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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 19 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2025

Causal Directions Matter: How Environmental Factors Drive Convective Cloud Detrainment Heights

This study investigates how environmental factors influence the level of maximum detrainment (LMD) in deep convective clouds. Through a novel application of the Linear Non‐Gaussian Acyclic Model (LiNGAM), we discover causal structures between environmental variables and LMD, observed at six tropical sites operated by the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) user facility. LiNGAM effectively identifies causal directions among variables of interest, revealing robust relationships such as those among the lifting condensation level (LCL), level of free convection (LFC), and convective inhibition (CIN), aligning with prior knowledge. Relative humidity is shown to directly influence LMD; however, this relationship exhibits strong nonlinearity and becomes difficult to detect when the contrast between oceanic and continental environments is excluded from the analysis. This study highlights the importance of establishing causal relationships before performing statistical inference.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2025

Environmental Performance Report 2024: Annual Site Environmental Report per the U.S. Department of Energy Order 231.1B Chg 1

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory's (NREL's) Environmental Performance Report provides a description of the laboratory's environmental management activities in calendar year 2024, including information on environmental and sustainability performance, environmental compliance activities and status, and environmental protection programs, highlights, and successes. The purpose of this report is to ensure that the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the public receive timely, accurate information about events that have positively affected or could adversely affect the health and safety of the public or workers, the environment, or the operations of DOE facilities. This report meets the DOE requirements of the Annual Site Environmental Report (ASER) and has been prepared in accordance with DOE Order 231.1B Chg 1, Environment, Safety and Health Reporting.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2026

Environmental Performance Report 2025: Annual Site Environmental Report per the U.S. Department of Energy Order 231.1B Chg 1

The National Laboratory of the Rockies (NLR) Environmental Performance Report provides a description of the laboratory's environmental management activities in calendar year 2025, including information on environmental performance, environmental compliance activities and status, and environmental protection programs, highlights, and successes. The purpose of this report is to ensure that the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the public receive timely, accurate information about events that have positively affected or could adversely affect the health and safety of the public or workers, the environment, or the operations of DOE facilities. This report meets the DOE requirements of the Annual Site Environmental Report (ASER) and has been prepared in accordance with DOE Order 231.1B Chg 1, Environment, Safety and Health Reporting.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2025

Comprehensive Database of Environmental Mitigations Extracted from FERC-Licensed Hydropower Projects Using Artificial Intelligence Techniques, 1998-2023

This dataset provides a comprehensive inventory of environmental mitigation measures required by Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) licensed hydropower facilities from 461 licenses that were issued from 1998 to 2023. These licenses constitute 446 of the 1015 FERC projects that were active at the end of 2023. 17,612 mentions of environmental mitigations were identified and categorized in 128 unique categories. Mitigations were identified using a Natural Language Processing (NLP) approach, specifically with a Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformer (BERT) model. Model-derived results were then reviewed and updated by a subject matter expert as needed. This dataset introduces important enhancements to previous efforts to inventory environmental mitigations, such as including associated license text for each mitigation, tracking the number of instances a mitigation was identified within a license, and providing improved location information. These enhancements significantly expand the dataset's utility, offering greater analytical capabilities and ensuring reproducibility. The dataset is downloadable as a zip file containing the metadata and dataset files.

Ruggles, Thomas [Oak Ridge National Laboratory (OR↗
DOE OSTI2026

American cities in a time of global environmental change: the case of the Baltimore Social-Environmental Collaborative

The Baltimore Social-Environmental Collaborative (BSEC) Urban Integrated Field Laboratory seeks a new paradigm for urban climate research. Motivated by deep uncertainties in urban climate and the future of urban systems, BSEC works collaboratively across institutions and stakeholder groups to co-generate the science needed to advance energy security and resilience to extreme events across the city of Baltimore, Maryland, USA, and to do so in a manner that can inform similar efforts in other cities. BSEC begins with stakeholder priorities (health, affordable energy, etc) and designs observation networks and models to deliver climate science to address them. This takes the form of an iterative collaborative cycle, in which an initial research strategy is repeatedly updated in conversation with community partners, and researchers and stakeholders learn from each other. To date, this cycle has included multiple rounds of collaborative deliberation on urban heat mitigation, in which a multicriteria decision tool has been updated with more community-relevant spatial structure and modified optimization metrics. The guiding objective of this cycle is to inform potential ‘secure and resilient pathways’ for energy and infrastructure. In doing so, BSEC addresses fundamental urban science questions in natural and social sciences. It also tests our ability to integrate this science in a manner that advances participatory decision-making for urban resilience.

