Life cycle assessment (LCA) in an environmental and innovation policy context

Recently I gave a seminar presented at the UC Santa Barbara Bren School on Life cycle assessment (LCA) in an environmental and innovation policy context. If you are interested in Life cycle assessment and its use as a framework to inform and design policies to support specific technologies for their environmental benefits, you might find the presentation interesting else below is a brief summary. 

I like to think my take on LCA is quite different from the majority of the researchers and certainly practitioners of LCA whose focus by design or inadvertently is narrower than what it ought to be from a societal perspective and this is the part that really excites me – LCA's utility in a public policy context. I see it as a uniquely valuable tool – one that is grounded in basic scientific and engineering principles,  but also requiring understanding of the socio-economic context in which the products or technologies analyzed in LCA operate. However, most people trained in LCA tend to be those exposed only to the former and not the latter which is largely because LCA is mainly offered in environmental engineering programs and both the faculty and students may not have the background in micro-economics, environmental economics  and cost-benefit analysis which I think is really needed if one needs to provide proper guidance on policy use of LCA.  For what it is worth, I have encountered many engineers who dismiss LCA as not real engineering and more of economics. To the typical engineer, economics is nothing more than cost budgeting and doing NPV calculations which only betrays how little they know of economics. On the other hand, as I explain in this talk, economists don't take LCA seriously for they think directly targeting CO2 or SOx or NOx is simpler instead of through LCA of specific technologies, and LCA as being inferior to pollution tax which is simpler. My former PhD advisor, Prof. David Zilberman with his trademark wit and humour, likened it to a Rube Goldberg machine yet oversaw my dissertation on this topic.  Anyway to the economists who doubt LCA I insist, so long as pollution taxes are not adopted everywhere and uniformly, LCA despite its complexities makes a lot of sense. 

To conclude, I think LCA is both an exciting area for research for those interested in the unintended consequences of technology and a really valuable tool for environmental and innovation policy.  For more details as to why check out the talk HERE

Questions to ask oneself before choosing an interdisciplinary PhD

Why an interdisciplinary PhD in Environment/Sustainability? 

I will begin with why I made this choice.  I was applying on the back of a bachelor and master of science degree both in Mech Engg and about three years experience working as an Engineer in the research and development division of large private corporation. I was working on emerging energy technologies such as fuel cells and microturbines for distributed power generation mainly from an engineering standpoint but then happened to get assigned a project focussed on the business case for these technologies. This project really spurred my interest in issues related to cost of energy and policies to reduce pollution. I applied to an interdisciplinary PhD program with just a broad motivation to work on clean energy and not being able to articulate much more than professing that I felt it was my responsibility to work towards making the world more environmentally friendly, yes it was that corny and am embarrassed at my naivete.  

But while it has luckily worked out for me, my resume perhaps compensated for my naivete, I actually feel a bit more clarity as to why you really want to go this route, and what you want to do with it wouldn't hurt for this a big leap. You don't quite need to know what it is you want to research as much as what type of thinking and analytical skills you really want to learn. I would recommend asking yourself the following questions

