of radiological material, potentially raising national security concerns. The vulnerability of the supply chain, a critical element in an increasingly interconnected world, was exposed. One example that challenged the adaptive capacity of the overall supply chain is the Ever Given container ship, which became stuck in the Suez Canal in 2020. This accident immediately shut down shipments that accounted for 12% of global trade, with long-term impacts estimated to be much larger. Developing the ability to anticipate and react in real-time to sudden changes has quickly become a necessity, particularly in industries that deal with the transport of hazardous material. The reaction to these dramatic incidents was to largely focus attention and resources on protecting the supply chain from external threats. However, the threat to the radioactive material supply chain from insiders intimately involved in the process may be even greater and remains a blind spot that requires increased attention. Recent events revealed the blueprint for targeting and disrupting that supply chain, so the potential for a malicious insider—or a manipulated, unwitting insider—to take advantage of this vulnerability is elevated, creating security concerns for radiological industries. This paper examines and analyzes the potential insider threat to the radioactive source supply chain and recommends steps to take to counter this possibility.

Kinney, Justin↗
DOE OSTI2023

Core Model Proposal #: 374 Global Iron and Steel Trade

This core model proposal (CMP) enables GCAM to track the gross trade of regional iron and steel commodities. Following the logit-based Armington trade modeling framework, this CMP aims to improve the representation of physical output (Mt) flows in GCAM v6.0’s iron and steel sector. In addition, the core model proposal also updates the regional steel demand and improves the representation of iron and steel technologies (and their energy coefficients) across all GCAM regions.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2024

Global peak water limit of future groundwater withdrawals

Over the past 50 years, humans have extracted the Earth’s groundwater stocks at a steep rate, largely to fuel global agro-economic development. Given society’s growing reliance on groundwater, we explore ‘peak water limits’ to investigate whether, when and where humanity might reach peak groundwater extraction. Using an integrated global model of the coupled human–Earth system, we simulate groundwater withdrawals across 235 water basins under 900 future scenarios of global change over the twenty-first century. Here we find that global non-renewable groundwater withdrawals exhibit a distinct peak-and-decline signature, comparable to historical observations of other depletable resources (for example, minerals), in nearly all (98%) scenarios, peaking on average at 625 km 3 yr -1 around mid-century, followed by a decline through 2100. The peak and decline occur in about one-third (82) of basins, including 21 that may have already peaked, exposing about half (44%) of the global population to groundwater stress. Most of these basins are in countries with the highest current extraction rates, including the United States, Mexico, Pakistan, India, China, Saudi Arabia and Iran. Furthermore, these groundwater-dependent basins will probably face increasing costs of groundwater and food production, suggesting important implications for global agricultural trade and a diminished role for groundwater in meeting global water demands during the twenty-first century.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2026

Thriving in the Carbon-Aware Market: How to Account for Emissions in the Era of Carbon-Centered Trade Policies

Emerging global policies, such as the European Union's enacted Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism and similar policies under development in Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom, will place a premium on goods traded into their territories with higher embedded emissions than those produced domestically. U.S. manufacturers could stand to benefit from such policies; given the investments U.S. industry has made to reduce the energy and emission intensities of its operations. For example, the overall GHG intensity of U.S. steel production in 2019 was ~0.96 t CO2/t steel, less than half that of China (~1.97 t CO2/t steel), and bested only by Italy. To realize these benefits, transparent, accurate, interoperable and accepted embedded emissions accounting and calculation methods are required. Achieving this requires overcoming challenges related to data availability, boundary definitions, and product definitions among others, both at individual facilities as well as through value chains. We will present technical findings on methodology considerations and data-availability constraints for determining the emissions of traded goods, using steel as a pilot and leveraging publicly available data. Issues such as determining the appropriate scope for emissions accounting, implications of the specificity of product chosen, emissions allocation in multi-product facilities, and enumeration of emissions for products manufactured across multiple facilities will be discussed. By sharing the results of our efforts, we aim to inform the development and execution of embedded emissions accounting methods from a technical perspective such that U.S. manufacturers can thrive in emerging global markets.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2022

