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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 OSTI2022

Assessing the efficiency implications of renewable fuel policy design in the United States

Abstract Obligated parties have chosen to comply with the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) by increasing the blending of biomass‐based biodiesel beyond originally targeted levels rather than increasing blending/consumption of ethanol to targeted levels that would have required pricing higher blends of ethanol (E85) at or below an energy‐equivalent level to E10. This paper develops a welfare‐economic framework to analyze the extent to which the nested design and the accompanying cellulosic waiver credit and biodiesel tax credit contributed to a compliance strategy by blenders that favored blending of biodiesel instead of inducing consumption of E85, and its implications for social welfare.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2021

Challenges in simulating economic effects of climate change on global agricultural markets

Abstract Many approaches have been used to investigate climate change impacts on agriculture. However, several caveats remain in this field: (i) analyses focus only on a few major crops, (ii) large differences in yield impacts are observed between projections from site-based crops models and Global Gridded Crop Models (GGCMs), (iii) climate change impacts on livestock are rarely quantified, and (iv) several causal relations among biophysical, environmental, and socioeconomic aspects are usually not taken into account. We investigate how assumptions about these four aspects affect agricultural markets, food supply, consumer well-being, and land use at global level by deploying a large-scale socioeconomic model of the global economy with detailed representation of the agricultural sector. We find global welfare impacts several times larger when climate impacts all crops and all livestock compared to a scenario with impacts limited to major crops. At the regional level, food budget can decrease by 10 to 25% in developing countries, challenging food security. The role of land area expansion as a major source of adaptation is highlighted. Climate impacts on crop yields from site-based process crop models generate more challenging socioeconomic outcomes than those from GGCMs. We conclude that the agricultural research community should expand efforts to estimate climate impacts on many more crops and livestock. Also, careful comparison of the GGCMs and traditional site-based process crop models is needed to understand their major implications for agricultural and food markets.

Gurgel, Angelo C. (ORCID:0000000183319508)↗
DOE OSTI2020

A comparison study on trading behavior and profit distribution in local energy transaction games

With the increasing integration of distributed energy resources, localized peer-to-peer energy transactions are receiving more attention since they could absorb more distributed renewables locally and stabilize the power grid. To better study the trading behavior and provide guidance for a viable local market design, different game-theoretical frameworks including cooperative and non-cooperative games are established and compared here. For the cooperative grand coalition, the maximum social welfare is guaranteed, the Shapley value and bargaining based approaches are implemented for further profit redistribution. It is shown that the asymmetrical bargaining power can be critical in the final payment clearing and it is equivalent to the Shapley value allocation if prosumers bargain based on their marginal contributions. Non-cooperative trading is formulated by using a Stackelberg bilevel model in which the upper level has the privilege in internal price setting. However, system optimum is not obtained due to competition, and the selfish leader could take away 89% of the collective benefit by price-gap based arbitraging. Aiming for a long-lasting trading market, a virtual benevolent leader and a uniform price structure in which purchase price equals selling price are tested. Experimental results indicate that maximum social welfare and a fairer profit allocation can be achieved with a uniform price structure, regardless of the selfish or benevolent attitude.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2023

Equity implications of net-zero emissions: A multi-model analysis of energy expenditures across income classes under economy-wide deep decarbonization policies

With companies, states, and countries targeting net-zero emissions around midcentury, there are questions about how these targets alter household welfare and finances, including distributional effects across income groups. This paper examines the distributional dimensions of technology transitions and net-zero policies with a focus on welfare impacts across household incomes. The analysis uses a model intercomparison with a range of energy-economy models using harmonized policy scenarios reaching economy-wide, net-zero CO 2 emissions across the United States in 2050. Here we employ a novel linking approach that connects output from detailed energy system models with survey microdata on energy expenditures across income classes to provide distributional analysis of net-zero policies. Although there are differences in model structure and input assumptions, we find broad agreement in qualitative trends in policy incidence and energy burdens across income groups. Models generally agree that direct energy expenditures for many households will likely decline over time with reference and net-zero policies. However, there is variation in the extent of changes relative to current levels, energy burdens relative to reference levels, and electricity expenditures. Policy design, primarily how climate policy revenues are used, has first-order impacts on distributional outcomes. Net-zero policy costs, in both absolute and relative terms, are unevenly distributed across households, and relative increases in energy expenditures are higher for lowest-income households. However, we also find that recycled revenues from climate policies have countervailing effects when rebated on a per-capita basis, offsetting higher energy burdens and potentially even leading to net progressive outcomes. Model results also show carbon Laffer curves, where revenues from net-zero policies increase but then decline with higher stringencies, which can diminish the progressive effects of climate policies. We also illustrate how using annual income deciles for distributional analysis instead of expenditure deciles can overstate the progressivity of emissions policies by overweighting revenue impacts on the lowest-income deciles.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2024

