The Office of Sustainability has honored CEE Research Professor David Greene with its top award, the John Nolt Lifetime Achievement in Environmental Leadership Award. This award is given to a faculty or staff member who has demonstrated environmental leadership throughout their tenure and will leave a lasting impact on the university after they retire.
Greene has spent much of his career shaping policy in the transportation sector with regard to fuel efficiency. How technology and policy can accomplish a transition to sustainable energy for transportation is a current focus of his research and modeling.
He’s a foremost expert in the field, and the author of more than 275 publications, 100 articles in peer-reviewed journals, and 12 National Research Council reports. Greene has published extensively on automotive fuel economy and the Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards and served on all four National Research Council committees that evaluated US fuel economy policy for cars and light trucks.
Other research interests of Greene’s include the costs to the US economy due to petroleum dependence, the “rebound effect” of increased vehicle use due to increased fuel economy, and modeling consumers’ choices of vehicles and fuels.
Lately, he has been focused on the need to decarbonize the transportation systems to prevent catastrophic effects of climate change. He recently gave a talk through the Baker Cafe series about deep decarbonization of the transportation sector, and it’s clear he is using his expertise to help light the way forward.
He was recently named a senior engineer to the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, a sign that his level of influence reaches far beyond state lines and across our nation.
Greene is an emeritus member of both the Energy and Alternative Fuels Committees of the Transportation Research Board, and a lifetime National Associate of the US National Academies. He received the Society of Automotive Engineers’ Barry D. McNutt Award for Excellence in Automotive Policy Analysis, the Department of Energy’s 2007 Hydrogen Research and Development Award, DOE 2011 Vehicle Technologies Research and Development Award, and DOE Distinguished Career Service Award. He was also recognized by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for contributing to its receipt of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.