Pandemic, War, and Global Energy Transitions

The COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s war on Ukraine have impacted the global economy, including the energy sector. The pandemic caused drastic fluctuations in energy demand, oil price shocks, disruptions in energy supply chains, and hampered energy investments, while the war left the world with energy price hikes and energy security challenges. The long-term impacts of these crises on low-carbon energy transitions and mitigation of climate change are still uncertain but are slowly emerging. This paper analyzes the impacts throughout the energy system, including upstream fuel supply, renewable energy investments, demand for energy services, and implications for energy equity, by reviewing recent studies and consulting experts in the field. We find that both crises initially appeared as opportunities for low-carbon energy transitions: the pandemic by showing the extent of lifestyle and behavioral change in a short period and the role of science-based policy advice, and the war by highlighting the need for greater energy diversification and reliance on local, renewable energy sources. However, the early evidence suggests that policymaking worldwide is focused on short-term, seemingly quicker solutions, such as supporting the incumbent energy industry in the post-pandemic era to save the economy and looking for new fossil fuel supply routes for enhancing energy security following the war. As such, the fossil fuel industry may emerge even stronger after these energy crises creating new lock-ins. This implies that the public sentiment against dependency on fossil fuels may end as a lost opportunity to translate into actions toward climate-friendly energy transitions, without ambitious plans for phasing out such fuels altogether. We propose policy recommendations to overcome these challenges toward achieving resilient and sustainable energy systems, mostly driven by energy services.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2024

The complex polyploid genome architecture of sugarcane

Sugarcane, the world’s most harvested crop by tonnage, has shaped global history, trade and geopolitics, and is currently responsible for 80% of sugar production worldwide. While traditional sugarcane breeding methods have effectively generated cultivars adapted to new environments and pathogens, sugar yield improvements have recently plateaued. The cessation of yield gains may be due to limited genetic diversity within breeding populations, long breeding cycles and the complexity of its genome, the latter preventing breeders from taking advantage of the recent explosion of whole-genome sequencing that has benefited many other crops. Thus, modern sugarcane hybrids are the last remaining major crop without a reference-quality genome. Here we take a major step towards advancing sugarcane biotechnology by generating a polyploid reference genome for R570, a typical modern cultivar derived from interspecific hybridization between the domesticated species (Saccharum officinarum) and the wild species (Saccharum spontaneum). In contrast to the existing single haplotype (‘monoploid’) representation of R570, our 8.7 billion base assembly contains a complete representation of unique DNA sequences across the approximately 12 chromosome copies in this polyploid genome. Using this highly contiguous genome assembly, we filled a previously unsized gap within an R570 physical genetic map to describe the likely causal genes underlying the single-copy Bru1 brown rust resistance locus. This polyploid genome assembly with fine-grain descriptions of genome architecture and molecular targets for biotechnology will help accelerate molecular and transgenic breeding and adaptation of sugarcane to future environmental conditions.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2024

Potential long-term, global effects of enhancing the domestic terrestrial carbon sink in the United States through no-till and cover cropping

Abstract Background Achieving a net zero greenhouse gas United States (US) economy is likely to require both deep sectoral mitigation and additional carbon dioxide removals to offset hard-to-abate emissions. Enhancing the terrestrial carbon sink, through practices such as the adoption of no-till and cover cropping agricultural management, could provide a portion of these required offsets. Changing domestic agricultural practices to optimize carbon content, however, might reduce or shift US agricultural commodity outputs and exports, with potential implications on respective global markets and land use patterns. Here, we use an integrated energy-economy-land-climate model to comprehensively assess the global land, trade, and emissions impacts of an adoption of domestic no-till farming and cover cropping practices based on carbon pricing. Results We find that the adoption of these practices varies depending on which aspects of terrestrial carbon are valued. Valuation of all terrestrial carbon resulted in afforestation at the expense of domestic agricultural production. In contrast, a policy valuing soil carbon in agricultural systems specifically indicates strong adoption of no-till and cover cropping for key crops. Conclusions We conclude that under targeted terrestrial carbon incentives, adoption of no-till and cover cropping practices in the US could increase the terrestrial carbon sink with limited effects on crop availability for food and fodder markets. Future work should consider integrated assessment modeling of non-CO 2 greenhouse gas impacts, above ground carbon storage changes, and capital and operating cost considerations.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2023

Agriculture, bioenergy, and water implications of constrained cereal trade and climate change impacts