Tax Credits for Clean Electricity: The Distributional Impacts of Supply-Push Policies in the Power Sector

We evaluate distributional and efficiency consequences of the bulk power clean electricity tax credits authorized by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. To do so, we link detailed electricity capacity expansion, computable general equilibrium, microsimulation, and air pollution models to estimate economic welfare and health incidence across demographic groups. We evaluate trade-offs between policy efficiency and income progressivity by comparing the tax credits to cap-and-trade policies. The tax credits encourage increased clean electricity investment, resulting in a reallocation of capital from elsewhere in the economy, higher prices for capital and other goods, lower power prices, and lower emissions. The tax credits yield progressive outcomes for economic welfare at the expense of efficiency while all modeled policies demonstrate progressivity in health impacts. The health benefits, absent climate benefits, exceed total policy costs and provide greater benefits for low-income and historically marginalized households given coincidence of household locations and emissions exposure intensity.

distributional impacts↗
DOE OSTI2021

Ethical, legal and social implications of human genome studies in radiation research: a workshop report for studies on atomic bomb survivors at the Radiation Effects Research Foundation

The Radiation Effects Research Foundation (RERF) is the primary organization in Japan dedicated to studying the health consequences of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings in World War II. In December 2020, RERF held a virtual international workshop on the ethical, legal and social implications (ELSI) of genome studies. In this workshop, the ELSI considerations of future human genome studies on radiation research including atomic bomb survivors and their families were discussed. Since genome sequencing (GS) is now practical and affordable, RERF now plans GS of parents/child trios to examine genetic effects of atomic bomb radiation. As such studies may engender some novel risks and benefits, ethics review and engagement with families (including consent) need to be considered. These include protection of individual privacy, use of samples from deceased prior participants, return of results to the participants, public sharing of genome data and advance science and social welfare. Specifically with regard to social welfare, the results of such studies may have implications for public and government decision-making regarding social benefits of victims and other important questions. Based on these broad-ranging discussions we have developed the following concepts to guide this work: “trust,” “compromise” and “relationship building,” inclusive of the concerned stakeholders, scientific aims and Japanese society at large. We conclude that in order to realize, establish and maintain these concepts, it is essential to put procedures into place to ensure the successful, consensus-based implementation of the RERF studies.

63 RADIATION, THERMAL, AND OTHER ENVIRON. POLLUTAN↗
DOE OSTI2024

A Decentralized Market Mechanism for Energy Communities under Operating Envelopes

Here, we propose an operating envelopes (OEs) aware energy community market mechanism that dynamically charges/rewards its members based on two-part pricing. The OEs are imposed exogenously by a regulated distribution system operator (DSO) on the energy community's revenue meter and is subject to a generalized net energy metering (NEM) tariff design. By formulating the interaction of the community operator and its members as a Stackelberg game, we show that the proposed two-part pricing achieves a Nash equilibrium and maximizes the community's social welfare in a decentralized fashion while ensuring that the community's operation abides by the OEs. The market mechanism conforms with the cost-causation principle and guarantees community members a surplus level no less than their maximum surplus when they autonomously face the DSO. The dynamic and uniform community price is a monotonically decreasing function of the community's aggregate renewable generation. We also analyze the impact of exogenous parameters such as NEM rates and OEs on the value of joining the community. Lastly, through numerical studies, we showcase the community's welfare, and pricing, and compare its members' surplus to customers under the DSO's regime.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2020

