Embedding human perspective and equity in the design of sustainable energy and transportation systems

This dissertation explores ways to embed human needs and equity into sustainable energy and transportation systems models. Part I explores ways to integrate human perspective in wind and solar models. Part II takes a holistic approach to integrating human perspective in sociotechnical models with an explicit focus on integrating equity. For the second part, we focus on the transition to clean mobility for all - how to transition to a decarbonized transportation sector in a way that is inclusive and empowers communities, especially those that are underrepresented and underserved, to have choice over their transportation. Sustainable energy and transportation systems are crucial to decarbonizing the global energy portfolio and fighting climate change. A deeper examination reveals that not everyone's needs are served equitably in the current energy and transportation systems nor in the transition to sustainable ones. There is a need to ensure these systems are studied, analyzed, and implemented from a human-centered design approach to ensure efficient engineered outcomes are equitably designed to meet the needs of the people who rely on them and the planet in which they exist. Part I contains two separate studies. The first study presents an agent-based model that investigates decision making and interactions of landowners and developers during the wind farm development process. The main contribution of this study is a scenario analysis to inform how landowner decisions and developer actions can affect wind project implementation. The second study in Part I presents a decision model that can be used to help funding agencies allocate solar research and development funding based on industry priorities. The decision model in this study is based on a utility-scale solar cost model, built through the lens of a developer, and a sensitivity analysis using industry data. The main contribution of this study is an industry-driven approach to prioritizing human-driven research and development projects when allocating funding and a cost model that includes both hard and soft costs. Part II focuses on the transition to clean mobility for all. The first half of Part II formulates the overall problem, reviews past literature to understand ways that equity has been integrated into energy and transportation models, and presents a human-centered framework to approach optimizing sociotechnical systems. The main contributions of the first half of Part II are 1) a definition of True Decommissioning, the removal of internal combustion engine vehicles permanently, quickly, and equitably and 2) our Human-Centered Design Cycle framework to build optimization models from multiple points of view while keeping equity front and center. The second half of Part II applies the Design Cycle to a clean mobility case study in Sonoma County, California. These chapters present work to define the problem perspective in the county, conduct community engagement, and suggest redesign directions for an equity mobility program to better serve the county's low-income communities. The main contributions of the second half of Part II are 1) a strategy to engage with communities, integrating data-driven and informal interview approaches, and 2) learnings from our case study that can be used to guide future mobility work in Sonoma County as well as other communities working toward the broader goal of transitioning to clean mobility for all. Human perspective can show up in multiple forms within models and can change outcomes that drive decision making, depending on what perspectives are included. Gathering both qualitative and quantitative data are equally important when designing models. Integrating equity into modeling is complex and requires careful efforts to define the problem context and stakeholders before any mathematical formulas are considered. The case study in Sonoma County showed that equity must be driven from granular analyses - high-level approaches risk averaging out certain populations in the analyses and may not contribute to driving equitable outcomes. Future work to apply the Design Cycle in other areas and sociotechnical systems may offer additional insights to help speed the transition to sustainable energy and transportation without causing undue harm to communities

Keywords: Mechanical Engineering.
Advisor: Gerritsen Margot (Margot G.)
Sheppard S. (Sheri)
Benson Sally