By Jamie Knapp • J Knapp Communications

Every year, the UC Davis Institute of Transportation Studies recognizes one Ph.D. dissertation and one master’s thesis as examples of the highest-quality research conducted by its graduate students. This year’s winners are Nathan Parker, 2011 Friends of ITS-Davis Outstanding Ph.D. Dissertation award (right) and Geoff Morrison, 2011 Friends of ITS-Davis Outstanding Master’s Thesis award (left).

Parker received his Ph.D. in Transportation Technology and Policy in Jan. 2011 and is currently conducting postdoctoral research at UC Davis. His dissertation, “Modeling Future Biofuel Supply Chains using Spatially Explicit Infrastructure Optimization”, highlights a new approach for identifying how much, from where and at what cost biofuel could be produced to meet policy goals in the United States.

Parker’s dissertation advisors professors Joan Ogden and Bryan Jenkins wrote, “Nathan’s work has strong bearing on one of the most important energy policy debates in California and the United States: how to develop new, low carbon fuels for the transportation sector. His work is of high relevance to the state of California and the nation.”

Parker developed a comprehensive model that employed geospatial models to estimate the location and magnitude of biomass resources, engineering/economic models to replicate the bio-refinery supply, production and fuel delivery system, and sophisticated mathematical programming techniques combining these factors to find the best supply chain solutions.

“His success in developing this first-of-a-kind comprehensive model attests to his exceptional creativity and facility as a mathematical modeler,” his advisors wrote, adding that the multi-disciplinary nature of his work is one of its strong points. Parker’s methods have attracted wide attention in the energy and modeling communities, they added, and could be applicable internationally.

Morrison, an Agricultural and Resource Economics student, analyzed the commute habits of military personnel in his thesis, “Driving in Force: Why the U.S. Military Commutes by Automobile.” He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Transportation Technology and Policy.

Morrison found that military personnel are more likely to drive to work than civilian counterparts, even after controlling for typical predictors of travel behavior such as socio-economic, demographic, family, immigration, transit availability and built environment variables. The study also investigated incentives for driving to base such as discounted gasoline, free parking and lack of walkability.

Professor Cynthia Lin, chair of Morrison’s thesis committee wrote, “Geoff’s research has the potential to make an important impact on policy… his research could improve the cost-effectiveness of infrastructure decisions on bases, help reduce congestion at gates, promote more healthy lifestyles of service members, bolster the environmental image of the Department of Defense, and facilitate the development of carbon-neutral-alternative-energy solutions.”

The judging committee noted that Morrison’s work is unique. “The study is original and tackles a subject that has not been well researched,” members wrote.

A three-person committee of ITS-Davis faculty judges the thesis and dissertation entries on their originality, significance of findings, rigor and logic, completeness, quality and clarity. Winners receive a $1,500 award from the Friends of ITS-Davis fund.

 

Photo: Taken at Shields Library, at the Robert Arneson sculpture named “Bookhead” (1991), from the Egghead Series, in September 2012. Geoff Morrison is on left, Nathan Parker is on right. Photo by Sylvia Wright – UC Davis

By Jamie Knapp • J Knapp Communications

California, the state known for pioneering car-dependent cities, is aiming to transform vehicles and how they are used. It is adopting policies that will not only protect public health and the environment, but also cut air pollution, carbon emissions and oil use. California is blazing a new trail, providing a model for other state and national governments to follow.

In the journal Issues in Science and Technology, ITS-Davis Director Dan Sperling and California Air Resources Board Chairman Mary Nichols explain how California has become a leader in reducing motor vehicles’ carbon footprint and changing the way people travel.

Two political circumstances favor California’s climate policy leadership, Sperling and Nichols say. First, because of its history of unhealthy air pollution, the state has unique legal authority under the federal 1970 Clean Air Act to adopt its own more stringent motor vehicle emission standards. Second, the state’s political leaders have had the freedom to take decisive action, thanks to broad public support for environmental and clean-energy initiatives.

The result is a unique and comprehensive strategy of vehicle, fuel and mobility policies that present minimal cost to taxpayers, are largely performance-based, embrace and take advantage of market forces, and work together to cut carbon and other pollution from transportation.

California adopted its first – revolutionary – vehicle emissions standards in 1966 and 1970 in response to eye-stinging smog that plagued the Los Angeles air basin. It broke more ground in 1990 by adopting the controversial Zero Emission Vehicle mandate, a rule that has prevailed despite automaker opposition, lawsuits and multiple revisions. The California ZEV mandate is credited for inspiring the electric and hybrid cars now on roads around the globe today.

In 2004, California took another giant step when it adopted the nation’s first vehicle greenhouse gas rules, which have since become the model for federal GHG and fuel economy rules.

And in January of this year, the state Air Resources Board updated its entire suite of vehicle regulations. In contrast to earlier years, when industry opposed California’s vehicle emissions rules, automakers generally supported all the updated standards.