Selling Demand Response Using Options

Wholesale electricity markets in many jurisdictions use a two-settlement structure: a day-ahead market for bulk power transactions and a real-time market for fine-grain supply-demand balancing. This paper explores trading demand response assets within this two-settlement market structure. Here, we consider two approaches for trading demand response assets: (a) an intermediate spot market with contingent pricing, and (b) an over-the-counter options contract. In the first case, we characterize the competitive equilibrium of the spot market, and show that it is socially optimal. Economic orthodoxy advocates spot markets, but these require expensive infrastructure and regulatory blessing. In the second case, we characterize competitive equilibria and compare its efficiency with the idealized spot market. Options contract are private bilateral over-the-counter transactions and do not require regulatory approval. We show that the optimal social welfare is, in general, not supported. We then design optimal option prices that minimize the social welfare gap. This optimal design serves to approximate the ideal spot market for demand response using options with modest loss of efficiency. Our results are validated through numerical simulations.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2021

Pricing and Energy Trading in Peer-to-Peer Zero Marginal-Cost Microgrids

Efforts to utilize 100% renewable energy in community microgrids require new approaches to energy markets and transactions to efficiently address periods of scarce energy supply. In this paper we contribute to the promising approach of peer-to-peer (P2P) energy trading in two main ways: analysis of a centralized, welfare-maximizing economic dispatch that characterizes optimal price and allocations, and a novel P2P system for negotiating energy trades that yields physically feasible and at least weakly Pareto-optimal outcomes. Our main results are 1) that optimal pricing is insufficient to induce agents with batteries to take optimal actions, 2) a novel P2P algorithm to addresses this while keeping private information, 3) a formal proof that this algorithm converges to the centralized solution in the case of two agents negotiating for a single period, and 4) numerical simulations of the P2P algorithm performance with up to 10 agents and 24 periods that show it converges on average to total welfare within 0.1% of the social optimum in on the order of 10s to 100s of iterations, increasing with the number of agents, time periods, and total storage capacity.

batteries↗
DOE OSTI2022

E-transit-bench: simulation platform for analyzing electric public transit bus fleet operations

When electrified transit systems make grid aware choices, improved social welfare is achieved by reducing grid stress, reducing system loss, and minimizing power quality issues. Electrifying transit fleet has numerous challenges like non availability of buses during charging, varying charging costs and so on, that are related the electric grid behavior. However, transit systems do not have access to the information about the co-evolution of the grid's power flow and therefore cannot account for the power grid's needs in its day-to-day operation. In this paper we propose a framework of transportation-grid co-simulation, analyzing the spatio-temporal interaction between the transit operations with electric buses and the power distribution grid. Real-world data for a day's traffic from Chattanooga city's transit system is simulated in SUMO and integrated with a realistic distribution grid simulation (using GridLAB-D) to understand the grid impact due to transit electrification. Charging information is obtained from the transportation simulation to feed into grid simulation to assess the impact of charging. We also discuss the impact to the grid with higher degree of transit electrification that further necessitates such an integrated transportation-grid co-simulation to operate the integrated system optimally. Our future work includes extending the platform for optimizing the charging and trip assignment operations.

Sen, Rishav↗
DOE OSTI2020

Land Use in Computable General Equilibrium Models

Constant Elasticity of Transformation (CET) functions are widely used to allocate land across uses in Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) models. These models fail to maintain area of land in balance. Several ways have been used or offered to fix this problem. This paper first examines the extent to which the CET approach may generate imbalances in area of land and identifies determinants of such imbalances. It then evaluates the merits, properties, and welfare impacts of the available approaches that restore area of land in balance. We show that heterogeneity in land prices (land rents) is the main source of imbalance in area of land, not the curvature of the CET function. Furthermore, we show that the available approaches that restore area of land in balance either introduce ad hoc adjustments in land allocation or undermine the conventional welfare assessments of the CET results and ignore the opportunity costs of land transformation. The CGE models which applied stochastic productivity distribution functions to allocate land among uses maintain area of land in balance, but they suffer from important limitations and ignore costs of land transformation.

Taheripour, Farzad↗
DOE OSTI2023

Tax Credits for Clean Electricity: The Distributional Impacts of Supply-Push Policies in the Power Sector

We evaluate distributional and efficiency consequences of the bulk power clean electricity tax credits authorized by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. To do so, we link detailed electricity capacity expansion, computable general equilibrium, data-rich microsimulation, and air pollution models to estimate the policy incidence in terms of economic welfare and health impacts across a wide range of demographic groups. We evaluate the tradeoff between policy efficiency and income progressivity by comparing the tax credits to cap-and-trade policies that vary revenue recycling approaches. Under the scenarios analyzed the bulk power tax credits lead to increased clean electricity technology deployment resulting in a reallocation of capital from elsewhere in the economy, higher prices for capital and other goods, lower power prices, and lower emissions. The tax credits yield progressive outcomes for both economic welfare and health impacts. The health benefits exceed total policy costs and provide greater benefits for low-income and historically-marginalized households given the coincidence of household and emission source locations.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
NASA NTRS2017