International trade increases connections and dependencies between countries, weaving a network of global supply chains. Agricultural commodity trade has implications for crop producers, consumers, crop prices, water and land uses, and other human systems. Interconnections among these systems are not always easy to observe when external impacts penetrate across multiple sectors. To better understand the interactions of non-linear and globally coupled agricultural-bioenergy-water systems under the broader economy, we introduce systematic perturbations in two dimensions, one human (restrictions on agricultural trade) and the other physical (climate impacts on crop yields). We explore these independently and in combination to distinguish the consequences of individual perturbation and interactive effects in long-term projections. We show that most regions experience larger changes in cereal consumption due to cereal import dependency constraints than due to the impacts of climate change on agricultural yields. In the scenario where all regions ensure an import dependency ratio of zero, the global trade of cereals decreases ~50% in 2050 compared to the baseline, with smaller decreases in cereal production and consumption (4%). The changes in trade also impact water and bioenergy: global irrigation water consumption increases 3% and corn ethanol production decreases 7% in 2050. Climate change results in rising domestic prices and declining consumption of cereal crops in general, while the import dependency constraint exacerbates the situation in regions which import more cereals in the baseline. The individual and interactive effects of trade perturbations and climate change vary greatly across regions, which are also affected by the regional ability to increase agricultural production through intensification or extensification.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2021

Embodied carbon in the U.S. manufacturing and trade

On average, one quarter of the global carbon footprint is embodied in traded goods. These emissions are a growing issue for global efforts to decarbonize the world economy. Embodied emissions in trade are not accounted for by existing greenhouse gas accounting systems. For example, countries only report their domestic carbon emissions (also known as production-based or territorial accounting) to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). If the embodied carbon in trade were accounted for and reported, the promising climate trends depicted by many countries would be negated or reversed. For example, many achievements of reducing emissions by developed countries under the Kyoto Protocol would actually appear as emissions outsourced to developing countries. Like many other developed countries, the United States is a net importer of embodied greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in trade. The goal of this study was to calculate the carbon footprint of various sectors of the U.S. economy using the latest available data and based on that, estimate the embodied carbon in certain manufacturing sector products imported and exported by the U.S. First, we conducted an input-output analysis to calculate the carbon footprint of 401 aggregate level sectors of the U.S. economy. After that, for a selected number of manufacturing subsectors /products(hereafter referred to as products),we collected their trade(import/export) data and combined that with their computed carbon footprint to estimate the embodied carbon in import and export of these products for the U.S. While we conducted the carbon footprint analysis for sectors covering the entire U.S. economy (401 sectors), we only conducted the embodied carbon in trade analysis for a few products within specific aggregate level manufacturing sectors,such as computer and electronic product manufacturing (NAICS 334), transport equipment manufacturing (NAICS 336), machinery manufacturing (NAICS 333), and chemical manufacturing (NAICS 325). It is possible to do the detailed embodied carbon analysis for all other products within the various aggregate level manufacturing sectors of the U.S. economy, but given the scope of this study and space constraint of this report, we only present the results for a few products. The results of our analysis for the selected products show the embodied carbon in trade for each product by country and also show the rankings of countries in terms of top importers and exporters of embodied carbon in trade with the U.S. Our results show that in majority of cases, the U.S. is a net importer of embodied carbon in trade. Unless consumption-based accounting is used, the U.S. and other net embodied carbon importing countries may continue to outsource their emissions to meet their climate change mitigation targets under the Paris Agreement, as observed previously with the Kyoto Protocol. Some countries reported reductions that exceeded their Kyoto targets, however, the changes in emissions embodied in imports were comparable to or larger than changes in domestic emissions. Traded emissions undermined emissions reductions in the Kyoto Protocol, and threaten to continue to do so for the Paris Agreement. New climate policies such as California’s Buy Clean act, EU’s proposed border carbon tax adjustment, as well as efforts in the private sector can help address the embodied carbon in traded products.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2020

A regional nuclear conflict would compromise global food security

A limited nuclear war between India and Pakistan could ignite fires large enough to emit more than 5 Tg of soot into the stratosphere. Climate model simulations have shown severe resulting climate perturbations with declines in global mean temperature by 1.8 °C and precipitation by 8%, for at least 5 y. Here we evaluate impacts for the global food system. Six harmonized state-of-the-art crop models show that global caloric production from maize, wheat, rice, and soybean falls by 13 (±1)%, 11 (±8)%, 3 (±5)%, and 17 (±2)% over 5 y. Total single-year losses of 12 (±4)% quadruple the largest observed historical anomaly and exceed impacts caused by historic droughts and volcanic eruptions. Colder temperatures drive losses more than changes in precipitation and solar radiation, leading to strongest impacts in temperate regions poleward of 30°N, including the United States, Europe, and China for 10 to 15 y. Integrated food trade network analyses show that domestic reserves and global trade can largely buffer the production anomaly in the first year. Persistent multiyear losses, however, would constrain domestic food availability and propagate to the Global South, especially to food-insecure countries. By year 5, maize and wheat availability would decrease by 13% globally and by more than 20% in 71 countries with a cumulative population of 1.3 billion people. In view of increasing instability in South Asia, this study shows that a regional conflict using <1% of the worldwide nuclear arsenal could have adverse consequences for global food security unmatched in modern history.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2023

