Author: Christine Flood

Professor Emeritus Barry D. Solomon (SS) and Shan Zhou (SS) published the article “Renewable Portfolio Standards: Do Voluntary Goals vs. Mandatory Standards Make a Difference?” In Review of Policy Research.

This paper investigates whether an obligation to meet a Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) target in U.S. states affects the policy effectiveness. A voluntary RPS target can serve as a political device for signaling a commitment to certain goals, though there is no penalty if the goal is not met.

Alternatively, mandatory RPS targets have varying stringency and uneven enforcement. Our results indicate that the compulsoriness of a state RPS is an insignificant determinant of RPS‐related renewable electricity capacity additions. Factors other than compulsoriness are more important in influencing renewable electricity development, such as state political ideology, income, electricity price and electric market deregulation status.

Don Lafreniere (SS/GLRC) and an interdisciplinary group of students recently published an article titled “Schools as Vectors of Infectious Disease Transmission during the 1918 Influenza Pandemic” in the journal Cartographica: The International Journal of Geographic Information and Geovisualization.

The article outlines how to use census and health microdata to follow infectious disease transmission between public school children during a pandemic. The paper leans on data created by public contributors to the Keweenaw Time Traveler project. The towns of Calumet and Laurium served as the case study.

New publication on the history of oil palm plantations

A new article exploring the history of the first oil palm plantations by Jonathan Robins (SS) has been published in the Journal of Southeast Asian Studies.

The article examines the economic, political, and environmental factors that contributed to the early growth of the oil palm industry, which is today the world’s largest supplier of vegetable oil

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-southeast-asian-studies/article/abs/shallow-roots-the-early-oil-palm-industry-in-southeast-asia-18481940/EB9B53BBAF6698ED0EE151BD11CF93E2

Angie Carter has published an invited essay “Thinking Downstream” in Compelling Ground: Landscapes, Environments, and Peoples of Iowa, a book documenting the exhibit of the same name that has recently opened at the Brunnier Art Museum in Ames, Iowa.

She will take part in a panel “The Changing Face of Iowa Farming” on Tuesday, April 13 as part of the exhibit’s virtual events.

Shan Zhou (SS) published a sole-authored article “The Effect of Smart Meter Penetration on Dynamic Electricity Pricing: Evidence from the United States” in The Electricity Journal.

The paper explores how electric utilities in the U.S. are leveraging AMI meter installations to implement dynamic pricing programs.

Angie Carter (Social Sciences) and co-author Andrea Basche (agronomy, University of Nebraska) published “Training future agriculture professionals in landowner–tenant conservation decision‐making” in Natural Sciences Education.

The paper analyzes collaborative conservation case studies; the research was funded by the North Central Region – Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education.

Adam Wellstead (SS) and Gemma Carey (University of New South Wales) published “Introduction: The Virtual World of the Public Servant,” In: Sullivan H., Dickinson H., Henderson H. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of the Public Servant. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.