Author: Amy Spahn

From Tech Today:

Professor Barry Solomon and Assistant Professor Adam Wellstead (SS) published a paper with lead author Fei Li ’13 (MS in Environmental and Energy Policy), “Michigan’s RPS Ballot Defeat: A Policy Failure or Success?” in Energy Strategy Reviews, Volume 5 (December 2014), p. 78-87.

ABSTRACT:

Despite heavy reliance on fossil fuels, Michigan’s electorate soundly defeated a Renewable Energy Amendment in 2012 (Proposal 3). The proposal would have mandated that 25% of its electricity come from renewable energy resources by 2025. Prior to the election the State had legislated a 10% goal of adopting more renewable energy into its electricity system through a renewable portfolio standard. Was the defeat a policy failure? This paper employs concepts from the policy failure literature to answer the question. We argue that a traditional policy evaluation such as cost-benefit analysis (CBA) needs to be considered along with broader “political” evaluations. CBA results are complemented with political analysis, which reveal the complexity of evaluating key energy strategies.

Steven Walton (Asst. Prof of History) has had an article published in the journal History of Science, co-authored with his former colleague and professor of architectural engineering at Penn State, Tom Boothby.  The article is entitled, “What is straight cannot fall: Gothic architecture, Scholasticism, and dynamics.“

Abstract:

It has long been shown that medieval builders primarily used geometrical constructions to design medieval architecture. The thought processes involved, however, have been considered to be remote from the natural philosophical speculations of the Scholastics, who, following Aristotle, had taken the basis of physics to be the study of dynamics, or change. However, investigations of the Expertises of Chartres, Florence, Milan, and other documents related to medieval building suggest that medieval architects, in speaking of their work, resort to recognizable dynamic arguments, structured similarly to the speculations of Scholastic philosophers. These dynamic explanations of structural behaviour persist at least into the 17th century, but thereafter lost out to the arguments based on statics made by modern scholars attempting to explain the endurance of these structures.

Professor Mary Durfee was quoted in the recent article “EPA Announces 2014 Presidential Green Chemistry Award Winners” published in JSTOR Daily. The quote comes from Durfee’s 1999 work titled “Diffusion of Pollution Prevention Policy.”

Abstract:

Mary Durfee explains that “pollution control has always been the main approach in environmental regulation,” while the use of prevention techniques varied widely depending on the industry. When prevention was emphasized, according to Durfee, businesses chafed at the regulatory focus on reducing inputs— i.e., using fewer chemicals—to the detriment of other reduction strategies such as recycling chemicals from one process to another.