Browsing by Subject "Sustainability"

Sustainable water management is needed to ensure quality supplies of our vital water resources in the face of growing human demand for water, high levels of pollution, and increasing spatial and temporal variability associated with climate change. An integrated approach to water management is recommended to address current water challenges, which are often interrelated with other environmental, economic and social issues. Universities and colleges have missions, resources, and contexts that could enable them to lead the process of developing and applying sustainable and integrated water resource management (IWRM). The opportunity to exemplify integrated water management has grown as institutions of higher education have made progress towards incorporating environmental sustainability into teaching, research, and campus operations. This dissertation examines the issue of campus water management at institutions of higher education through a review of campus sustainability literature, a survey of sustainability and facilities managers, and case studies of three campus water-related projects.

Findings from the review of campus sustainability literature and websites suggests water is less of a campus management priority than issues such as energy and climate change; furthermore, where water is addressed, the focus is on water conservation, while water quality management is overlooked. IWRM is not explicitly discussed in the campus sustainability literature reviewed, though principles relevant to IWRM are included in some campus sustainability declarations and programs. Results from the survey substantiate the findings from literature review that water management is less of an institutional priority than energy management and water quality management is often underemphasized in campus management. According to the survey respondents, campus water management at the institutions represented was on average just adequately managed and institutions were minimally prepared to deal with several types of future water problems. Facilities managers tended to rate their institution's water management as slightly more effective compared to sustainability coordinators. Many campuses relied on top-down, engineering based water management approaches, rather than integrated and interdisciplinary water management. Individual initiatives, municipal codes and policies, campus community sustainability awareness, and campus environmental projects served as drivers for more sustainable water management, while budget constrains were a common barrier. Logistic regression analysis of the survey data revealed that institutions featuring stream and wetland restoration projects had greater odds of being described as having a developed watershed plan and taking into consideration multidisciplinary approaches to water management.

Case studies showed that wetland creation and restoration projects can serve as effective teaching and research laboratories for institutions of higher education, but that none of the studied cases fully exemplified IWRM in their operation. Of the three cases studied, the Stream and Wetland Assessment Management Park project at Duke University most closely demonstrated a campus project designed and developed to address water problems in the campus watershed, while also offering an effective outdoor teaching and research laboratory for hundreds of students, professionals, and researchers. The Olentangy River Wetland Research Park case at Ohio State University exemplified the potential for wetland creation and restoration projects to serve as a facility for educating thousands of students and visitors, training dozens of water experts, and influencing wetland and water resource management beyond the campus. The Radford University Stormwater Treatment Wetland Project case illustrated the potential for institutions with limited space and resources to establish effective outdoor teaching laboratories using environmental features already present or in development on campus.

Findings from the review, survey and case studies all point toward the need and opportunity for institutions of higher education to make greater efforts at implementing and promoting sustainable and integrated water resource management. Literature review and survey findings reveal that water is frequently overlooked as environmental resource at universities and colleges, while other environmental issues such as energy, climate change and recycling are prioritized in sustainability plans and efforts. Universities and colleges have made progress addressing water conservation, while water quality and stormwater need further attention and an integrated approach for more effective management.

The care of creation is the responsibility of all Christians. Consequently, the Black Church has a role to play and must attend to its responsibilities seriously. In this thesis, I take a comprehensive look into rituals of the Black Church related to death—funerals, memorials, and burial practices—and how the church can take ownership and be more responsible in the care of creation. For instance, the Black Church could benefit from a new aesthetic of beauty related to funeral processing. Currently, the Black Church funeral concept of aesthetics is tightly coupled with visuals and preservation of the corpse—shiny gold coffins and embalming. As a chaplain, director of bereavement, and minister of the Gospel, I focus on the Black Church’s relative silence and insufficient attention given to how our practices around death go against the foundational principle of covenant relationship and therefore distort our perceptions of Christian beauty. This thesis engages aesthetics and ecological commitments that lead to introducing practices of ministry that honor God and contribute to the care and sustainability of the earth.

This dissertation studies capacity investments in energy sources, with a focus on renewable technologies, such as solar and wind energy. We develop analytical models to provide insights for policymakers and use real data from the state of Texas to corroborate our findings.

We first take a strategic perspective and focus on electricity pricing policies. Specifically, we investigate the capacity investments of a utility firm in renewable and conventional energy sources under flat and peak pricing policies. We consider generation patterns and intermittency of solar and wind energy in relation to the electricity demand throughout a day. We find that flat pricing leads to a higher investment level for solar energy and it can still lead to more investments in wind energy if considerable amount of wind energy is generated throughout the day.

In the second essay, we complement the first one by focusing on the problem of matching supply with demand in every operating period (e.g., every five minutes) from the perspective of a utility firm. We study the interaction between renewable and conventional sources with different levels of operational flexibility, i.e., the possibility

of quickly ramping energy output up or down. We show that operational flexibility determines these interactions: renewable and inflexible sources (e.g., nuclear energy) are substitutes, whereas renewable and flexible sources (e.g., natural gas) are complements.

In the final essay, rather than the capacity investments of the utility firms, we focus on the capacity investments of households in rooftop solar panels. We investigate whether or not these investments may cause a utility death spiral effect, which is a vicious circle of increased solar adoption and higher electricity prices. We observe that the current rate-of-return regulation may lead to a death spiral for utility firms. We show that one way to reverse the spiral effect is to allow the utility firms to maximize their profits by determining electricity prices.

This dissertation studies coordination mechanism design for sustainable supply networks in a globalized environment, with the goal of achieving long-term profitability, environmental friendliness and social responsibility. We examine three different types of supply networks in detail.

The first network consists of one supplier and multiple retailers. The main issue is how to efficiently share a scarce resource, such as capacities for green technology, among all members with private information under dynamically changing environment. We design a shared surplus supply agreement among the members which can lead to both efficient private investments and efficient capacity allocation under unpredictable and unverifiable market conditions.

The second network is a serial supply chain. The source node provides critical raw material (like coffee cherries) for the entire chain and is typically located in an underdeveloped economy, the end node is a retailer serving consumer at a developed economy (like Starbucks Co.). We construct a dynamic supply agreement that takes into account the changing market and production conditions to ensure fair compensations so that the partners have the right incentives to work together to develop sustainable quality supply.

The third network is a stylized global production network of a multinational company consisting of a home plant and a foreign branch. The branch serves the foreign market but receives a key component from the home plant. The distinctive feature is that both facilities belong to the same company, governed by the headquarters, yet they each also have their own autonomies. We analyze the role of the headquarters in designing coordination mechanism to improve efficiency. We show the headquarters can delegate the coordination effort to the home plant, as long as it keeps veto power.