The decarbonization of energy system plays a fundamental role in global climate change mitigation efforts, and it entails unprecedented infrastructural transformations across the whole energy supply chain and the end uses as well as large scale deployment of emerging low-carbon technologies. In addition to the carbon mitigation potential, it is also critical to comprehensively assess other sustainability dimensions of the decarbonization actions. Techno-economic analysis (TEA) and life cycle assessment (LCA) are two main methods that are used to quantify the economic and environmental performances for energy system technologies, respectively. However, applying these methods at technology-level is limited to capture the dynamic system contexts and their effect on the technology performances. The main contribution and novelty of this dissertation is that it evaluated the economic and/or environmental implications of decarbonization actions in the energy system by linking the relevant methods with scenario analysis and/or system modeling approaches. This methodology integration makes it possible to capture the effects of system interaction and evolution on the performance of decarbonization actions. A transition to energy-efficient lighting technologies (e.g., fluorescent and light-emitting diode (LED) lightbulbs) assist climate change mitigation by reducing energy consumption. In Chapter II, I studied the uses and recycling of critical rare earth oxides (REOs) in the efficient lighting technologies. The demand for REOs in the lighting sector shows a rapid increase during 1990 and 2014 driven by the global adoption of fluorescent lightbulbs, but this increasing trend decreases after the peak as more efficient LED lightbulbs (that requires significant less REO consumption than fluorescent lightbulbs) penetrated the market and replaced fluorescent lightbulbs. The REO recycling from end-of-life lighting technologies are not economically feasible under 2018 REO prices, even though economy of scale can reduce recycling cost by two third as plant capacity increases from 100 t/yr to 1,500 t/yr, highlighting that the improvement of REO recycling rate may need higher REO prices or commensurate policy interventions. In Chapter III, I quantified the total system cost of the U.S. electric power system under different decarbonization scenarios based on the capacity expansion and dispatch outputs from an electricity system optimization model. I found pursuing zero CO2 emission by replacing fossil fuel with renewable and other low-carbon energy sources would incur $335–$494 billion additional cost (5% discount rate, 2020 US$) to the U.S. electricity system during 2020–2050 (compared to a reference scenario). Additionally, the marginal costs of mitigating the last few percent CO2 emission from the U.S. electricity system could exceed the costs of some carbon dioxide removal (CDR) solutions, such as bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) and direct air carbon capture and storage (DACCS), indicating their potential opportunity to decarbonize the electricity system. In Chapter IV, I evaluated the prospective environmental performance of DACCS which is a CDR solution that deliberatrely removes carbon dioxide (CO2) from atmosphere. I found decarbonizing the electricity sector leads to environmental trade-offs for DACCS by increasing its terrestrial ecotoxicity and metal depletion levels both by an average of 56% from 2020 to 2100, but these increases can be reduced by improving the material and energy use efficiencies of DACCS as it scales up. Also, DACCS deployment aids the achievement of long-term climate targets, its environmental and climate performance however depend on sectoral mitigation actions, and thus DACCS deployment should not suggest a relaxation of sectoral decarbonization targets. This dissertation provides robust and reliable insights for the low-carbon transition in energy system by evaluating the economic and environmental performances of decarbonization actions in dynamic system contexts. Decarbonization actions in the energy system could lead to economic and environmental trade-offs which should be carefully studied and considered in policy decisions. Future studies and policies may also rely on multi-criterion decision analysis to decide how to implement a variaty of decarbonization actions in energy system based on the optimization of different sustainability dimensions.

This dissertation is comprised of three article-length essays, all of which concern important issues in early-life health and well-being. All three essays focus on the decision to formula feed or breastfeed--one of the first decisions a mother makes in her child's life. Two of the papers--one quantitative and one qualitative--study the environment of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and the potential effect of hospital policy and procedures on breast milk feeding. The remaining paper investigates a large federal policy and the consequences of altering the costs of infant formula relative to breast milk. All papers are tied together by an eye towards the plasticity of these early life experiences, as well as the troubling persistence of health disparities by race, class and maternal education.

Essay One: Breast milk feeding in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) is associated with a host of improved health outcomes. However, breast milk feeding rates differ by socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity and maternal education indicating that these results are vulnerable to selection bias. Qualitative work by this author and others suggests that women giving birth in the late-night hours are less likely to begin a successful milk expression regimen due to the lack of experienced clinicians working during these shifts. Using the hour of birth as an instrument for breast milk feeding, this study attempts to isolate the effects of breast milk feeding on incidence of deadly conditions in the NICU, as well as the infant's growth patterns and length of stay. This study also uses innovative measures of the indications for delivery type in order to construct a sub-sample whose distribution of delivery times is the most random, thereby increasing the validity of the analysis. The first-stage of the analysis revealed no significant relationship between late-night births and breast milk feeding at discharge, contrary to the claims of clinicians and mothers interviewed in a separate study. C-Section delivery and shorter maternal lengths of stay significantly predictive of decreased breast milk feeding at discharge, even after controlling for potential confounders. The reduced-form analysis suggests that infants born in the evening (5pm-Midnight) are roughly 2-4% more likely to contract Necrotizing Enterocolitis at some point during their stay in the NICU. The majority of associations between hour of birth and other health outcomes were insignificant. Evidence of heterogeneity in hour of birth effect size by birth weight, gestational age, race/ethnicity and maternal age were also explored.

