Publications

| Report

State of the Coast: A Review of Coastal Management Policies for Six States

This analysis of coastal habitat policy in six US states—California, Florida, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Texas, and Washington—aims to identify promising policy approaches for improved protection and restoration of oyster reefs, mangroves, salt marshes, and seagrass.

| Journal Article

What You Get Is Not Always What You See—Pitfalls in Solar Array Assessment Using Overhead Imagery

Effective integration planning for small, distributed solar photovoltaic (PV) arrays into electric power grids requires access to high quality data: the location and power capacity of individual solar PV arrays. Unfortunately, national databases of small-scale solar PV do not exist; those that do are limited in their spatial resolution, typically aggregated up to state or national levels. While several promising approaches for solar PV detection have been published, strategies for evaluating the performance of these models are often highly heterogeneous from study to study.

| Working Paper

Coalition Stability in PJM: Exploring the Consequences of State Defection from the Wholesale Market

Using a simulation tool, the authors investigate the effects created by a US state defecting from the wholesale electricity market in an organized electric grid on the states that remain in the coalition. The report finds that if a net-importing state defects, the remaining states’ producers are worse off and the remaining states’ consumers are better off. The opposite effect takes hold if the defecting state is a net-exporter. Furthermore, the authors find evidence that defection impacts the remaining states’ climate initiatives.

| Report

Taxes and Subsidies and the Transition to Clean Cooking: A Review of Relevant Theoretical and Empirical Insights

Though many challenges impede low- and middle-income countries’ access to clean cooking energy, cost barriers are perhaps most significant. This report discusses the role of subsidy and tax policies—levied on both the supply and demand side of this market—in affecting progress toward universal access to clean cooking. Moreover, we show that a “fear of spoiling the market” with such incentives finds little empirical support in the literature. This report offers recommendations to policy makers, in additional to a case study on clean cooking transitions in Nepal.

| Journal Article

Voluntary Commitments Made by the World’s Largest Companies Focus on Recycling and Packaging Over Other Actions to Address the Plastics Crisis

In a study published by the journal One Earth, Duke experts share findings from an examination of the types of commitments that corporations have made to address global plastic pollution. The authors find that, rather than tackle virgin plastics, most companies target packaging and general plastics and frequently emphasize recycling-related efforts. While many large and important companies are making commitments, significantly more efforts beyond plastic recycling are required to effectively address plastic pollution challenges.

| Report

Pathways to Net-Zero for the US Energy Transition

What will it take to achieve a net-zero carbon emissions footprint for the US economy by 2050? This report from Energy Pathways USA helps strengthen the evidence base on what will be required for a robust US energy transition and elucidates key barriers and opportunities for reaching net-zero goals. The report also outlines future areas of focus for Energy Pathways USA, a Duke-based project that accelerates progress towards a net-zero carbon future by developing workable solutions with corporate partners across multiple key industries.

| Journal Article

Self-Supervised Encoders Are Better Transfer Learners in Remote Sensing Applications

Transfer learning has been shown to be an effective method for achieving high-performance models when applying deep learning to remote sensing data. Recent research has demonstrated that representations learned through self-supervision transfer better than representations learned on supervised classification tasks. However, little research has focused explicitly on applying self-supervised encoders to remote sensing tasks.

| Journal Article

A Transdisciplinary Approach to Reducing Global Plastic Pollution

In a commentary published by Frontiers in Marine Science, Duke experts outline evidence underscoring the urgency of the plastic policy crisis and recommend novel research-based interventions. The interdisciplinary group of authors are part of Duke's Plastic Pollution Working Group.

| Policy Brief

Can Time-of-Use Tariffs Increase the Financial Viability of Mini-Grids?

Declining solar and battery costs and increased operational efficiency have helped expand community-scale mini-grids, especially in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, where they now meet the power needs of over 47 million people. However, mini-grid system economics must continue to improve to be a reliable power solution for the nearly 800 million people still lacking access. Time-of-use (ToU) tariffs could represent one piece of the solution. This policy brief develops a model to estimate the effects of a ToU tariff using data from Energicity, a solar mini-grid operator in Sierra Leone.

| Working Paper

Spatial Patterns in Water Quality Portal Data: Identifying and Addressing Gaps in Water Quality Monitoring and Reporting

Data from the Water Quality Portal were analyzed to determine spatial patterns in monitoring coverage at the subwatershed scale. These patterns were integrated with population, race, ethnicity, and income data to determine what communities may be underserved by monitoring. Trends varied by state and EPA region but were more strongly correlated with population density than with race, ethnicity, and income. Findings were compiled into a dashboard and recommendations for policy and practice were developed for increasing the comprehensiveness and accessibility of water quality monitoring data.