SEAS Events

Each student will present for 10 minutes, followed by 5 minutes for Q&A. There will be tea bags, hot water, and cookies. Please bring your own mugs. 

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Riti Bhandarkar

Beyond the historical record: improving the representation of low-probability extreme weather in power system modeling using climate ensembles

Recent large scale resource adequacy failures, as occurred in California in 2020 from extreme heat and Texas in 2021 from extreme cold, highlight the need for new approaches to resource adequacy (RA) that better capture weather uncertainty. Studies of grid reliability frequently lean on the historical record, which has limited observations of extremes and does not reflect the changing climate, to model weather dependent risks. Consequently, resource adequacy assessments, which focus on rare, 1-in-10 year extremes, are grounded in an incomplete and often inaccurate picture of the weather conditions the system could experience.

Using a high resolution climate ensemble, CESM-HR, we evaluate 2030 resource adequacy for the MISO grid region over 589 distinct weather years, modeling dependencies for load, thermal derates, solar and wind generation, and forced outages. By integrating climate ensembles, which generate many realizations of typical weather conditions for a future year, into power system modeling, we construct a statistically robust and physically realistic representation of weather conditions a system could experience. In our study, we quantify the number of weather years required to obtain an accurate understanding of grid reliability for common reliability metrics like LOLE and EUE and calculate the magnitude of error in limited-sample approaches to RA assessment. Additionally, we assess MISO’s vulnerability to the 1-in-10 year events grid operators currently focus on, as well as lower probability (e.g., 1-in-100 year) extremes that are unprecedented in the historical record.

Olivia David

Intractability in Environmental Justice Policy Conflicts: The Epistemic Politics of Water Shutoffs in Detroit

Drinking water affordability is a policy challenge for many U.S. cities, as utilities must balance social equity with financial solvency. This study examines one instantiation of this challenge—conflict around water shutoffs for non-payment in Detroit—as an intractable environmental justice (EJ) policy issue, positing that its intractability stems from epistemic politics: disagreement over what the problem is and whose knowledge counts. Through qualitative analysis of interviews and policy documents, I identify the epistemic frameworks underlying actors’ arguments and strategies. I find that political actor groups hold different conceptions of the problem itself and imagined solutions to their version of the problem: non-payment as irresponsibility, requiring enforcement through shutoffs, versus as a product of historic and systemic inequality. Epistemic politics unfold through actors’ uses of not only technical expertise, but also moral claims. I argue that moral authority is an epistemic resource itself, and that racial and epistemic justice are co-constituted. My analysis suggests that EJ policy conflicts require local governments to reconfigure policymaking systems to incorporate deliberative processes beyond standard participation procedures, and mechanisms for processing moral claims as legitimate policy decision inputs. Findings offer insights for urban environmental governance and utility sectors more broadly, and how epistemic dynamics intersect with and reinforce racial inequalities.

Berk Duruturk

Sink or Source? What’s Happening Beneath Lake Superior?

Lake Superior is the most pristine and oligotrophic of the Laurentian Great Lakes, yet algal blooms have begun appearing along its coast. It’s well-known with its phosphorus-limited ecosystem, however its sediment may regulate whether nitrogen (N) is removed or recycled to the water column. To determine whether these sediments act as a net N sink or source, we measured N₂, O₂, and nutrient fluxes using continuous-flow core incubations with ¹⁵N-nitrate tracers during ice-free seasons (2021–2023). We compared a deep, oxygenated offshore site (Western Mooring) with a bloom-affected coastal bay (Siskiwit Bay). Denitrification dominated N loss, although sediments periodically exhibited net nitrification. Denitrification appeared carbon-limited rather than P-limited, potentially uncoupling it from nitrification and driving the elevated water-column N:P ratio.

Spencer Checkoway

45V and Beyond: Mechanisms for Incentivizing Green Hydrogen

Hydrogen has the potential to decarbonize hard-to-electrify sectors of the economy when produced via renewable electrolysis. Within the Inflation Reduction Act, the United States included an emissions-tiered subsidy provision (§45V) for clean hydrogen in an attempt to drive cost parity between electrolysis and the higher emissions incumbent, steam methane reforming. To achieve this goal, the §45V production tax credit (valued up to $3/kg H2) could be seen as having three objectives: 1) be an efficient mechanism for subsidizing a new technology in the market, 2) drive planned electrolysis projects toward using clean electricity, 3) value CO2 high enough to outcompete other H2 production modes on price. This project uses three case studies to evaluate how effectively and efficiently the §45V tax credit would have performed across the United States had it been rolled out in its legislated form in 2024. Early results show that the §45V production tax credit (PTC) would have been 13-22% as efficient per dollar spent as an equally valued investment tax credit (ITC) and 32-41% as efficient as an electricity tax credit (ETC). At the market value of an electrolyzer, renewable electrolysis would have only outcompeted grid-connected projects in 5-14% of U.S. counties. While the credit itself values carbon between 4-21 times the global average carbon price (depending on the production source), §45V would have to value carbon at over $1,000/tCO2 for renewable electrolysis to remain competitive in a majority of US counties.