This project tackles a particularly pressing challenge with respect to sensor development and deployment: the ability to quickly identify damage to energy infrastructure and water pipelines following wildfires and other natural disasters. Wildfires, earthquakes, and other natural disasters have the potential to damage, degrade, or destroy wires, pipelines, and other vital parts of AmericaХs energy and water infrastructure. Yet public and private utilities have very limited ability to detect when and where such damage has occurred. This grant funds a project led by Erica Fisher of Oregon State University to develop, construct, and test new sensor technology that could be used to detect environmental damage to energy and water infrastructure. Over the next three years, Fischer and her team aim to develop low-cost, low-powered sensors capable of withstanding the high temperatures common in wildfires. The team plans to test these sensors in the laboratory on a number of representative materials used in energy and water pipeline infrastructure and in simulated real-world conditions in a buried pipeline network located on the Oregon State campus. They will also conduct two case studies in locations that recently experienced devastating fires (Santa Rosa and Paradise, California) that will allow them to test and integrate data across multiple scalesСremote sensing data, in situКsensor data, and crowdsourced social media informationСto develop a tool that stakeholders can use to better monitor potential pipeline damage more quickly and efficiently.

This grant supports a cohort of three postdoctoral fellows in data curation for energy social science, overseen by the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR). One fellow will be placed at each of the following three institutions, involving both their respective energy research centers and university libraries: Scott Institute for Energy Innovation at Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Michigan Energy Institute, and the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In addition to recruiting, selecting, and placing the postdoctoral fellows, CLIR organizes training programs and mentorship activities throughout the two-year fellowship program. This includes an initial introductory summer institute, regular mentoring calls with fellows and their institutional hosts, funding for travel to present at and attend conferences, and a pool of resources to help initiate collaborative projects developed by the fellows. This second phase of CLIR postdoctoral fellowships builds on a successful first round of fellowship support that is nearing conclusion. The program offers a unique opportunity to train the next generation of scholars and practitioners, while simultaneously providing core energy research institutions with expertise in cutting-edge data science analysis.

Funds from this grant will allow researchers from Resources for the Future and the University of Chicago to study how consumers respond to time-varying electricity pricing schemes. One component of this project is undertaking a unique field experiment in collaboration with a smart thermostat company called Ecobee. This randomized controlled trial (RCT) will look at how 4,000 households use a new product feature available on Ecobee thermostats that gives households the ability to program their thermostat to automatically adjust air conditioning schedules to take advantage of different time-of-use electricity rates. The second research component is a methodological project that will attempt to use machine learning techniques to replicate a previously conducted RCT that examined consumer energy use under different electricity pricing schemes. If successful, the developed methods are likely to be applicable in generating more accurate counterfactual comparative groups in the many situations where conducting an RCT of energy consumers is not feasible. Findings from both components of the project will be disseminated through a final workshop that will engage stakeholders from multiple sectors in discussing the potential impacts of increased adoption of time-varying electricity pricing programs.

This grant provides four years of continued funding for postdoctoral fellowships, for junior scholars to work on the labor market consequences of the aging of the U.S. workforce. Awarded through a competitive process, each fellowship will run for one year under the supervision of senior scholars in NBERХs well-regarded Economics of Aging or Labor Studies programs. Fellowships will be awarded on the basis of a candidateХs potential to make an important contribution to our understanding of labor markets for older workers. Additional monies will support a small competitive grants program, run by Alexander Gelber, associate professor at the University of California, San Diego, department of economics and School of Global Policy and Strategy, and RFPs for small economic research projects on issues related to the aging workforce. Over the course of the four-year grant, six projects will be funded on topics that include the determinants of work at older ages, age discrimination, productivity effects of an aging workforce, or how differences in workplace policies, training, and structure affect older workers.