Core Model Proposal #350: Detailed Natural Gas Trade

This core model proposal adds detail to GCAM's natural gas trade model by separating gas trade between Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) and six regional gas pipeline networks. This entails creating new trade markets for global LNG and the six regional pipeline networks, and modifying the regional natural gas sector in each region to reflect the competition between LNG and pipelines within imported natural gas, and between different pipeline networks. The nesting subsector capability (CMP #299 Infinite Subsector Nesting) was used to represent this additional level of competition on the consumption side.

03 NATURAL GAS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Global 10 m Land Use Land Cover Datasets: A Comparison of Dynamic World, World Cover and Esri Land Cover

The European Space Agency’s Sentinel satellites have laid the foundation for global land use land cover (LULC) mapping with unprecedented detail at 10 m resolution. We present a cross-comparison and accuracy assessment of Google’s Dynamic World (DW), ESA’s World Cover (WC) and Esri’s Land Cover (Esri) products for the first time in order to inform the adoption and application of these maps going forward. For the year 2020, the three global LULC maps show strong spatial correspondence (i.e., near-equal area estimates) for water, built area, trees and crop LULC classes. However, relative to one another, WC is biased towards over-estimating grass cover, Esri towards shrub and scrub cover and DW towards snow and ice. Using global ground truth data with a minimum mapping unit of 250 m 2 , we found that Esri had the highest overall accuracy (75%) compared to DW (72%) and WC (65%). Across all global maps, water was the most accurately mapped class (92%), followed by built area (83%), tree cover (81%) and crops (78%), particularly in biomes characterized by temperate and boreal forests. The classes with the lowest accuracies, particularly in the tundra biome, included shrub and scrub (47%), grass (34%), bare ground (57%) and flooded vegetation (53%). When using European ground truth data from LUCAS (Land Use/Cover Area Frame Survey) with a minimum mapping unit of <100 m 2 , we found that WC had the highest accuracy (71%) compared to DW (66%) and Esri (63%), highlighting the ability of WC to resolve landscape elements with more detail compared to DW and Esri. Although not analyzed in our study, we discuss the relative advantages of DW due to its frequent and near real-time data delivery of both categorical predictions and class probability scores. We recommend that the use of global LULC products should involve critical evaluation of their suitability with respect to the application purpose, such as aggregate changes in ecosystem accounting versus site-specific change detection in monitoring, considering trade-offs between thematic resolution, global versus. local accuracy, class-specific biases and whether change analysis is necessary. We also emphasize the importance of not estimating areas from pixel-counting alone but adopting best practices in design-based inference and area estimation that quantify uncertainty for a given study area.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2023

Trade and Climate Mitigation Interactions Create Agro–Economic Opportunities With Social and Environmental Trade–Offs in Latin America and the Caribbean

The Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) region plays key roles in both meeting global agricultural demands and maintaining carbon sinks due to its abundant land and water resources. In this study we use the Global Change Analysis Model (GCAM) to evaluate the opportunities and challenges posed by two global-scale drivers: agricultural market integration (i.e., reduction of trade barriers) and land-based climate mitigation policy. We evaluate their potential individual and combined impacts on agricultural production and trade revenues across LAC’s economies through mid-century, as well as the resulting impacts on agricultural consumers and integrated land-water-climate systems across the region’s diverse sub-regions. Increased global market integration results in increased agricultural production and trade revenues for many LAC economies driven by their evolving comparative advantages. Climate mitigation measures on CO 2 and non-CO 2 greenhouse gases increase revenues due to increased agricultural prices from land competition and emissions abatement. The combined outcomes from both drivers are complex and sometimes non-linear, highlighting the importance of understanding the interactions between multiple drivers. Our results show that increased agricultural production and trade opportunities pose significant trade-offs that require careful multi-sectoral planning, such as emissions reduction challenges, potential loss of livestock production when pursuing land-based climate mitigation strategies, increased consumer expenditures, and changes in land-use or water withdrawals, resulting in deforestation or water scarcity pressures. There is considerable heterogeneity in economic and environmental outcomes across LAC sub-regions and agricultural commodities, illustrating the value of considering outcomes at finer scales.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2023