1. Which among the two is the key motivating reason for you?

• Intellectual curiosity: A pure thirst for an understanding of why things are the way they are (in a scientifically/empirically verifiable sense) or how they ought to be/what we ought to do (from a given normative/ethical standpoint).  To me this is knowledge for knowledge sake or for your own intellectual satisfaction. We owe many of the scientific breakthroughs and innovations to this sort of drive - in basic physics, chemistry, biology etc. Only with intellectual curiosity will you really try to get to the bottom of the problem to understand the fundamental causes. In the context of sustainability, this involves asking fundamental questions such as what is our ethical responsibility to the poor and the future,  how do we make decisions under uncertainty (not just risk but fundamental ignorance), how do we discount the future, what types of new institutions we need etc. There are innumerable fundamental questions which more easily fall under philosophy, economics, political science, sociology, climate science etc. or even mathematics. If what drives you is pure intellectual curiosity, a PhD is for you without a doubt, at least if you want a traditional career and accepted forum to pursue this. As to whether you want to do an interdisciplinary PhD requires you to dig a little deeper into your motivations. I say this because, I often find myself craving for an even deeper understanding of say, ethical theories, physical or biological laws,  statistical theory etc. Secondly, I find sustainability research drawing on these more than contributing back to these traditional areas of inquiry, or at least that is my limited understanding based on what I read. It is of course possible to come out of an interdisciplinary program and make fundamental contributions to human understanding but there are more straightforward trajectories for that while remaining motivated by Sustainability. I say this because at its core sustainability is concerned with Ethics and it builds on a solid understanding of human behavior, political and economic systems, basic workings of nature and sustainability research is about taking these reductionistic understandings and saying something that is more than its parts. 

• Passion for impact on environment and society: I see this as absolutely necessary but not sufficient for while you can make a great impact armed with a PhD, you dont really need a PhD for this. In fact advanced degrees could even be a hindrance, fo at its core this is about learning to work with people to get some change going on the ground - by informing individuals, or working with or in businesses, non-profit institutions, and government and you need a capacity to translate science and be an effective communicator, organizer or manager. However, it is true that a PhD lowers the barriers to entry to various institutions through which you can impact on sustainability short of becoming an entrepreneur yourself. This is why a desire to contribute to change is necessary for without this motivation, why bother with  a PhD in Sustainability. I am bit more cautious about enthusiastically encouraging you to do a PhD if your primary objective is bringing about this sort of change. Also a desire to have an impact on the practice of Sustainability can make one impatient not wanting to take the time to learn the boring and painful and I know this because there are way too many classes that talk of lofty things, critiquing everything people, businesses and government do  while requiring little rigorous work or critical thinking. Unfortunately,  academics can often be  arm-chair or ivory-tower critics who themselves lead highly unsustainable lifestyles (flying to conferences, going away to a secluded place to think and write) ensconced in the security of assured and well paying jobs while exhorting students to go and enact change on their behalf. The least I could do is be authentic if I cannot walk the talk. But even if one walks the talk, they would be wrong in expecting others to be able to follow their path. Somewhat recursively, leading a sustainable life oneself is necessary but not sufficient to preach sustainability. 

At one level with an interdisciplinary PhD in environment this is also about asking yourself why do you want to be a generalist? I recall a book I read (more precisely, listened to the audiobook) Range: Why Generalists Triumph In A Specialized World by David Epstein. It doesn't hurt to know that Roger Federer is used as an example of someone who started off learning many sports before settling on tennis or that many nobel laureates while best at one thing are also very good at a few other things. Seems not really that striking but it is the simplest of things that we fail to tell ourselves when we need to and go looking for more profound stuff.  

As for me it was a combination of desire to switch career from engineering to working on environmental issues and since I already had a Masters it had to be a PhD, nothing more profound or no lifetime passion, none of that. But if you ask me both having a thirst for knowledge for knowledge sake and a desire to have an impact is ideal.

This brings me to a second question you should ask yourself

2. What would you like to do post PhD? 

A PhD in sustainability can help in each of the three different types of career's below which I rank order in terms of the returns to investment in a PhD in Sustainability. And by returns I don't mean financial returns (the order will be reversed if we are talking purely financial returns)

• Academia - research and/or teaching 
• Research non-academic 
• Non-research  

I personally feel this is a great time to get an inter-disciplinary PhD if you are interested in an academic career. We are not at a point where we can say the world has one too many generalists.  Also the number of opportunities in academia for interdisciplinary studies is growing (demand). But I suppose the supply of graduates is also growing faster relative to demand and so getting good academic jobs could get tougher. However, this supply and demand argument is less straightforward for there is so much room to differentiate yourself that if you are good you wont be easily comparable to others. If oil companies can brand a commodity like gasoline, I will find a way to differentiate yourself. I had earlier written about my approach and good fortune in choosing an academic career with an interdisciplinary PhD here

An interdisciplinary PhD is also very good for teaching Sustainability or research in non-academic settings. And last but least it can hold immense value in non-research careers in multinational corporations, think tanks, governmental organizations and multilateral institutions such as World Bank etc.

