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. 

My take on California's mandate on Lyft and Uber to go clean miles

This post is about my interview on NPR's Take 2 show (by KPCC) on May24th about California's mandate on ride-hailing companies (Lyft and Uber mainly) on which I have done some work and continue to do so as researcher interested in innovative policies for clean technology adoption. 

Back in Fall 2019, in collaboration with researchers at Ohio State University, we conducted a survey of Uber and Lyft drivers in Los Angeles, which was aimed at understanding their perceptions of the benefits and limitations of electric vehicles (EV) for their work as a ride-hailing driver. A separate post will follow on that. The report of that work (which I regret not having yet submitted for peer-review, the principal currency for recognition by my peers) seems to have had its intended impact which was to help inform public policy first and foremost. It was cited by the California Air Resources Board multiple times in the Initial Statement of Reasons  for the California Clean Miles Standard and the survey was the reason I was invited to comment on California's mandate. What particularly excited me about this particular project was that almost all the research on EV users was on those who use it for private use and tend to be wealthier (not surprisingly) where as I strongly feel that EVs can deliver both greater private benefits and social benefits when adopted by poorer drivers who drive a lot for a living and who would both save more money and help avoid more pollution. Traditionally, the coolest technologies were first adopted by the rich and then it became a mass product, for which there are good reasons but I feel we dont need to make the poorer households wait in this case. The basic point is this mandate should not cause much trouble for the regulated parties for they have voluntarily committed to full electrification by 2030 already, this regulation just makes that a hard requirement to which they will be held. 

Here is the LINK to the full interview, the topic. 

My claim on FAME

India's electric vehicle policy is titled Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Electric and Hybrid vehicles, abbreviated as FAME. This policy, which was originally launched in 2015, underwent a total transformation and was launched as FAME phase II just last month. I recently wrote an opinion piece in Business Line (link below), a leading Indian financial daily. But my claim to FAME is I have been at it since 2004, with one minor difference, I was working on policies towards Fatty Acid Methyl Esters or in popular terms biodiesel.

The full article is here LINK

Why it is time to usher the EV revolution and how

The full article is here.

On Tesla and Tariffs

Much to the chagrin of Econists the White House has imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum imports into the US. The tariffs are set at 25% and 10% on the two metals respectively. The relationship between trade and environment is fascinating and complex and above all hard to generalize. But here I just want to explore what it means for pollution from transportation. It is not obvious the these are connected right? But they are.

I will dispense with the environmental implications one can draw from Econ101 as to how this raises domestic price of these commodities and lowers the world price (as we are a large consumer) and it's attendant effects for consumption and pollution. Since steel and aluminum are very energy intensive, if this action does lead to a net reduction in global consumption and if it shifts production to countries with cleaner electricity mix, it could be an "unintended" benefit for the environment. But those are BIG IFS. For if you relax Econ101 assumptions and bring in exemptions to imports from specific countries which could mean we are just shuffling things around, game theory and  general equilibrium effects, it gets complicated very quickly. Economics of trade and the environment is, however, not my trade.

But what I do know is steel and aluminum have an important role in automakers achieving the stringent fuel economy standards put forth by Pres. Obama. Needless to mention, this is a regulation that the current administration is proposing abandoning. In any case, according to the US Department of Energy,  "A 10% reduction in vehicle weight can result in a 6%-8% fuel economy improvement. Replacing cast iron and traditional steel components with lightweight materials such as high-strength steel, magnesium (Mg) alloys, aluminum (Al) alloys, carbon fiber, and polymer composites can directly reduce the weight of a vehicle's body and chassis by up to 50 percent and therefore reduce a vehicle's fuel consumption."

At the same, it appears that aluminum-based materials are two to three times costlier per kilogram relative to steel. So whereas the pricey Tesla S relied more heavily on aluminum, the Tesla 3 which is a intended as a mass market car has a greater proportion of Steel. This means the Tesla 3 will be heavier for a given range  and will have to pay a greater fuel economy penalty.

In fact, the tariffs might be giving ammunition to auto makers to lobby harder for weaken the fuel economy targets. After this yet another depressing assessment, let me try to cheer you up with a couple of sunnier possibilities. One, steel makers have not been sitting idle hoping for political developments to regain market share in the auto industry. They have developed  advanced high-strength steel (AHSS), which according to the steel industry is cheaper and has lower life cycle emissions relative to aluminum. This coupled with improvements in power train technology and lighter batteries there might not be much penalty from reverting to steel. Last but not least, the tariffs on aluminum are set lower relative to steel.

If you accept that intentional harm is a given, then the fact there isn't additional unintentional harm is good news.

A bright spot in the US tariffs of solar imports

Today's hottest news relating to the environmental is the imposition of tariffs on imports of solar panels (along with washing machines) by the Trump administration. Ironically it coincides with World Economic Forum summit in Davos.

Per Econ 101 trade barriers cannot be good overall. While I do buy that, if we are to take anything away from the developments of late 2016 it is that thinking in overall terms is practically useless. What matters is who stands to gain (or lose) or are can be seen as gaining (losing). Domestic solar panel industry benefits while domestic solar panel consumers, retailers and installers lose. Government revenues increase due to tariffs and decrease due to reduced sales. The size of each is an empirical question. However, if the affected countries retaliate, there will be loses in the broader economy and this is what economists mean it cannot be good overall.

But let me talk about something I really know little bit better. Climate change is a global problem and while the world could use all the solar we can, in the near to medium term which is the time frame for this policy, it matters where it is installed. On the margin Solar is displacing natural gas in the US market and not coal. If the US is large enough a market, and it is, this should dampen global demand for solar which would lower global solar prices. This will boost demand from  developing countries.  If this can help delay or cancel investments in coal then both the global and local environmental benefits could be larger. So our president's policy might end up helping the poor countries he wants to limit migration from. Of course, you don't need have come this far to keep your chin up as there are reports out there that say this policy will not affect the global solar industry as much as it seems. Now what would be the point of saying this right up front.

