Cities & Buildings

Where we live and where we work are critical to who we are. How we power, organize, and move within these spaces is a key part of our energy story.

Recent Work

Digest

Electric Vehicle Penetration and Urban Spatial Restructuring: A Case Study of Beijing with Geospatial Machine Learning

Electric vehicles are proliferating worldwide, yet the urban infrastructure that must support them is often mismatched between demand and supply. This digest uses Beijing as a case study to explore how EVs are reshaping urban patterns.

Digest

Cooling People, Not Spaces: Surmounting the Risks of Air-Conditioning Over-Reliance

The growing global demand for air conditioning is exacerbating carbon emissions. This trend will intensify unless alternative solutions are sought and massively adopted. Solutions already exist and new ones are emerging, but face barriers including technology, building design, education, finance, and policy.

Energy Efficiency

Digest

Evaluating K-12 Public School District Sustainability Plans for Justice and Equity

Sustainability and climate plans for public K-12 school districts have the potential to address infrastructural gaps that produce outdated, unhealthy, and unsafe school facilities. This project takes a deeper look at several plans across the nation.

Digest

The Economics of Building Electrification

The percentage of U.S. homes heated with electricity has increased steadily from 1% in 1950 to 40% in 2020. New research explores the implications of this increase for a growing number of policies aimed at electrifying buildings.