Published: March 8, 2016

Upcoming BE Seminar March 16 (download flyer here)

 

 

 

Dr. Don Grant, Professor and Chair, University of Colorado Boulder and RASEI Affiliate

Organizational Approaches to Analyzing Power Plants and their Carbon Pollution: A Review and Research Agenda

Wednesday March 16 at 10am

Location: NREL, RSF x344- San Juan C (for this event, if you are NOT an NREL employee, you must RSVP by Monday 14th 9am to Jennifer.williamson@colorado.edu for clearance and further logistical information)

 

ABSTRACT:

In the past, organizations like power plants were conceived as closed systems whose performance could be explained by their internal properties (e.g., age, size, technology).  More recently, scholars have adopted an open systems approach that stresses how external factors like corporate peers, citizen groups, and regulators shape organizational behavior.  This talk reviews insights offered by open systems scholars and how they have been applied so far to explain power plants’ CO2 emissions. Implications of an open systems approach for future research on electricity-based carbon pollution are also discussed.