climate↗
DOE OSTI2025

Environmental life cycle assessment methods applied to amine-ionic liquid hybrid CO 2 absorbents

A hybrid solvent mixture of triethyl(octyl)phosphonium cyanopyrrolide [P2228][2-CNPyr] and aqueous monoethanolamine (MEA) has the potential for absorbing CO 2 from post combustion flue gas. However, previous studies have found that the production of phosphonium based ionic liquids (IL) had significantly higher potential environmental impacts compared to MEA. Literature attributes these higher environmental impacts to the phosphine and phosgene-based intermediates required to produce the phosphonium ion of the ionic liquid. This study proposes a novel synthesis pathway that eliminates the need for phosphine and phosgene intermediates in the production of [P2228][2-CNPyr]. The environmental impacts of producing 1kg of the ionic liquid through this novel synthesis route was evaluated using the TRACI 2.1 methodology within the life cycle assessment (LCA) framework. Additionally, the environmental impacts for the production of 1kg of a hybrid solvent was also evaluated and compared against MEA. The life cycle inventory for the production of the IL and its hybrid solvent were calculated based on the stoichiometry and then scaled up. This study found that the IL and its hybrid solvents had higher environmental impacts among 9 of the 10 environmental impact categories calculated by the TRACI 2.1 methodology, except for the ecotoxicity potential. A sensitivity analysis indicated that these solvents were more sensitive to the assumptions of the material requirements of the phosphonium cation than the overall energy or transportation requirements. Despite this sensitivity, both the solvents demonstrated a lower Ecotoxicity Potential compared to MEA, the rest of the environmental impacts were still found to be higher than that of MEA, thereby underscoring the need to investigate novel synthesis routes for the production of phosphonium cation. The uncertainty analysis performed confirmed the findings that the IL has a higher environmental impact potentials across all categories except ecotoxicity potential. The uncertainty analysis also confirms that the phosphonium cation is a major hotspot in production route of these solvents and a source of uncertainty in the model compared to the anion. Altogether, this study underscores the need for investigating novel green chemistry pathway for the synthesis of phosphonium based ionic liquids, such as [P2228][2-CNPyr], to ensure that the these ILs can be a truly green alternative to MEA by not only offering superior CO₂ capture capacity compared to MEA but also being sustainably produced.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2025

Environmental Impacts of Closed-Loop Pumped Storage Hydropower

The goal of this report is to help license applicants, resource agencies, and other members of the hydropower community involved in closed-loop pumped storage hydropower permitting and licensing process, focus the scope of environmental reviews, and more quickly identify impacts with project nexus and potential mitigation measures for these impacts. Pumped storage hydropower (PSH) is an energy storage technology that uses energy to pump water up from a lower reservoir to an upper reservoir where water is stored until electricity is needed and the water is released to a lower reservoir passing through turbines. Closed-loop PSH—PSH that is not continuously connected to a naturally flowing water feature—is one of the lowest greenhouse gas emitting energy storage technologies and is therefore a critical part of the transition to renewable energy (Simon et al. 2023). Proposals for closed-loop PSH facilities in the United States currently account for more than 40% of original licenses and 99% of potential generation capacity in the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) hydropower licensing pipeline (Johnson et al. 2023). While closed-loop PSH facilities can have lower environmental impacts than open-loop PSH facilities, no closed-loop facilities have been constructed in the United States to enable direct accounting of project impacts and efficacy of mitigations. Many proposals for closed-loop PSH submitted to FERC are abandoned early in the permitting and licensing process prior to license applications and environmental assessments, so there is little documentation describing potential project impacts and proposed mitigations. The newness of closed-loop PSH proposals in the United States may mean that tribal, federal, and state agencies with authorities for cultural and natural resources protection and management involved in the FERC licensing process may not have experience with closed-loop PSH regulation. Moreover, many proposed closed-loop PSH facilities are in areas that do not have high concentrations of conventional hydropower, so these agencies may also be unfamiliar with the FERC hydropower licensing process. The goal of this report is to help license applicants, resource agencies, and other members of the hydropower community focus the scope of environmental review for the closed-loop PSH development, licensing, and federal authorization process enabling quicker identification of potential impacts, mitigations, and situations where mitigation may not be possible. We found that environmental impacts of closed-loop PSH are highly site-specific, and generalizations about the types of environmental impacts across closed-loop PSH projects are difficult to make. Environmental impacts of closed-loop PSH are like those for open-loop PSH with a few exceptions including water sourcing, which can lead to delays and contention due to potential complexities with water rights, impacts to aquatic resources, and greenhouse gas emission potential. Cultural resource impacts were commonly reported in National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) documents reviewed and discussed in interviews, but in many cases such impacts cannot be mitigated.