These actions serve as an international model for policies that address smog-forming and GHG emissions, Sperling and Nichols note. What’s more, California’s leadership has accelerated automotive investment worldwide, spurring a race to innovate body and powertrain designs.

California policy is also spurring a fuels innovation race. Sperling and Nichols explain how the state’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard provides a durable framework to transition transportation fuels away from high-carbon sources. The LCFS is a performance-based standard that applies to all transportation fuels and encourages competition in an open, transparent market. The LCFS is already stimulating investment in cleaner, lower-carbon fuels, despite legal challenges from the oil and ethanol industries.

California’s third approach to cutting transportation carbon involves mobility. Sperling and Nichols describe how California is trying to reverse its suburban sprawl development patterns and high vehicle usage. The state has set targets for local governments to reduce GHG emissions from passenger travel, encouraging them to change land-use policies, increase transit use, pursue new forms of efficient mobility services, and use pricing to reduce vehicle use. Once again the state is pioneering new ideas and approaches.

Even though California contributes only 2 percent of the world’s total GHG emissions, few countries have larger shares, so the state’s policy action is significant in its own right as well as being a model for other states and nations.

Sperling and Nichols conclude by suggesting that, although California’s top-down approach has worked, a bottom-up approach that directly engages individuals, businesses and local and regional governments is at least as important, if the results are to be sustainable.

Read this paper: Sperling, Daniel and Mary Nichols (2012) California’s Pioneering Transportation Strategy. Issues in Science and Technology Winter (2012), 59 – 66.

Learn more about California climate policy: Sperling, Daniel and Mary Nichols (2012) Cooling the Sky: Creating Climate Policy in California. Boom: A Journal of California, Vol. 2, Number 1 (Spring 2012), pp 17 – 32.

Explore future global mobility in emerging countries like China and India: Gordon, Deborah and Daniel Sperling (2011) Critical Crossroad: Advancing Global Opportunities to Transform Transportation. The European Financial Review 2011 (October-November), 71 – 75.

Envision future travel in zero-emission “pod” cars: Sperling, Daniel and Richard T. Forman (2011) The Future of Roads: No Driving, No Emissions, Nature Reconnected. Solutions 2011 (September-October), 10 – 23.

Photo: Fernie Payan, then 24, drives through Los Angeles on Oct. 29, 1965 in the city’s third smog alert in three days. California adopted its first – revolutionary – vehicle emissions standards in 1966. Credit: TheOldMotor.com

Amy Myers Jaffe, a leading expert on the oil industry and influential thought leader on global energy policy, will join the University of California, Davis. She strengthens the university’s leadership on clean technology, sustainable energy and transportation.

On October 1, Jaffe will join UC Davis with a joint appointment in to the Institute of Transportation Studies and the Graduate School of Management. At ITS-Davis she will head the fossil energy component of Next STEPS (Sustainable Transportation Energy Pathways) and will play a lead role with our energy policy research. She will also be executive director of a new energy executive education program at the School of Management in collaboration with ITS-Davis. She has spent the past 16 years at Rice University, where she served as director of the Energy Forum at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy. She is the Wallace S. Wilson Fellow in Energy Studies, as well as associate director of the Rice Energy Program.

Jaffe’s expertise spans oil geopolitics and strategic energy policy, including energy science policy and energy economics. She said she was drawn to UC Davis by its focus on sustainability and the interdisciplinary research and relationships between transportation and energy, and by the opportunity to work near California’s state capital, which is an international pioneer on environmental and public policy issues.

“Amy’s knowledge of the energy industry is the perfect complement to ITS-Davis’ global leadership and expertise on transportation energy and sustainability,” said Daniel Sperling, director of the Institute of Transportation Studies (ITS-Davis) and professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Jaffe said, “I am excited to join the team at UC Davis to be able to play a greater leadership role in the transition in the energy pathway.

“UC Davis is making an exemplary commitment to sustainability and the kind of world I would like to leave for my children and their children,” she said. “By working at the interface of two great UC Davis institutions, the Graduate School of Management and the Institute of Transportation Studies, I see tremendous opportunities to work with the top minds in the field to forge a bridge between academia and the energy industry to a smarter U.S. policy on energy and climate change.”

Jaffe said the U.S. has a historic opportunity to fashion a national energy policy that addresses both the growing insecurity of Middle East oil supply and the challenges of climate change.

“The United States suddenly finds itself with ample domestic natural gas, emergent automotive technologies and a younger generation of Americans who care deeply about sustainability,” she said. “It is within our grasp to gain an energy future that we can be proud of for future generations.”

