Skip to main content

Utility

  • Admissions
  • Exploring Grad School
  • Current Students
  • Community Impact and Engagement
  • Faculty + Staff
  • Alumni
Give
Intranet
Report Sexual Misconduct
Home

Main navigation

  • Academics
    • Master of Science
    • Master of Landscape Architecture
    • Doctoral (PhD)
    • Dual-Degree Programs
    • Graduate Certificate Programs
    • Undergraduate Program
    • Courses
    • Online Learning
  • Research + Impact
    • Sustainability Themes
    • PhD Profiles
    • Student Research
    • The Centers, Institutes + Initiatives
    • Faculty Profiles
    • Labs
  • Prospective Students
    • Why Michigan?
    • Application Information
    • International Students
    • Financial Aid + Tuition
    • Visit Campus
    • Faculty Profiles
    • Admitted Students
    • Exploring Graduate School
  • Student Services
    • SEAS and PitE Student Center
    • Career Services
    • Financial Aid
    • Academic Advising
    • Student Organizations
    • Student Development
    • Forms, Handbooks + Policies
    • Quick Links
  • News
    • Community Highlights
    • In the Media
    • Stewards Magazine
  • Events
    • Co-Sponsorship Form
    • Submit Event
    • Admissions Webinars
    • Gallery
  • About
    • Who We Are
    • SEAS Values
    • Collective Impact Committee
    • Leadership
    • Demographics
    • Faculty Profiles
    • Administrative Departments + Staff
    • Facilities + Locations
    • Community Impact and Engagement
    • Art & Environment Gallery
    • COVID-19
    • Land Acknowledgement
    • History
    • Email Sign-Up
Search search icon

Utility

  • Admissions
  • Exploring Grad School
  • Current Students
  • Community Impact and Engagement
  • Faculty + Staff
  • Alumni
Give
Report Sexual Misconduct
search icon Search

Faculty

Image
Faculty Group 2022
  • Academics
  • Research + Impact
  • Prospective Students
  • Student Services
  • News
  • Events
  • About
    • Who We Are
    • SEAS Values
    • Collective Impact Committee
    • Leadership
    • Demographics
    • Faculty Profiles
    • Administrative Departments + Staff
    • Facilities + Locations
    • Community Impact and Engagement
    • Art & Environment Gallery
    • COVID-19
    • Land Acknowledgement
    • History
    • Email Sign-Up

Main navigation

  • Academics
  • Research + Impact
  • Prospective Students
  • Student Services
  • News
  • Events
  • About
    • Who We Are
    • SEAS Values
    • Collective Impact Committee
    • Leadership
    • Demographics
    • Faculty Profiles
    • Administrative Departments + Staff
    • Facilities + Locations
    • Community Impact and Engagement
    • Art & Environment Gallery
    • COVID-19
    • Land Acknowledgement
    • History
    • Email Sign-Up
back to all faculty

Benjamin Goldstein

Benjamin Goldstein
Assistant Professor
Sustainable Systems
Climate + Energy
Food Systems
Cities + Mobility + Built Environment
[email protected]
CV
Office
3505 Dana
Lab website
SURF Lab
Websites
ORCID

How to Apply to SEAS Graduate Programs

Explore Graduate School

About

Benjamin Goldstein is Assistant Professor of Environment and Sustainability and head of the Sustainable Urban-Rural Futures (SURF) Lab. The SURF Lab studies and emphasizes urban sustainability at multiple scales. Through his work at the SURF Lab, Benjamin helps understand how urban processes and urban form drive the consumption of materials and energy in cities and produce environmental change inside and outside cities. He develops methods and tools to quantify the scale of these changes and the locations where they occur using life cycle assessment, input-output analysis, geospatial data, and approaches from data science. Benjamin is particularly interested in combining quantitative methods with theory rooted in social science to explore multiple dimensions of sustainability and address issues of distributive justice. His topical foci include urban food systems (esp. urban agriculture), agri-commodities, residual resource engineering, global supply chains, sustainable production and consumption, and energy systems.

Publications

VanderWilde, C.P., Newell, J.P., Gounaridis, D. and Goldstein, B.P., 2023. Deforestation, certification, and transnational palm oil supply chains: Linking Guatemala to global consumer markets. Journal of Environmental Management, 344, p.118505.

Goldstein, B., Reames, T.G. and Newell, J.P., 2022. Racial inequity in household energy efficiency and carbon emissions in the United States: An emissions paradox. Energy Research & Social Science, 84, p.102365.