13 HYDRO ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2026

Development and application of an environmental risk register for marine energy device and project developers

The marine energy industry is steadily advancing as more devices are deployed worldwide. However, several challenges and barriers remain, such as lingering uncertainty regarding the potential environmental effects of marine energy devices on marine animals, habitats, and ecosystems. Concerns have led to difficulty navigating permitting and consenting processes and receiving authorization to deploy devices in the marine environment, including extended timelines and costs. Based on existing risk registers, a novel marine energy environmental risk register was created to help the marine energy industry move beyond these barriers. This risk register aims to aid marine energy device and project developers identify and assess potential environmental risks early in device design or project planning, document and track potential environmental interactions, prioritize risks and determine risk responses, and make decisions throughout device or project development. It can also be used as a tool to assist in communicating with regulators and advisors during permitting processes and to inform stakeholder and community engagement efforts. This paper details the methods and process to develop a risk register specific to environmental effects of marine energy and describes two use cases (one for wave energy and another for tidal energy) to highlight example results. Due to the tool's novelty, the paper showcases its application for the marine energy industry and acknowledges limitations and possible future improvements. Overall, the environmental risk register shows promise to support marine energy developers when identifying, tracking, and addressing potential environmental risks and to help successfully navigate permitting and deploy marine energy devices responsibly.

Environmental effects↗
DOE OSTI2025

NEPATEC v2.0: Standardized Metadata and Text Corpus of National Environmental Policy Act Documents

The National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, as amended (NEPA), is a major environmental law in the United States, requiring Federal agencies to consider and document potential environmental impacts before deciding on a proposed action. Modernization of NEPA and permitting processes faces significant challenges due to the lack of standardized formats and interoperable systems for organizing and sharing NEPA-related information across agencies. Much of the information gathered during NEPA reviews is written into documents such as categorical exclusions, environmental assessments, and environmental impact statements, then filed in predominately independent agency file stores that may or may not be publicly accessible. The application of metadata and data standards, such as those recommended by the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), to NEPA documents offers a shared vocabulary and structure for key entities like projects, processes, and documents that can streamline information exchange and enhance collaboration across systems. In this work, we publicly release NEPATEC2.0, an expanded corpus of NEPA documents with associated metadata. NEPATEC2.0 encompasses approximately 120,000 documents from 60,000 projects prepared by more than 60 different agencies. Modeled to align with CEQ metadata standards, NEPATEC2.0 promotes consistency in environmental reviews and supports the ongoing effort to modernize permitting technologies by facilitating more transparent, efficient, and data-driven decision-making. Importantly, NEPATEC2.0 demonstrates the possibilities and limitations of large language model-based prompting to extract information from NEPA documents at scale.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2025

Systems Analysis and Optimization of Circular PET Packaging Supply Chains in the United States: Environmental and Socioeconomic Impacts