I would like conclude with a few cautionary notes. One is that as exciting and important as Sustainability sounds, coming up with something new, backing it up with evidence, and accomplishing it all in 5 years, is not an easy task. It really requires the discipline to very quickly shed any inhibition of wanting to change society through a dissertation and take up some thing that is small and become really good at it and I assure you it will not be insubstantial in effort or impact. I think it is important to be humble while wanting to make a mark. 

To quote the really wonderful Paul Eddington from my all time favorite political satire Yes Minister - "A journalist once asked me what I would like my epitaph to be and I said I think I would like it to be 'He did very little harm'. And that's not easy. Most people seem to me to do a great deal of harm. If I could be remembered as having done very little, that would suit me." - Excerpted from LINK

When voluntary actions come cheap

If you don't like the thought of lions killing deers, would you sympathize more with a lion in a jungle with 9 other lions and 100 deers or a lion in a jungle with no other lions and 20 deers? May be this not a great analogy for what I have to say, let's see.

Without wading into socialism vs capitalism, I suppose we can all agree, if you are really rich and doing something voluntarily and trying to take credit for it then you should be taking on some pain in doing the voluntary action and so the person taking the greater pain deserves relatively more goodwill even if they are both causing harm. By that measure, I feel the tech companies deserve no more goodwill than fossil companies but while we are hyper about fossil companies today we seem to be giving the really wealthy tech companies a free pass. And I say this notwithstanding the fact that the harm done by fossil energy to the environment is greater than the tech companies both in aggregate and per unit of their economic output, but please remember each's value addition is not easily compared.

Here is why 

Since I just picked on Google in the last post (please read that one first for this to make better sense), as a Californian, let me pick on the other big fruit (sorry I don't like to pick on Fish, big or small), Apple this time. Phasebook's turn will come in due course and I hope to eventually move up the coast (not down) to the Amazon and MostlySoft. But my point applies to these companies as well.

If you look at the fossil companies and their major products - coal, oil products and gas, and when you look at the life cycle green house gas pollution from each product, only a small share 10% (maybe little more) happens in the process of getting those to the ultimate end user. The rest of the pollution happens when we actually burn those fuels to make electricity or when we drive our car or heat our homes. For computers etc. most of the harm (specifically, GHG and some types of air pollution) happens when the consumers use them (from emissions associated with the electricity they use) and when they trash them or recycle them (a lot of which could eventually be landfilling). Apologies for a casual error in an earlier version of the post where I claimed the same for phones but they are not in the same league as laptops or pcs 

Now here is the question, Apple, Google and the like seem to be really flaunting their plan to make their offices, factories, and suppliers go renewable or clean or whatever, and people seem ok with it, whereas I am sure if Shell or Chevron said we are making our refineries become carbon neutral we would call that putting lipstick on something we should not be putting it on (I am sorry, I would rather take a cheap shot at the rich as opposed to a more benign creature we have chosen to treat like a ...) 

Let me reiterate, fossil fuel companies cause disproportionately more environmental harm in aggregate compared to tech companies. (I am steering clear of non-environmental harm, at a certain level technology is not different from cigarettes, a whole another issue) and the former needs to have their feet held to a blast furnace not just any fire. But given they are both obscenely wealthy (at least the very big ones in each) and when you control for the fact one can more easily afford to do more (again, read the last post), isn't it time tech companies really do substantially more or just shut up and have the guts to say we are doing our bit but it is not that hard instead of painting themselves like warriors. In fact, if you factor how much they are paying their employees, investors and stockholders and how that wealth gets spent in turn generating additional emissions and how much more easy and wasteful consumption the tech giants are enabling by making it easy to consume and the attendant pscyhological costs (of living in a bubble), I am not sure the tech industry's footprint is all that less than fossil fuel's and perhaps even worse.