Goldstein, B., Gounaridis, D. and Newell, J.P., 2020. The carbon footprint of household energy use in the United States. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117(32), pp.19122-19130.

Goldstein, B. and Newell, J.P., 2020. How to track corporations across space and time. Ecological Economics, 169, p.106492.

Goldstein, B.P., Hauschild, M.Z., Fernández, J.E. and Birkved, M., 2017. Contributions of local farming to urban sustainability in the Northeast United States. Environmental science & technology, 51(13), pp.7340-7349.

Google Scholar page
Research

Benjamin is interested in how we can make cities greener. He uses big data and models to put numbers on the environmental impacts of urban lifestyles. For example, he might look at meat consumption in different neighborhoods of a city to estimate the amount of climate changing gasses, such as methane from cows, result from the city’s meat consumption. Benjamin is also interested in revealing how consumption in cities can produce negative environmental change beyond the city borders and impact the livelihoods of distant peoples. His work focuses on agricultural systems and forestry products.

By better understanding where our products come from and how they are made, we gain insights into how to produce and consume more sustainably.

Ongoing Projects:

The FEW- Meter: Project with EU and US partners to holistically assess the sustainability of urban farming. We analyze 100 urban farms to understand their resource use, food outputs, environmental impacts, and social benefits. Funding: Belmont Forum/NSF.

Carbon Inequality of Household Energy: Project with University of Michigan. Big data analysis of the carbon emissions from residential energy use in the United States. Probabilistic models of energy use at the individual household level, combined with geodemographic information to reveal drivers of consumption and emissions.

The Sustainability Hoofprint of Cities: Project with University of Michigan and University of Minnesota. Develops spatial life cycle assessment model of livestock production across the continental United States at the county level. Estimates consumption of beef, chicken, and pork for all counties and uses linear optimization to connect consuming counties to producing counties and explore distributional environmental justice issues.

Education

PhD, Technical University of Denmark (Management Engineering)

MSc, Technical University of Denmark (Environmental Engineering)

BASc, University of Toronto (Chemical Engineering)

Affiliations

Professional Engineers of Ontario (P.Eng.)

In the News
Concept illustration depicting food crops growing in an urban district.
November 13, 2024

The time is ripe to support urban agriculture

A newly published policy brief explores the ways that policy and planning play a role in supporting climate-friendly practices that are already being used in urban...

Food from urban agriculture has carbon footprint 6 times larger than conventional produce, study shows
January 22, 2024

Study finds that urban agriculture must be carefully planned to have climate benefits

Contact: [email protected] A new study, led by researchers at the University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability (SEAS), finds that fruits and...

In the Media
03/31/2025
Benjamin Goldstein
Joshua Newell
Fact Check: World Economic Forum did not demand ban on homegrown foods (Reuters)
05/07/2024
Benjamin Goldstein
What do we really know about urban agriculture’s impact on people, places, and the planet? (Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists)
03/20/2024
Benjamin Goldstein
Issues of the Environment: A University of Michigan study of Urban Agriculture stirs controversy (WEMU-FM)
01/26/2024
Benjamin Goldstein
Stateside: Friday, Jan. 26, 2024 (Michigan Radio)
01/23/2024
Benjamin Goldstein
Joshua Newell
Study examines carbon footprint of urban-farmed food (The University Record)
01/22/2024
Benjamin Goldstein
Joshua Newell
Urban agriculture isn’t as climate-friendly as it seems – but these best practices can transform gardens and city farms (The Conversation)
01/22/2024
Benjamin Goldstein
The Largest Study Of Its Kind Says Urban Agriculture May Not Be the Climate Solution We Thought It Was (Ethos)
01/22/2024
Benjamin Goldstein
Urban Farming Has A Shockingly High Climate Cost — Here’s How Growers Can Bring Carbon Down, According To Scientists (Forbes)
01/22/2024
Benjamin Goldstein
Urban agriculture beats conventional agriculture on climate — if it’s done right (The Hill)
seas logo
University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability
Dana Building
440 Church Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
(734) 764-6453
Email us
facebook
twitter
instagram
linkedin
youtube
flickr
planet blue global impact logo

Footer

  • Contact us
  • Intranet
  • Contact Web Team
  • Email Sign-Up

© 2025 The Regents of the University of Michigan | Privacy Policy

Produced by Michigan Creative