Many actions are underway at global, national, and local levels to address the plastic waste problem and transition toward a circular economy of plastics. Studies evaluating environmental and socioeconomic impacts of such a transition are lacking. Here, the purpose of this study is to conduct a national systems analysis of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) packaging supply chains in the United States. Material flow data was combined with environmental and socioeconomic indicators to evaluate and compare the sustainability of the linear PET packaging supply chain, current (2019) supply chain, and possible future circular supply chain options in the United States. Environmentally optimal circular US PET packaging material flows showed 31% and 38% savings of GHG emissions and energy demand, respectively, with a circularity of 77% when compared with a linear supply chain. Additionally, the environmentally optimal system showed higher employment (29%) and wages (31%) than a linear system, but with a 5% decrease in revenue generation. A socioeconomically optimal circular PET supply chain showed increased employment (by 52%), wages (by 67%), and revenues (by 1%), with a circularity of 59% when compared with the linear system. However, it showed 14% higher GHG emissions than a linear system, indicating a trade-off between environmentally and socioeconomically optimal circular PET packaging systems. Overall, linear-to-circular material flow transition may not necessarily lead to increased revenues and decreased environmental impacts of the entire system, but it does benefit society due to increased employment and wages. Future systems analysis work should focus on improving data quality for environmental and socioeconomic dimensions.

PET↗
DOE OSTI2025

Intraspecific Reaction Norm Variation Controls the Eco-Evolutionary Consequences of Environmental Change

As environmental change accelerates globally, understanding concurrent organismal, species, and community responses is increasingly vital. Here, we examine these collective responses by incorporating genotype-specific thermal reaction norms into an eco-evolutionary predator-prey model, allowing us to track simultaneous phenotypic, ecological, and evolutionary responses to environmental change within ecological communities. We show that the reaction norms expressed by genotypes within a population determine how a community switches between different eco-evolutionary outcomes with changes in temperature. We identify how different components of phenotypic variation in thermal reaction norms—environmental (E), additive environmental and genetic (E + G), and gene-by-environment interactions (G × E)—influence eco-evolutionary dynamics and outcomes as temperature changes. Furthermore, our findings underscore how complex eco-evolutionary responses to environmental change ultimately emerge from variation in reaction norms among genotypes, offering new mechanistic insights into environmental impacts on adaptation, the maintenance of phenotypic and genetic variation, and ecological stability, which is crucial for understanding and predicting eco-evolutionary effects of rapid environmental change in the future.

Eco-evolutionary↗
DOE OSTI2025

Argonne National Laboratory Site Environmental Report for Calendar Year 2024

This report discusses the status and accomplishments of the environmental protection program at Argonne National Laboratory for calendar year 2024. The status of Argonne environmental protection activities with respect to compliance with the various laws and regulations is discussed, along with environmental management, efficiency efforts, environmental corrective actions, and habitat restoration. To evaluate the effects of Argonne operations on the environment, samples of environmental media collected on the site, at the site boundary, and off the Argonne site were analyzed and compared with applicable guidelines and standards. A variety of radionuclides were measured in air, surface water, groundwater, and bottom sediment samples. In addition, chemical constituents in surface water, groundwater, and wastewater were analyzed. External penetrating radiation doses were measured, and the potential for radiation exposure to off-site population groups and on-site members of the public was estimated. Results are interpreted with respect to the origin of radioactive and chemical substances (i.e., natural, Argonne, and other) and are compared with applicable standards intended to protect human health and the environment. A U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) dose calculation methodology, based on International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) recommendations and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) CAP 88 computer code, was used in preparing this report.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2025

Review: Recent advances of ToF-SIMS for environmental analysis and imaging

Background: Time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (ToF-SIMS) is a powerful surface analysis technique, initially developed and applied in inorganic materials and semiconductors. In past decades, ToF-SIMS has attracted more attention in its analysis capabilities of organic materials, with increased applications in biology, medical, and health development. It has also become a versatile and effective tool in environmental analysis due to its high mass resolution, mass accuracy, and depth profiling. Results: In this review, we first give an overview of the principle of ToF-SIMS and follow with recent ToF-SIMS applications in exemplary environmental study cases, including atmospheric aerosol, soil, water, plant, and organic solvent analysis. Moreover, sample preparation techniques are summarized in relation to corresponding environmental applications. Specifically, we call attention to ToF-SIMS investigations showcasing studies in surface chemical compositions, images, and depth profile analysis. These findings emphasize the important role of interfacial chemistry in environmental processes and provide valuable insights into dynamic processes, such as chemical transformation, particle formation, plant biology, and microbial inspired biotechnology development. The mass spectral imaging results acquired by ToF-SIMS offer a deeper understanding of intermediate stages and transient phases for environmental specimens. Significance: In situ and operando imaging offer new possibilities in studying phenomena in real time with high spatial resolution. Furthermore, it is anticipated that more research groups will use ToF-SIMS in environmental research given recent advances in measurement capabilities and surging needs in chemical mapping of complex analytes and systems.