So what has this to do with lions and deers. The nine (arbitrary number) lions situation refers to fossil fuel industry where there is more competition within it even if as whole they are not in competition with renewables except in some cases, while the lone lion situation is the limited competition environment within which each of the major tech giants operate. I still don't know if the analogy I opened with makes sense, but I hope the rest does. 

Which is worse - weak claims by wealthy or media cheerleading it without scrutiny?

What is a lay person to make of claims of wealthy companies to go carbon free? Of course it sounds great but when you look a little closer you will see it is not as tall as it is made out to be. Not just that, I suspect even many technically and financially adept people will think this is a big deal especially and when you have media houses like CNBC cheerleading such claims without proper scrutiny one cannot but lose trust and view every media claim with cynicism.

The specific issue that led me to write this was a request from a CNBC reporter as to what I thought of Google's claim to go carbon free and the CEO reported to be losing sleep over it. I wrote back saying you probably are not going to like what I have to say for it is a nuanced point which is this: Google and big tech are not the reason we face carbon issues and while their trying do such things is ok, it is really not a big deal for them. She wanted to hear more and so I shared the below and much more. 

This was my simple argument, which I call a smell test

• Google's annual revenues ~ $200 Billion
• Total annual google data center energy consumption ~ 14 TWh (tera Watthour). I got this from a presentation by Google employee here 
• Assuming a generous cost of $0.15 per kWhr, the energy cost of data centers = 14 TWh*0.15 $/kWh ~ $2 Billion
• Therefore, the energy cost share of their business (in terms of revenues) ~ 1% 
• Not only that, in all likelihood, switching to renewable electricity might even lower their cost for there are tax credits and even carbon credits to be sold if they build their own renewable facilities. Let's be generous and say their energy cost increases 50% or doubles and becomes 2%. Would a $200 Billion business which is a practical monopoly have to lose sleep over it? Give me a break!

However, a convenient weakness CNBC used was that my claim about their energy consumption was from an online search and not trust worthy. I cannot but help recall a line from perhaps the greatest political satire ever, the BBC's Yes Prime Minister, in which the Minister when his civil service secretary rejects his idea for raising taxes on cigarettes sky high  responds my statistics are mere statistics but his statistics are facts (Snippet here with the statement on statistics coming at t=3:19). What's more the reporter ran the numbers by Google who was supposed to responded that I am confusing matters of net zero and carbon neutrality or something like that. Therefore, nothing I said was trustworthy or useful for them such as my suggestion that would Google consider offsetting the energy of all the devices it expects to sell such as mobile phones and offset the emissions of their employees commuting to work and commit to zero landfilling of their devices. Of course, this is the real inconvenient truth. I found the Google presentation with their energy information only today.

So why does Google CEO have to lose sleep over this piddly stuff and why does the media choose to buy this greenwashing outright and fool us? And let's be clear, Google is not the reason we are facing an environmental crisis and what it wants to do is fine, but to say this is something great doesn't pass the smell test.

Coming back to the question of what is a lay person to make of the claims you hear about net zero claims of wealthy (companies, people and governments) - please don't just lap it up. I spent a couple hours to read, collect the above information above and spend time writing elaborate emails to the CNBC reporter who wanted me to help her understand what to make of this. Unfortunately, my facts didn't fit the story CNBC wanted to tell and as with these requests they can easily harvest respectable people whose views might pose less discomfort. While I am disappointed that I wasted time trying to help the writer and did not some much as get a mention, this is one more data point that the media is doing society a great disservice.

So if you ask me which is worse - claims made by companies of how much good they are doing or media cheerleading it without scrutiny, it is a no contest. And likewise we should also be a bit skeptical of media claims of harm caused by companies.