Essay Two: It is impossible in most countries to randomize assignment into child health programs that may offer benefits. In the absence of this gold standard of program evaluation, researchers face the threat of selection bias--the possibility that there are unmeasured differences, relevant to outcomes, between those who are treated and those to whom they are compared. A common concern is that people who are eligible for a program but choose not to enroll may differ from those who do enroll. Because policies geared towards a country's most vulnerable people are determinants of health inequities, it is imperative that sources of selection bias be identified and that evaluation methods minimize the impact of selection bias on our estimations of treatment effects. Using a case study of a large Federal nutrition program in the United States, this study reviews how researchers have attempted to minimize selection bias and presents an analysis illustrating how the decision to take up the program can highlight sources of this bias. Relying on data from a longitudinal study of mothers and infants, I show that prenatal attitudes and beliefs may determine postnatal program enrollment, and that the direction of the bias differs by demographic variables. Further, I show that magnitude of supposed program effects vary significantly as a function of these prenatal beliefs. In sum, this paper makes the case for more careful study of the factors that determine take-up of a program, and inclusion of those factors in an evaluation of the program

Essay Three: The third paper in this series diverges from the methodology of the first two essays. This paper is the culmination of a year-long survey data collection effort; the work is a collaboration between UC Berkeley, UC San Francisco and Alta Bates Summit Medical Center (Berkeley, CA). The objective of this study was to investigate determinants of breast milk feeding in the NICU, and to try and account for the pervasive racial, ethnic, socioeconomic and language disparities in breast milk outcomes. The survey was developed by the authors of this essay based on established theories of decision making about infant feeding. Over the course of the study period, mothers giving birth at less than 32 weeks gestational age were invited to participate in the study, either through filling out a survey in the hospital, participating in a one-on-one interview, or both. This essay focuses on the results from the survey which were later linked to medical outcome data of the infant upon discharge home. An innovation of this study is the collection of breast milk exclusivity--that is, if a dose-response relationship between breast milk and outcomes did exist, our data collection method would be able to capture it. Results indicate that mothers who participated in the study were less likely to breast milk feed if they were: of black race, non-Hispanic (any race), low-income, or living a long distance from the NICU. Measures of social support, peer effects, and attitudes towards breast milk feeding also predicted the proportion of an infant's feeding that was breast milk.. Implications of these findings are discussed, as are the lessons learned from pursuing this type of study.

In this dissertation, I ask a series of questions regarding why people perform different environmental behaviors and how environmental communication can influence individuals’ actions and opinions. The first chapter uses a broader range of basic values to explain why people participate in many types of political action. Using a nationally representative sample of US adults, I identify several patterns connecting political actions to individuals’ values. One central value that explains many political actions is concern for others (i.e. self-transcendence); I find that people who prioritize this value are more likely to engage in nearly all types of political behavior evaluated, but are no more likely to vote. People who value traditional social norms (i.e. conservation) are more likely to vote, but are less likely to participate in other ways. This indicates a major distinction between voting and other types of participation like contacting elected officials, attending demonstrations, and others. Two other central values, concern for one’s own well-being and pursuit of excitement, do not consistently influence political participation.

In chapter two, I begin by evaluating the structure and psychological drivers of different types of behaviors specifically related to environmental protection. To do so, I collected a large (N=1077) sample of Californians via Qualtrics that was representative of the California population in terms of income, education, and party identification. Whereas existing literature suggests three categories of environmental behavior, my survey analysis shows the presence of as many as six distinct types of common environmental behaviors. These behavioral types include household environmental conservation, green consumer behaviors, support for environmental policies, communications to promote environmental policies, involvement with environmental advocacy organizations, and attendance at environmental rallies. After establishing statistical and theoretical distinctions between these types of environmental behavior, I show that individual’s values influence which behaviors people engage in, and that collectively values exert the largest influence on relatively low-cost, non-activist environmental behaviors.

In the third chapter, I apply lessons from chapters 1 and 2 to study the influence different messages can have on public support for an environmental management project. To do so, I fielded a survey experiment (N=1077) in which messages describing a proposed invasive species management project differed both based on whether their primary impacts would be to provide ecological or economic benefits, and differed based on whether those benefits were framed as providing future gains or preventing future losses. I found that ecological- and loss-framed messages were more effective than either economic- or gain-framed messages when communicating the value of invasive species management. The results suggests that communicating how policies influence people (i.e. via economic co-benefits) may not be the most effective strategy in all cases.