Aerosol↗
DOE OSTI2025

West Valley Demonstration Project (WVDP) Annual Site Environmental Report (ASER) for Calendar Year 2024

The report, prepared for the U.S. Department of Energy West Valley Demonstration Project office (DOE-WVDP), summarizes the environmental protection program at the WVDP for calendar year (CY) 2024. Monitoring and surveillance of the facilities used by the DOE are conducted to verify protection of public health and safety and the environment. The report is a key component of DOE’s effort to keep the public informed of environmental conditions at the WVDP. The quality assurance protocols applied to the environmental monitoring program ensure the validity and accuracy of the monitoring data. In addition to demonstrating compliance with environmental laws, regulations, and directives, evaluation of data collected in 2024 continued to indicate that WVDP activities pose no threat to public health or safety, or to the environment.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2025

Environmental life cycle of fentanyl: From the cradle to an unknown grave

The lack of available information on the presence and persistence of fentanyl in the environment is a significant gap in the technical literature. Although the origins of the opioid in the environment are well-known because they follow the same pathways of other drug-related environmental contaminants, the downstream effects of fentanyl in the water supply and its retention in soil are less understood. The characterization of fentanyl and its potential degradation products in complex environmental samples such as soil is severely understudied. Very few articles are available that work to identify fentanyl and its degradation products in complex samples or name the possible hazards that may result from environmental exposure and degradation. Therefore, the objectives were to identify available articles focused on environmental fentanyl and its pathways and highlight quantifiable research or results that included specific degradation products or downstream effects. Research articles focused on fentanyl between 2000 and 2024 were identified and reviewed and then filtered using Boolean search terms for environmental parameters. Various studies have determined that trace levels of fentanyl can be found in a variety of environments, and additional data suggest preferential partitioning into soils from water and long-term persistence. Despite this knowledge, very little data exists on the long-term downstream effects of fentanyl or its analogs. As the chronic effects from low-level fentanyl exposure are currently unknown, this lack of insight brings to the forefront the need for further research to improve our understanding of fentanyl persistence, degradation, and toxicity within the environment.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2026

West Valley Demonstration Project (WVDP) Annual Site Environmental Report (ASER) for Calendar Year 2025

The report, prepared for the U.S. Department of Energy West Valley Demonstration Project office (DOE-WVDP), summarizes the environmental protection program at the WVDP for calendar year (CY) 2025. Monitoring and surveillance of the facilities used by the DOE are conducted to verify protection of public health and safety and the environment. The report is a key component of the DOE’s effort to keep the public informed of environmental conditions at the WVDP. The quality assurance protocols applied to the environmental monitoring program ensure the validity and accuracy of the monitoring data. In addition to demonstrating compliance with environmental laws, regulations, and directives, the evaluation of data collected in 2025 continued to indicate that WVDP activities posed no threat to public health or safety, or to the environment.

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗
DOE OSTI2025

Exploring the environmental drivers of human blastomycosis cases in the Midwestern United States

Blastomycosis is a fungal infection endemic to the eastern United States (US) and Canada caused by the inhalation of the fungi Blastomyces spp. Currently, the environmental drivers of disease dynamics are poorly understood. The goal of our work was to explore what environmental conditions are associated with the annual presence of blastomycosis cases, and therefore are potentially explanatory of the ecological niche of Blastomyces. We examined the relationships between reported cases of blastomycosis in three Midwestern US states (Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin) from 2007–2017 in relation to eleven hypothesized environmental conditions, including climate, stream and soil mineral content, and land cover variables. Then, we fit logistic regression models to explore the relationships between the environmental variables and yearly blastomycosis case occurrence. Mean soil moisture, stream sediment mercury content, percent of water within the county, and woody wetlands land cover were all positively associated with the presence of annual cases, with woody wetlands having the most consistent signal across the three states. We also found significant differences in the likelihood of case presence between US states that were not explained by the variables in our model, suggesting state-level differences in case reporting and disease awareness. Our results provide a perspective on potential biological hypotheses to further test regarding environmental controls on the life cycle and ecological niche of Blastomyces.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