New Development in NASA's Rodent Research Hardware for Conducting Long Duration Biomedical and Basic Research in Space

Animal models, particularly rodents, are the foundation of pre-clinical research to understand human diseases and evaluate new therapeutics, and play a key role in advancing biomedical discoveries both on Earth and in space. The National Research Councils Decadal survey emphasized the importance of expanding NASAs life sciences research to perform long duration, rodent experiments on the International Space Station (ISS). To accomplish this objective, flight hardware, operations, and science capabilities were developed at NASA Ames Research Center (ARC) to enhance science return for both commercial (CASIS) and government-sponsored rodent research. The Rodent Research program at NASA ARC has pioneered a new research capability on the International Space Station and has progressed toward translating research to the ISS utilizing commercial rockets, collaborating with academia and science industry, while training crewmembers to assist in performing research on orbit. Throughout phases of these missions, our practices, hardware and operations have evolved from tested to developed standards, and we are able to modify and customize our procedure and operations for mission specific requirements. The Rodent Research Habitat is capable of providing a living environment for animals on ISS according to standard animal welfare requirements. Using the cameras in the Habitat, the Rodent Research team has the ability to perform daily health checks on animals, and further analyze the collected videos for behavioral studies. A recent development of the Rodent Research hardware is inclusion of enrichment, to provide the animals the ability to rest and huddle. The Enrichment Hut is designed carefully for adult mice (up to 35 week old) within animal welfare, engineering, and operations constraints. The Hut is made out of the same stainless steel mesh as the cage interior, it has an ingress and an egress to allow animals move freely, and a hinge door to allow crewmembers remove the animals easily. The Rodent Research team has also developed Live Animal Return (LAR) capability, which will be implemented during Rodent Research-5 mission for the first time. The animals will be transported from the Habitat to a Transporter, which will return on the Dragon capsule and splashes down in the Pacific Ocean. Once SpaceX retrieves the Dragon, all powered payloads will be transferred to a SeaVan and transferred to the Long Beach pier. The NASA team then receives the transporter and delivers to a PI-designated laboratory within 120 mile radius of Long Beach. This is a significant improvement allowing researchers to examine animals within 72 hrs. of reentry or to conduct recovery experiments. Together, the hardware improvements and experience that the Rodent Research team has gained working with principal investigators and ISS crew to conduct complex experiments on orbit are expanding capabilities for long duration rodent research on the ISS to achieve both basic science and biomedical objectives.

ISS↗
NASA NTRS1997

Effect of environmental enrichment devices on behaviors of single- and group-housed squirrel monkeys (Saimiri sciureus)

Squirrel monkeys display an interest in novel places, habituate to new situations, and spend most of their daily activity in the wild in large groups engaging in feeding behaviors over a broad area. Captivity limits these behaviors and consequently may disrupt normal social organizations. In captivity, squirrel monkeys may exhibit stereotypical behaviors that are believed to indicate decreased psychologic well-being. When a monkey's behavior can be made to approach that seen in the wild, and stereotypical behaviors are minimal, it is assumed that psychologic well-being is adequate. Environmental enrichment devices have been used to address the Animal Welfare Act requirement that psychologic well-being of captive nonhuman primates be considered. The purpose of the study reported here was to examine whether various environmental enrichment devices improve the psychologic well-being of captive squirrel monkeys. In the study, we used behavioral observation to quantify the effectiveness of several environmental enrichment devices for reducing stereotypical behaviors in squirrel monkeys housed alone or in groups. Analysis of our results revealed that the environmental enrichment devices did not affect the expression of normal or stereotypical behaviors, but that the type of housing did.

