This research will utilize the energy and poverty alleviation framework to investigate a sustainable energy ecosystem for the Wakapoa indigenous community of Guyana. Five questions guide the research – 1) Is there an energy access-development nexus? 2) Can the relationships and trends between key development indicators and electricity access guide policymakers on development activities? 3) Can small-scale concentrated solar and biomass systems provide adequate electrical power to meet the Wakapoa community's domestic and commercial loads economically? 4) What added social value could be generated from the energy system as per Wakapoa context? and 5) What governance systems can be considered to facilitate a sustainable energy ecosystem? In addressing questions 1 and 2, the research collected secondary data on selected countries' key development indexes from the World Bank and Our World in Data. Datasets include the human development index, human capital index, gross domestic product per capita, gross national income per capita, and electricity access. In addressing questions 3 to 5, the research utilized the convergent research design methods, where an inclusive data collection process targeted fifty (50) community residents as survey participants. Statistical analysis of the survey data proved useful in identifying the community needs for the renewable energy system design options utilizing system advisor model (SAM) software, identifying key economic activities that can add social value to the community, and giving key insight into governance practices preferred by the community. Key findings reveal that electricity access exerts a strong and moderate influence on key development indicators, the concentrated solar power and biomass hybrid system can satisfy the electricity demand of the community at the Tier-5 level that can support many traditional and non-traditional economic activities, while key governance support functions such as the community financial aid fund and community management committee can enhance the sustainability of the various operations as well as residents' well-being and livelihood. Future research can address project financing, community productive capacity, and the marketing of goods and services to promote a sustainable energy ecosystem.

ABSTRACTThis dissertation addresses two pivotal challenges within the US technology industry: racial equity and the rise of artificial intelligence (AI). It investigates whether the integration of AI in human resources (HR) can foster inclusivity and diversity for Black women in the tech workforce. Despite numerous diversity initiatives, Black women account for less than 2% of the US tech workforce, symbolizing a persistent challenge. Furthermore, AI often perpetuates structural biases, magnifying workforce inequities. This dissertation employs intersectionality, responsible innovation, and algorithmic bias theories to amplify the voices of Black women. It poses three critical questions: 1) How have Black women's HR experiences influenced diversity issues in the tech industry? 2) How is AI in HR developed considering the experiences of Black women? 3) What measures can enhance the role of AI in HR to promote diversity without deepening inequalities? Key findings reveal that current HR practices do not adequately serve Black women, driven by competing corporate priorities. Solutions should concentrate on recruiting, developing, promoting, and retaining Black women. Black women acknowledge the potential of AI to either reinforce or mitigate biases, yet they express apprehension about the development and implementation of AI in HR, which often lacks Black women's input. For AI to facilitate positive diversity results, companies must actively involve Black women in its development. This entails understanding the problems Black women face, using insights to design AI that addresses these issues and supports Black women's success, and engaging Black women in the development and assessment of AI implementations in HR, thereby enhancing accountability for diversity outcomes.

This paper will explore the existing relationship between direct air capture (DAC)technology and energy justice (EJ) principles. As DAC is a nascent technology that is transitioning from the R&D phase to the deployment phase, a standard for typical scaling practices has not yet been established. Additionally, since the industry of DAC aims to capture at least 10 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide per year by 2050, and at least 20 Gt/yr by 2100, the scaling practices of this technology will have a significant impact on communities around the world. Therefore, in this thesis I argue that if DAC is not scaled equitably, it will negatively impact the communities hosting the technology, and would develop a negative reputation which could slow down the overall scaling process. On the flip side, if DAC is scaled equitably, then it could create a positive effect by being deployed in underserved and marginalized communities and providing an economic benefit. This could result in DAC having a positive reputation and scaling more rapidly. In order to understand how the field viewed the integration of EJ principles into the scaling process, I interviewed representatives from DAC companies, experts in energy justice from NGOs and academia, and local government officials. These interviews were semi-structured, open-ended and conducted anonymously. Through these interviews I was able to refine my arguments and put forward a set of guidelines that the industry could use to scale DAC with equity and justice as core principles.

This research identifies several barriers to large scale implementation of solar photovoltaics into the modern US electricity system, along with solutions to help mitigate these challenges. The need for new technologies and utility rate plans are identified as two of these key barriers. In place of expensive, developing technologies this research explores the use of thermal energy storage (TES), a widely used, inexpensive, mature technology as a potential solution for a portion of this problem. A real-life example from Arizona State University (ASU) is used to illustrate the potential of TES. In addition, shortcomings of modern electricity rate plans are identified using both cost and system characteristics of residential solar and battery systems. This rate and system modeling also gives insight into the value that solar can provide to residential customers in a variety of settings.

