![]() “We wanted to create a solution, and the economics were going to be important - we want to turn plastic waste into something of value. ![]() Mann School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences. “It’s pretty sad when you visit the harbor - there are pieces of trash from the Pacific Ocean and these marine animals dying on the beach,” said Wang, professor of pharmacology and pharmaceutical sciences at the USC Alfred E. Wang and Travis Williams saw an opportunity.Ĭlay C.C. Where some saw this eyesore as an impossible-to-solve problem, USC professors Clay C.C. The harbor’s beach captures trash from the massive Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a gigantic, swirling gyre of plastic debris ranging from microplastics to milk jugs. One of the world’s most devastating examples of plastic pollution sits just off the L.A. “For instance, air pollution can be made worse by rising temperatures, so the benefits of transitioning to a clean electricity grid were likely underestimated in the initial phase of the LA100 project, because it assumed historical climate conditions.” USC research into ‘fungus food’ conversion reveals value of plastic waste “We’re now building on the LA100 effort to see what air quality trade-offs might result from different energy scenarios in the future when climate change is taken into account,” Sanders said. Her study was one of the key pieces of evidence the City Council cited when moving its goal forward to 2035. Yun Li, who was a postdoctoral scholar in Sanders’ research group before moving to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, created models used in the LA100 report as a doctoral student working with Ban-Weiss, which showed that 150 lives per year could be saved if the city transitioned to sustainably generated energy by 2045. “In this new project, we’re actually considering what the city’s air pollution might look like in the context of future climate change.” “After George’s passing, I helped finish up some of his work with his former lab members to develop models to quantify the impact of different energy system scenarios on air pollution,” she said. Kelly Sanders, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at USC Viterbi, led some of the energy modeling for the LA100 study and is now working to develop better estimates of how air pollution levels across the city might change as a result of decarbonizing its electricity system. ![]() After Ban-Weiss died in 2021, his colleagues took up the cause and continued his research. In coordination with colleagues from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and USC, Ban-Weiss and his fellow researchers created a novel, science-based analysis of the city’s power systems to determine how to achieve the goals set by the City Council. Pivotal to the findings was the work of the late George Ban-Weiss, a USC Viterbi School of Engineering professor whose groundbreaking research aimed to reduce public exposure to air pollution. ![]() While the City Council first aimed for 2045, the LA100 report prompted city leaders to revise their goal, moving the decarbonization deadline up by a decade. The resulting report - called the Los Angeles 100% Renewable Energy Study, or LA100 - showed that the city’s energy needs can be met by an electric grid generated by carbon-free sources and on a much faster timeline than initially forecast. A major concern was the evolving demand on electricity: With increased solar and electric vehicle adoption by customers, how soon could Los Angeles transition to a grid powered by renewable energy? City Council commissioned a study to evaluate the feasibility of the city transitioning to an electricity system powered by 100% renewable energy. Two USC research projects tackling seemingly insurmountable problems - Los Angeles’ polluted air and plastic garbage in the Pacific Ocean - illustrate the ambitious Trojan approach to sustainability research. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |