Circular Economies to Decarbonize Electricity and Mobility

Please join the Payne Institute for Public Policy at the Colorado School of Mines as we welcome Fellow Dustin Mulvaney, Professor in the Environmental Studies Department at San José State University (SJSU), presenting a webinar titled Circular Economies to Decarbonize Electricity and Mobility on Tuesday, April 20, 2021 from 1:00pm – 2:00pm (MT).

Over 90% of the global economy continues to use natural resources unsustainably. The linear “take-make-toss” approach to materials use still prevails over circular economy and industrial ecology ideas in practice. The shift to renewable energy is one step towards building an economy on more circular material flows. But the materials needed to decarbonize electricity and mobility are supplied by mining and extractives industries, places where impacts from natural resource extraction can be most severe.

Dustin Mulvaney is a Professor in the Environmental Studies Department at San José State University (SJSU) and a Fellow with the Payne Institute for Public Policy at the Colorado School of Mines. His research includes work on natural resource use, solar energy commodity chains, and public lands and clean energy development in the American West. Dr. Mulvaney’s book Solar Power: Innovation, Sustainability, Environmental Justice was published by the University California Press (2019). His textbook Sustainable Energy Transition: Socio-Ecological Dimensions of Decarbonization is out with Palgave-MacMillan (2020). Dustin has conducted extensive work on photovoltaic sustainability, chemical stewardship, and recycling management including the development of the e-stewards recycling standard for photovoltaics with the Basel Action Network and as a member of the Joint Committee for a sustainability leadership standard for photovoltaics at the National Standards Foundation International. Prior to SJSU, he was a National Science Foundation Science & Technology Studies Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management at the University of California, Berkeley. He was Visiting Scholar with the Bill Lane Center for the American West at Stanford University 2016-17. Dustin received his Ph.D. from the Environmental Studies Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and obtained an M.S. in Environmental Policy Studies and B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the New Jersey Institute of Technology. He previously worked for a bioremediation startup as a project engineer at fossil fuel spill sites, and before that was a chemical process engineer for a Fortune 500 chemical manufacturer.