Life Cycle Assessment of Energy Systems : Closing the Ethical Loophole of Social Sustainability.

Cover -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Part I ENGINEERING AND SUSTAINABILITY -- 1 Engineering Sustainability, Sustaining Engineering -- Introduction -- The Sustainable, Yet Invisible, Engineer -- What Prompts the Sustainability Engineer? The Ideologies of Technological Change and Technopolitics -- Recasting Engineering Progress as the Golem-Like View of Sustainability -- The Rationalities of Engineering Ideologies of Sustainability -- Conclusion -- 2 A Critical History of Sustainability Engineering -- Common Departures -- Sustainability's Technological Change Roots -- Familiar Ideological Bases for Engineering Theories of Sustainability -- Speaking to the Converted: Institutional and Ideological Alliances -- Development Institutions and Corporations Ratifying Sustainability Engineering -- Sustainability and Technological Change in the 1995 US National Security Strategy -- Engineers Going for Sustainability (1985-1997) -- Engineering Groundwork (1985-1991): The Institutions and Metrics of Sustainability -- From Invisible Engineers to Facilitators of Global Stewardship -- The Turn to Quantifying Sustainability -- The US-Led World Engineering Partnership for Sustainable Development -- Meeting the Challenge to not be Left Behind (1998-2003) -- WFEO's ComTech and Engineering Sustainability Through Public Private Partnerships -- Claiming Technology's Territory, Stretching Sustainability's Boundaries: US Engineers and the Earth Charter -- Conclusion -- 3 Resisting Sustainability -- Negotiating Ideas about Self and Nature: the Case of American Engineers for Social Responsibility (AESR), 1988-1994 -- Conclusion -- Part II LIFE CYCLE ANALYSIS -- 4 When Social Values Make an Entry -- Introduction -- Targeting the Social Risks: Fitting the Life Cycle Perspective into Corporate Social Responsibility.

Social Sustainability Tinkerers -- Sustainable Development, Corporate Social Responsibility, and Life Cycle Assessment -- Social Auditing Pioneers and the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) -- Conclusion -- What is "Natural"? -- 5 Social Life Cycle Assessment (SLCA) Rationalities -- SLCA Understandings and Verbalizations of Sustainability -- Entwined Ontological, Epistemological, and Methodological Anxieties -- "Almost Moral": SLCA Limitations -- Toward Greater Democracy in SLCA? -- Do SLCAs Have Politics? -- The Potential Technopolitics Function of "Non-Implemented" Life Cycle Scenarios -- Widening Sustainability Competencies Beyond the Engineering World -- Conclusion -- Part III Case Studies -- 6 Life Cycle Sustainability, Renewable Energy Project Development, and the Exclusion of Local Knowledge in California's Western Antelope Valley (WAV) -- Introduction -- Sustainability Engineering Downplaying Local Knowledge -- Solar Developers and Local Communities in the WAV: An Unsustainable Relationship -- Mistrust and hostility: Perceptions of Engineering and Community Engagement in RE project development in the WAV -- Setting an "Engagement" Precedent, Breaking with Transparency -- Conclusion -- Savvy Desert Rats versus Arrogant Corporate Suits: Planning Paradoxes and Perceptions of RE Engineering in the WAV -- 7 Through an Ethnographic Lens: Local-Regional Politics of Utility Solar and Wind Siting in California -- The Cinderella of Utility-scale Renewables -- The Fabrication of a "Competitive Renewable Energy Zone" -- Rushed RE Project Development: Planning After the Fact in the Californian Wild West -- WAV Rural Town Councils: A Lack of Due Diligence While Creating Animosity and Division -- Opaque and Contentious by Design: LA County's Inaugural Utility-scale Solar PV Projects -- The Letter of the Law and a Double Standard.

Antelope Valley Solar Ranch 1 (Solar Ranch One) Collapsing Consensus: Factionalism and the Loss of Legitimacy -- Recurring Waves of Factionalism and Mistrust: The Fairmont Butte Motor Sports Park and Solar Ranch One's Biological Mitigation -- Sowing seeds of Mistrust: From Non-Transparent Permitting and Mitigation to Boomerang Construction Hurdles -- NRG Energy Alpine Solar Project -- Blue Sky Thinking: Siting Utility-scale Wind projects in Rural LA County -- Attitudes one is Bound to Mistrust: NextEra Energy and Element Power's Attempts to Reset RE Industry Local Engagement Standards in the WAV -- Conclusion -- Wrong Time, Wrong Place -- Perceptions of Community Engagement -- 8 Epilogue -- Bibliography -- Appendix 1: Solar Ranch One Timeline (Siting, Permitting, Financing and Pre-Construction) -- Appendix 2: Sample of Community Concerns as Regards to the Solar Ranch One, Alpine, Wildflower and Blue Sky RE projects -- Index -- EULA.

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Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2024. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.