Jaffe is widely published, most recently as the co-author of the 2010 book “Oil, Dollars, Debt and Crises: The Global Curse of Black Gold.” She is a frequent keynote speaker at major energy industry and investment conferences, and has provided testimony on Capitol Hill on energy matters. She is a widely quoted commentator on oil and energy policy in the international media, appearing regularly on TV and in print, including CNN, The New Hour with Jim Lehrer, FOX, MSNBC, National Public Radio, the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times of London. Her writings have been featured by the New York Times, Dow Jones International and Petroleum Intelligence Weekly.

Jaffe served as a member of the reconstruction and economy working group of the Baker/Hamilton Iraq Study Group. She was project director for the Baker Institute/Council on Foreign Relations Task Force on Strategic Energy Policy. She also chaired a working group on nuclear power in the Middle East for the U.S. Institute for Peace-Stinson Center strategic task force on Iran. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Steven Currall, dean and professor at Graduate School of Management, said Jaffe brings unequaled experience, expertise and international media visibility on the energy industry and geopolitical factors affecting energy and sustainability, which will contribute to the School’s focus on innovation and entrepreneurial solutions in the energy and clean tech sectors.

 “Amy will be leading our efforts in education programs in energy and sustainability, and her interdisciplinary work and leadership represents a first-of-its-kind collaboration between our program and the Institute of Transportation Studies,” Currall said.

 

More information

Read Amy Jaffe’s article in Foreign Policy: “America’s real strategic petroleum reserve — Is relying on Saudi Arabia in times of war a smart tradition or future folly?” Aug. 24, 2012

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/08/24/Saudi_Arabia_Strategic_Petroleum_Reserve

Watch Jaffe on CNN: “Rising gas prices are starting to affect the 2012 elections.” Her comments are at 1:35 and 2:40 in the video clip. March 2012

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEBoCCkgQ18

Watch a Jaffe speech: “Where I see the conflict lines coming in the oil market in the current economic crisis and the geopolitics of today.” March 2012
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1y2PL8CEpg&feature=plcp

 

About the Institute of Transportation Studies at UC Davis (ITS-Davis)

The leading university center in the world on sustainable transportation, ITS-Davis is home to more than 60 affiliated faculty and researchers, 120 graduate students, and has roughly $15 million in funding. While our principal focus is research, we also emphasize education and outreach. We partner with government, industry and non-governmental organizations to inform policy making and business decisions, and advance public discourse on key transportation, energy and environmental issues. We focus on issues important to society. www.its.ucdavis.edu

 

About the UC Davis Graduate School of Management

Dedicated to preparing innovative leaders for global impact, the UC Davis Graduate School of Management is consistently ranked among the premier business schools in the United States and internationally. The School’s faculty members are globally renowned for their thought leadership and teaching excellence and research in advancing management practices. Each year, the school provides a bold, innovative approach to management education to 110 full-time MBA students at the UC Davis campus and more than 450 part-time MBA students in Sacramento and the San Francisco Bay Area. A new Master of Professional Accountancy degree program begins in fall 2012. The Schools offers open enrollment and customized executive education programs. The School is home to the Center for Investor Welfare and Corporate Responsibility, and the Child Family Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. www.gsm.ucdavis.edu

Media Contact:

Sylvia Wright, Institute of Transportation Studies, (530) 304-2697, swright@ucdavis.edu

 

On Sept. 6, ITS-Davis director Dan Sperling was a guest on NPR radio’s “Talk of the Nation” program, hosted by Neal Conan, to discuss the new U.S. car and truck fuel efficiency (CAFE) standards. On Aug. 19, he was interviewed on Platts Energy Week by John Kingston about the new report he co-authored on a National Low Carbon Fuel Standard.

 

Photo: Left image: screen shot from Platts Energy Week. Right image: Sperling in UC Davis radio studio, February 2012, by Sylvia Wright

Read the story and watch a Sierra Magazine video of the UC Davis students building a hybrid race car.

The UC Davis Institute of Transportation Studies (ITS-Davis) will receive a two-year, $2.77 million grant from the California Energy Commission to research the value, benefits and drawbacks of all types of alternative transportation fuels and fuel uses in California. The Energy Commission approved the grant at its June 13, 2012 meeting in Sacramento.

The grant will support teams of research leaders and graduate students in the Institute’s NextSTEPS consortium as they complete eight complex research tasks.

NextSTEPS is studying transitions to a sustainable transportation energy future, gaining unique insight from its multidisciplinary approach, and disseminating that knowledge to decision-makers in the private sector and governmental agencies so that they can make informed technology, investment and policy choices. It is the successor to the ITS-Davis research program named STEPS, for Sustainable Transportation Energy Pathways.

“This grant will allow us to conduct a wide assessment of the major alternative-fuel transitions in California, and enable us to inform the CEC in its investment decision-making,” said NextSTEPS Program Director Joan Ogden, a UC Davis professor of environmental science and policy. “We look forward to helping the CEC maximize the reduction of greenhouse gases in California.”