You cannot take this to the bank

After spending three weeks in India and exposing my son to  pollution in the name of being sustainable (i.e, not Ubering or Ola-ing every where), I am all the more looking forward to the rapid diffusion of electric cars in our cities. So far I have read reports  that cite automakers, oil companies, transportation industry, consumers, investors, and ofcourse, policy makers. However, one group is conspicuous by it's absence from this list, Bankers. There was a time before 2008 when the phrase you can take it to the bank was worth the ink on which it was written but not anymore.

Apropos this criticism is the picture below from a Bloomberg report citing a Bank of America analysis about the future of oil demand.












I am not going to go into issue of peak oil demand for it is not a question of if but when, and I for one feel the when is not as near as it is made out to be but that is another topic. I refer to my earlier post on Peak Oil here.

Here, I really take issue with how two different phenomena -- share of EV sales and global oil demand over the three decades -- are juxtaposed in a misleading way and misinterpreted as an optimistic future when the actual story it tells is a depressing one for the environment! Notice that the primary y-axis (one on the left) runs from 0 through 100% while the secondary y- axis (one the right) runs from 96 to 106 million barrels per day. In other words, the right axis runs from 0 to 8%, which is the decline in oil consumption from it's peak in the late 2020's. What's more, oil demand is unchanged at 0% from 2016 through 2050. Just think about EV's rise to a 100% of car sales in 30 years time and oil consumption has not dropped one bit. This chart is not one you can take to the bank. For the sake of our own future let us hope that this projection is wrong.

May be I am being too harsh as this post is about bank analysts, a subset within those large institutions who perhaps are more guilty than the rest of their ilk for all that is wrong with them.  Unfortunately, one might find such misleading graphics in academic and scholarly journals as well, which was the point of my 2016 paper on "Peak Cropland". I argue, albeit using correlations only, that global crop acreage is set to keep growing.

Green Christmas tree options

Yesterday, I received a request from a environment and science reporter to comment as to which is better for the environment - real or artificial Christmas trees and I had 24 hours to respond. For once, I can empathize with people at Amazon fulfillment centers :-) Although I had not thought about this specific comparison, it being a perfect question for an LCA, I accepted the challenge of coming up with something interesting and overnight it.

At the outset, if someone feels they just want a real tree to get the real Christmas spirit, which no one argue with, then there is no need for further discussion. But say, one is interested in simply knowing the enviromental footprint of each. My plan is to hazard a calculated guess and my approach is to use as a spring board the paper versus plastic debate, which it feels like predates Christmas but is in the context of shopping bags or beverage/food containers.

Before jumping into the dry and boring mechanics of LCA, a first step is to see whether the two goods or products in question are functionally equivalent. If they are not, one needs to find a way to first make them comparable which in technical terms is called as System expansion or allocation. So needless to say we ought to be comparing two trees of identical dimensions and physical appearance.

Next, and right off the bat, there are no simple answers in an “overall” environmental sense, for what is “overall” is subjective. First, there are multiple different non-commensurate environmental burdens such as greenhouse gas emissions, criteria air pollutants, toxics, water pollution, and solid waste which have different impacts on human health and natural environment, and whose implications vary spatially and temporally. Next and on a related note, there are multiple different scarce natural resources consumed in the lifecycle of each including fossil fuel use, water use, land use. Finally, the sourcing of the natural resource (virgin vs recyled), the end-of-life  management practices (reuse, composting, recyling, landfill or incineration) and how much transportation is involved at different stages of the lifecycle all matter to the calculus. That said, evidence suggests that in general plastic outperforms paper with respect of almost every measure other than biodegradability. So after round 1 of this match, it is even-steven.

Now, what are the differences and similarities to the paper vs plastic situation. Artificial christmas trees are made of plastic (of which there are many different types by the way and each can be produced from different types of fossil fuels) while wood from different types of trees is the main raw material for paper. So, in translating from paper vs plastic, we can drop the environmental impacts associated with converting wood to paper, which is the main reason that paper comes out poorer compared to plastic except with respect to biodegradability. This alone means that the balance might significantly be tilting towards natural trees. Round 2 goes to real trees.

Next, people often cite transportation as big potential waste of a resource but in my experience, it is unlikely to tilt the calculus one way or another even shipping stuff from a point diametrically across the globe. Round 3 is even-steven

Having said that, I need to point out a potential issue in the literature on LCA of plastics. Plastics are derived from an incidental co-product of oil refining, namely Naptha, which is cracked (broken down) to ethylene, the basic building block for poly-ethylene i.e. plastics. An aside, increasingly ethane that accompanies natural gas extraction is becoming the source of ethylene and this is also cleaner. In any case, the key word is incidental, which means the impacts of oil extraction, transportation and refining should be attributed to gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and heating oil which are the main reasons we drill for oil. Round 4 goes to artificial trees

The next critical aspect is reusability. In the paper vs plastic case, even though plastic bags can be reused, they rarely are while paper bags are either  recycled or land filled. But artificial Christmas tress can last for years or decades and can be resold on craigslist and ebay while real trees tend to be discarded after one time use and tend to be landfilled or composted. My "guess" is if it is used for 5 times of so, the balance significantly tilts in favor of artificial trees. Round 5 - artificial trees big time and perhaps the knock out punch assuming they are reused multiple times.

This is the best my academic self can bring to say unambiguously without a full LCA. So, what should you do? As to what God wants from you, you know. For everything else, ask Alexa.