Supply chain system for a centralized biorefinery system based on switchgrass grown on marginal land in Michigan

The feedstock supply chain of a biorefinery is critical in determining the economic and environmental performance of biofuels. This study investigated various feedstock supply chains for a centralized biorefinery based on different objective functions and how the biorefinery responds to supply chain volatility. For the analysis, a hypothetical centralized biorefinery was supplied by switchgrass grown on marginal lands in Michigan. From an economic standpoint, the minimum biofuel selling price is an important metric of the objective function, and the greenhouse gas mitigation potential is a similarly important metric for global warming impact. A trade-off therefore exists between the economic and environmental performance of biofuels under this system configuration. However, when a carbon tax credit is applied to soil organic carbon sequestration in switchgrass production, the metric of the objective function may not be the key factor in establishing a supply chain as long as it is associated with biorefinery capacity as well as economic or environmental values. Year-to-year fluctuations in cellulosic biomass yield (supply chain volatility) might also prevent the biorefinery from operating at full capacity. Cellulosic biomass pellets can serve as an auxiliary feedstock for the centralized cellulosic biorefinery system to minimize the impacts of supply chain volatility.

09 BIOMASS FUELS↗
DOE OSTI2026

BLEECAM™ (Benchmarking Life Cycle Environmental, Economic, and Social Metrics for Critical and Advanced Minerals and Materials) [SWR-25-125]

The National Laboratory of the Rockies' (NLR) Benchmarking Life Cycle Environmental, Economic, and Social Metrics for Critical and Advanced Minerals and Materials (BLEECAM™) is an open-source, integrated decision-support tool for evaluating the impacts, risks, and trade-offs across U.S. and global materials supply chains. Funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, BLEECAM supports supply chain and market analysis. The tool integrates multi-objective supply chain optimization, system dynamics, network design, lifecycle assessment, techno-economic modeling, and social impact assessment methods to evaluate how supply chains evolve over time, geography, and deployment scenarios. BLEECAM also supports analysis related to energy infrastructure, data centers and digital infrastructure, advanced manufacturing, and other sectors that depend on critical materials.

Khalifa, SherifA. [National Laboratory of the Rock↗
DOE OSTI2022

Seasonality and trade in hydro-heavy electricity markets: A case study with the West Africa Power Pool (WAPP)

Hydroelectric power plants account for 25% of West Africa's total installed capacity. In general, electricity generated by these plants is seasonal and intra-annual fluctuation has a considerable impact on electricity supply and cross-border electricity trade. We soft-linked a global hydrologic model to a multi-region capacity expansion and planning model for the West Africa Power Pool (WAPP) to examine the effects of seasonality in hydropower electricity generation on electricity trade, as well as the economic benefits of unconstrained cross-border electricity trade. We found that transitioning from rainy to dry season decreases hydroelectricity generation by an average of 40% in a normal year across the region. Between 2018 and 2050, satisfying the region's electricity demand will require significant capital investment; nevertheless, extending from current bilateral electricity trade agreements to a fully competitive cross-border electricity trade will result in net annual savings of $3 billion in 2015 USD. To achieve year-round energy security, countries should plan ahead and diversify their energy sources to ensure that supply reliability can be maintained in the case of lower supply during the dry season.

13 HYDRO ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2021

Observational constraints on low cloud feedback reduce uncertainty of climate sensitivity

Marine low clouds strongly cool the planet. How this cooling effect will respond to climate change is a leading source of uncertainty in climate sensitivity, the planetary warming resulting from CO 2 doubling. In this study, we observationally constrain this low cloud feedback at a near-global scale. Satellite observations are used to estimate the sensitivity of low clouds to interannual meteorological perturbations. Combined with model predictions of meteorological changes under greenhouse warming, this permits quantification of spatially resolved cloud feedbacks. We predict positive feedbacks from midlatitude low clouds and eastern ocean stratocumulus, nearly unchanged trade cumulus and a near-global marine low cloud feedback of 0.19 ± 0.12 W m -2 K -1 (90% confidence). These constraints imply a moderate climate sensitivity (~3 K). Despite improved midlatitude cloud feedback simulation by several current-generation climate models, their erroneously positive trade cumulus feedbacks produce unrealistically high climate sensitivities. Conversely, models simulating erroneously weak low cloud feedbacks produce unrealistically low climate sensitivities.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