Solar energy is a disruptive technology within the electricity industry, and rooftop solar is particularly disruptive as it changes the relationship between the industry and its customers as the latter generate their own power, sell power to the grid, and reduce their dependence on the industry as the sole source provider of electric power. Hundreds of thousands of people in the western United States have made the decision to adopt residential rooftop solar photovoltaic technologies (solar PV) for their homes, with some areas of western cities now having 50% or more of homes with solar installed. This dissertation seeks to understand how rooftop solar energy is altering the fabric of urban life, drawing on three distinct lenses and a mixed suite of methods to examine how homeowners, electric utilities, financial lenders, regulators, solar installers, realtors, and professional trade organizations have responded to the opportunities and challenges presented by rooftop solar energy. First, using a novel solar installation data set, it systematically examines the temporal, geographic, and socio-economic dynamics of the adoption of rooftop solar technologies across the Phoenix metropolitan area over the decade of the 2010s. This study examines the broad social, economic, and urban environmental contexts within which solar adoption has occurred and how these have impacted differential rates of solar uptake. Second, using survey and real estate data from the Phoenix metropolitan area, it explores how solar energy has begun to shape important social and market dynamics, illuminating how decision-making in real estate transactions, including by buyers, sellers, agents, lenders, and appraisers is shifting to accommodate houses with installed solar systems. Lastly, the study explores patterns of rooftop solar adoption across major electric utilities and what those can tell us about the extent to which corporate social responsibility and sustainability reporting have affected the practices of investor-owned electric utilities (IOU) within the western US.

This dissertation investigates and describes the concept of precision medicine from historical, conceptual, capital investment, industry strategic, regulatory oversight, and medicalization perspectives. The study examines the various current and ongoing challenges, impacts, assimilations, and actual adaptive measures occurring within each of these areas as a result of the emergence and continued evolution of precision medicine as a medical discipline, as well as the technosocial advancements characteristic of precision medical products, such as companion diagnostics and targeted therapeutics, seeking market entry in the United States. The dissertation argues that there is a disjunction between precision medicine and historical governance, oversight, and medical practice mechanisms. Through case studies of two case products, Foundation Medicine’s F1CDx companion diagnostic and Novartis’ Kymriah CAR-T Cell therapeutic, the dissertation illustrates the impacts, destabilization and destandardization effects, and re-standardization efforts around a precision medicine diagnostic and therapy. As a central contribution, this dissertation demonstrates and illustrates the impact(s) that precision medicinal technologies are having on the technoscientific network involved in the creation, development, evaluation, governance, and implementation of medical products in the United States. Results revealed an emerging precision medical innovation model between and among member components of a precision medical ecosystem comprised of the above-mentioned focal areas and that, to fully understand the emerging precision medical innovation model, it is critical to understand not only the impacts of precision medical technologies on the individual components of the precision medicine ecosystem, but also the impacts, adaptations, assimilations, and occlusions inherent to the ecological relations within and across the ecosystem itself. Findings include the destabilization of the traditional drug development process across all stakeholder areas, characterized by the development of non-linear adaptive processes at both the premarket and post-market phases. Although the findings from this study are significant, it is likely that they are temporary in nature and will continue to evolve in accordance with the further advancement of precision medicine, ultimately re-stabilizing the precision medical development ecosystem.

Technology and society co-exist, influencing each other simultaneously and iteratively, in ways that are sufficiently interdependent that it can be hard to see where one ends and the other begins. A set of sociotechnical relations exist between and across society and technologies that structure the ways that people live and work. What happens to sociotechnical relations when technologies are introduced or changed? In this dissertation, I argue that key parts of the processes that link technological and social change occur in a liminal space between the invention of new technologies and their widespread adoption and integration in society. In this space, engineers, businesses, and users of new technologies imagine, explore, develop, and test new ways of weaving together technology and society in novel sociotechnical arrangements. I call this space between invention and adoption a testbed, which I theorize as an early phase of technological deployment where outcomes are explored and tested, and sociotechnical assemblages are imagined, assembled, evaluated, and stabilized. I argue that the testbed, which is often delimited in both time and location, should be understood, interrogated, and governed appropriately to anticipate and examine the possibilities of social disruption inherent in technological change and to design the relationships between technology and society to improve sociotechnical outcomes. To understand the testbed, I engage in a case study of the Arizona public autonomous vehicle testbed, leveraging a multi-method approach that includes public observations, interviews, a survey, and content analyses. Through this work, I analyze diverse aspects of the testbed and articulate how the work of testbed actors imagines, assembles, tests, and stabilizes sociotechnical assemblages and futures. The dissertation builds on the insights gained from this investigation to evaluate the testbed and develop recommendations about assessing the space between technology invention and widespread adoption. Ultimately, this dissertation concludes that testbeds are key places where futures get made and so should be given greater attention by theorists of innovation and by societies confronting the societal and ethical challenges posed by new technologies.

