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Dissertation Project Summary:

Much of the world’s socio-cultural, environmental, health and industrial prosperity depends on the design and governance of engineering projects, in particular energy infrastructure. In recent years, technological expertise, industrial investment, organizational rhetoric, codes of ethics, and educational initiatives clearly associate professional engineering activity with its environmental, economic and social ramifications. “Sustainability engineering” represents a significant shift toward a systemic perspective, and away from classical engineering problem-solving, which employs reductionism and delineates clear boundaries to define technological projects. Due to their increasing awareness of the inherent complexity of interactions between natural and built environments, engineers progressively face the politics of determining whether the socio-technical systems on which they work are “sustainable” or not. It is thus critical to examine the ethical, social and political elements of sustainability in an engineering context.

This dissertation begins with a broad conceptual analysis of “sustainability engineering” in the U.S. (1989-present) to unpack its history, epistemology and politics. This dissertation further examines the politics of creating, utilizing, and modifying what has become the dominant "sustainability engineering" methodology: Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). My first case study on "Social Life Cycle Assessment"  (SLCA) analyzes the politics of engineering identity formation in relation to social, political, regulatory and community pressure to reshape the ethics and boundaries of LCA. I then focus on two case studies of renewable energy system building—solar and wind project development in California’s West Antelope Valley (WAV) and the decommissioning of wind turbine blades—to understand in more detail the politics and ethics of LCA in renewable technologies.

This dissertation proposes one of the first studies to focus on the politics of deciding what sustainability means in engineered systems. It aims to understand why, how, by whom, and for whom assumptions about the environmentally and socially beneficial implications of solar and wind energy are built into sustainability “best practices” and policies.

The intellectual merits of the proposed dissertation are as follows. Building upon insights from Environmental Science and Technology Studies (STS) and Engineering Studies, this dissertation investigates the politics and ethical implications of what is considered sustainable in an engineering context by using engineer identity formation and LCA objects as key foci. In doing so, (1) it maps the connections between professional identity-formation and conceptualization of sustainability, as they reflect a spectrum of normative worldviews that dominate, but also increasingly challenge American engineering. (2) It stresses the politics of LCA and why/how LCAs have become more dominant in defining sustainability. It highlights the potential for different views and ethics of LCA to be advanced by communities, regulators, activists-engineers, and NGOs. (4) The study also fills an important gap in the STS literature, by examining wind and solar project-development from the perspective of LCA and the politics of sustainability metrics. (5) Finally, in light of the renewable sector’s heterogeneity—namely the fact that many actors in the solar and wind sectors claim the role of energy system designers, even though they are not formally trained as engineers—this dissertation prompts philosophical reflection on the broader question: who is a green engineer?

Broader impacts: This dissertation will provide insights into key sustainability questions regarding engineering project development with an eye on ethics and justice. My results will be disseminated broadly through publications in leading STS, engineering, and energy policy journals and through presentations in multi and interdisciplinary conferences. I will participate in developing new approaches to engage communities in the development of solar and wind projects in California and elsewhere. I will collaborate with researchers and fellow graduate students working on the ethics of sustainable technologies. Through reports and publications, I will make my data available in a timely manner to STS, engineering and policy researchers. I will partner with federal, state, and local agencies to analyze my results in formats useful to policy makers. Based on my results, I will create an interdisciplinary, internet-run project, aimed at improving the comprehension of sustainability from an engineering perspective.