NextSTEPS brings together research from diverse academic disciplines, including vehicle engineering and design, systems analysis and operations, chemical and mechanical engineering, lifecycle cost and emissions analyses, market and consumer research, sociology and anthropology, economics and business strategy, and policy analysis.

Under this new contract, the UC Davis team will draw on those diverse disciplines to develop robust scenarios for the Energy Commission. For example, using data from its world-leading research on consumer response to alternative-fuel vehicles, researchers can inform market-growth expectations and strategies, and offer insight on the role of fueling infrastructure in driving consumer adoption of alternative vehicles. The project also will provide scenarios for biofuel investments and deployment, offer advice on possible policy tools, assess low-carbon fuel options for medium- and heavy-duty vehicles, assess natural gas as a transportation fuel in California, and enhance agency staff technology awareness through training workshops.

Read more

Photo: The research will be done by the Institute’s NextSTEPS consortium, directed by Joan Ogden, a UC Davis professor of environmental science and policy.

The UC Davis Institute of Transportation Studies, which helped California create the nation’s first low carbon fuel standard in 2009, has joined five other leading research institutions in releasing a series of studies designed to establish a national standard.

In a bipartisan briefing in Washington, D.C., the researchers said that a national standard will ensure fuels of the future are cleaner, cheaper and “made in America.”

“A national low carbon fuel standard is a promising framework to help solve the transportation energy challenges that have eluded us for several decades,” said Daniel Sperling, director of the UC Davis Institute of Transportation Studies. “Technologically, such a standard is very doable. And it can help us address the complex choices with conventional oil, shale gas, oil sands, biofuels, and electric vehicles.”

Joining the scientists at the briefing were representatives of the automobile, electric utility, and biofuels industries.

A low carbon fuel standard, designed to reduce the amount of carbon in transportation fuels, would require all energy companies to meet a common target for carbon intensity but leave it up to the companies to decide how to reach that goal. So, for example, an oil company might choose to diversify into electric or hydrogen fuels. It might add more low-carbon biofuels to its mix of offerings. Or it might buy credits from companies that specialize in low-carbon fuels, or that can lower the carbon intensity of their fuels more efficiently.

The peer-reviewed reports will be published in an upcoming special issue of the Energy Policy Journal, from science and health publisher Elsevier.

Read more

Photo: Dan Sperling and co-authors at July 19, 2012, briefing in Washington, D.C. (UC Davis)

The transition to sustainable forms of personal transport is complex, difficult and will require sustained cooperation among stakeholders both locally and internationally. The ITS-Davis World EV Cities and Ecosystems web portal has been developed to facilitate cooperation, inspiration and sharing of practical experiences among cities and regions around the world that are encouraging clean, low-carbon forms of transport.

Read more

In the journal Access, ITS-Davis researcher Susan Handy writes:

“Pick a city, any city in the US, and then pick a house within that city. Open the door of its garage and you’re likely to find a bicycle. Chances are good that it is covered with dust or has a flat tire. If not, and if its owner has in fact used it any time recently, odds are the purpose was exercise or recreation.

Compare this to a garage, any garage, in Davis, California. Inside you’re likely to find several bicycles—more bicycles, perhaps, than people living in that house. In all probability, one or more of those bicycles is used at least weekly, not for exercise or recreation but for transportation—to get the rider to work, school, the store, a restaurant, or another destination in town.

Davis is one of the few places in the US where bicycling is a substantial mode of transportation. With the goal of helping other communities in their efforts to promote this low-cost, low-polluting, health-promoting mode, my students and I have undertaken a series of studies over the last five years to understand bicycling in Davis.”

Read more

Photo: The Sacramento-Davis commute on I-80 (Sylvia Wright – UC Davis)

TheAtIanticCities.com writer Emily Badger reports:

“In 2006, Davis residents voted on a ballot measure to amend the zoning code for a particular parcel of land off Interstate 80 in the eastern part of town.

“ ‘But everyone knew it was this Target that was going to be opening at this specific site,’ says Kristin Lovejoy, a UC-Davis Ph.D. student who studied what happened next. ‘It was totally controversial, everyone was talking about it, and there was a lot of anti-Target discussion because Davis is this sort of progressive town, where it would be counter to our aesthetics and our culture. Are we going to allow this big box store in to our idealistic town where we all go to the farmer’s market?’

“In fact, people did. The measure passed by 51.5 percent of the vote, and the Target opened in October of 2009.

“Lovejoy and four other researchers at the university’s Institute of Transportation Studies took the opportunity to study how the new store would change residents’ shopping and travel patterns. And it turned out, for one thing, that people in Davis were already shopping at big-box stores – they were just driving long distances to get to them.”

Read more

Photo: Priuses at the Davis Target store (CovertProfessor — Daviswiki.org)