As ASU students, we saw that our peers had opinions regarding sustainable issues, but did not feel like their voices were being heard by the university. We saw a space we could fill to promote engagement and let students know that they could participate in finding sustainable solutions to problems they faced around campus. This created our venture which works to promote engagement through sustainable solutions. We ran a successful competition with students and local professionals by focusing on sustainability topics students were interested in. Promoting engagement can often come across as disingenuous and thus serve the opposite effect of its function. By centering around the topic of tailored sustainability related competitions, we can direct goodwill to the organizations by harnessing the positive feelings individuals have toward sustainability topics.

The Energiewende aims to drastically reduce Germany’s greenhouse gas emissions, without relying on nuclear power, while maintaining a secure and affordable energy supply. Since 2000 the country’s renewable-energy share has increased exponentially, accounting in 2017 for over a third of Germany's gross electricity consumption. This unprecedented achievement is the result of policies, tools, and institutional arrangements intended to steer society to a low-carbon economy. Despite its resounding success in renewable-energy deployment, the Energiewende is not on track to meet its decarbonization goals. Energiewende rules and regulations have generated numerous undesired consequences, and have cost much more than anticipated, a burden borne primarily by energy consumers. Why has the Energiewende not only made energy more expensive, but also failed to bring Germany closer to its decarbonization goals? I analyzed the Energiewende as a complex socio-technical system, examining its legal framework and analyzing the consequences of successive regulations; identifying major political and energy players and the factors that motivated them to pursue socio-technical change; and documenting the political trends and events in which the Energiewende is rooted and which continue to shape it. I analyzed the dynamics and the loopholes that created barriers to transition, pushed the utility sector to the brink of dissolution, and led to such undesirable outcomes as negative wholesale prices and forced exports of electricity to Germany’s European neighbors. Thirty high-level energy experts and stakeholders were interviewed to find out how the best-informed members of German society perceive the Energiewende. Surprisingly, although they were highly critical of the way the transition has unfolded, most were convinced that the transition would eventually succeed. But their definitions of success did not always depend on achieving carbon-mitigation targets. Indeed, Germany jeopardizes the achievement of these targets by changing too many policy and institutional variables at too fast a pace. Good intentions and commitment are not enough to create economies based on intermittent energy sources: they will also require intensive grid expansion and breakthroughs in storage technology. The Energiewende demonstrates starkly that collective action driven by robust political consensus is not sufficient for steering complex socio-technical systems in desired directions.

This dissertation explores the functional purpose of imagination as it is enacted in the context of shaping large transitions in sociotechnical systems. Large sociotechnical systems undergoing profound transitions embody instantiations where societies experience profound changes in the ‘rules of the game’ that underpin the conduct of daily life. The forms of imagination that guide these transformations, known in the political theory literature as ‘imaginaries,’ play a profound yet undertheorized role in transition of sociotechnical systems from one configuration to another. Expanding on this relationship, the study draws on three case studies of energy systems change in the United States during 20th and 21st century. Each case study explores unique element of how actors at a variety of levels – transnational governance, regional electrification, and in-home energy marketing – define and the possibilities for ideal human and technological action and interaction through a transition. These actors defining the parameters of a new form of systems operation and configuration are as equally focused on defining how these new configurations shape fundamental ideas that underpin American democratic sensibility. Moreover, in the process of articulating a new configuration of energy and society – be that in terms of managing global resource flows or the automation of energy use in a residential home – questions of what makes an ideal member of a society are interlinked with new contractual relationships between energy producers and energy users. Transitions research could and should pay greater attention to the normative commitments emergent systems actors – as it is in these commitments we can chart pathways to redefine the parameters that underpin emergent transitions.