NASA Discipline Neuroscience↗
NASA NTRS1992

The Language Research Center's Computerized Test System for environmental enrichment and psychological assessment

In the spring of 1987, we undertook to provide environmental enrichment to nonhuman primate subjects in ways that would complement and even contribute to the bio-behaviorial science that justified the monkeys' captivity. Of course, the psychological well-being of captive primates--and indeed all research species-- has been an area of intense research activity since the 1985 amendment of the Animal Welfare Act. This mandate for researchers to ensure the psychological, as well as physical, fitness of experimental animals catalyzed the humane and scientific interests of the research community. The contemporary literature is replete with proposed means both of assaying and of providing enrichment and well-being. Notwithstanding, consensus on either assessment or intervention has yet to be reached. The paradigm we employed was modelled after successful efforts with chimpanzees. An automated test system was constructed in which subjects responded to computer tasks by manipulating a joystick. The tasks, interactive game-like versions of many of the classic testing paradigms of cognitive and comparative psychology, permitted the controlled presentation of stimuli and demands without the required presence of a human experimenter. Despite significant barriers to the success, rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) and a variety of other primate species (including, of course, humans) have mastered the skills necessary for testing in this paradigm. Previous experiments have illustrated the utility of the test system for addressing questions of learning, memory, attention, perception, and motivation. Additional data have been reported to support the contention that the Language Research Center's Computerized Test System (LRC-CTS) serves its other raison d'etre--providing environmental enrichment and assessing psychological well-being. This paper is designed to augment previous descriptions of the technology and the paradigm for scientists and caretakers interested in environmental enrichment and performance assessment with primates.

Non-NASA Center↗
DOE OSTI2025

Bio‐Inspired Cascade Photocatalysis on Fe Single‐Atom Carbon Nitride Upcycles Plastic Wastes for Effective Acetic Acid Production

Plastic imposes a critical threat to the environment, ecosystems, and human health because of the low utilization efficiency of plastics. Here, we demonstrate a sustainable, highly efficient cascade photocatalysis for upcycle plastics to value-added acetic acid using Fe single-atom catalysts (Fe@C 3 N 4 SAC) at ambient conditions. Inspired by Phanerochaete chrysosporium microbial, the defective Fe@C 3 N 4 SAC acts as a bifunctional cascade photocatalyst for both Fenton-like and CO 2 reduction reactions. During the reaction, hydroxyl radicals (*OH) form and subsequently oxidize plastics into CO 2 intermediates. These CO 2 intermediates are then photo-reduced to CH 3 COOH on the same catalyst via cascade photocatalysis. The mechanism is confirmed by in situ multimodal microscopy and spectroscopies, with density functional theory calculations. A state-of-art CH 3 COOH yield of 63.8 mg h −1 gcat −1 from PVC, 12.7 mg h −1 gcat −1 from PE, 5.4 mg h −1 gcat −1 from PET, and 5.3 mg h −1 gcat −1 from PP are directly obtained under AM1.5G solar irradiation and further validated under real sunlight (≈0.6 sun), achieving 5.6 mg h −1 gcat −1 from PET, using low-cost Fe@C 3 N 4 SAC in a sealed reactor by enhancing the photon transport and utilization efficiency. The techno-economic analysis shows it is promising to practically mitigate plastic based on broader social welfare assessments.

cascade photocatalysis↗
DOE OSTI2025

Unveiling the drivers contributing to global wheat yield shocks through quantile regression

Sudden reductions in crop yield (i.e., yield shocks) severely disrupt the food supply, intensify food insecurity, depress farmers' welfare, and worsen a country's economic conditions. Here, we study the spatiotemporal patterns of wheat yield shocks, quantified by the lower quantiles of yield fluctuations, in 86 countries over 30 years. Furthermore, we assess the relationships between shocks and their key ecological and socioeconomic drivers using quantile regression based on statistical (linear quantile mixed model) and machine learning (quantile random forest) models. Using a panel dataset that captures spatiotemporal patterns of yield shocks and possible drivers in 86 countries, we find that the severity of yield shocks has been increasing globally since 1997. Moreover, our cross-validation exercise shows that quantile random forest outperforms the linear quantile regression model. Despite this performance difference, both models consistently reveal that the severity of shocks is associated with higher weather stress, nitrogen fertilizer application rate, and gross domestic product (GDP) per capita (a typical indicator for economic and technological advancement in a country). While the unexpected negative association between more severe wheat yield shocks and higher fertilizer application rate and GDP per capita does not imply a direct causal effect, they indicate that the advancement in wheat production has been primarily on achieving higher yields and less on lowering the possibility and magnitude of sharp yield reductions. Hence, in the context of growing extreme weather stress, there is a critical need to enhance the technology and management practices that mitigate yield shocks to improve the resilience of the world food systems.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