Varun Rai
Biographic Data
| ID | 4393259 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Varun Rai |
| GIVEN NAMES | Varun |
| FAMILY NAME | Rai |
| SIGNATURE | RAI V |
| AFFILIATIONS | The University of Texas at Austin |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4080-9299 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 52 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 18 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Pursuing energy security via technologies and human behavior
The role of policy narrators during crisis
How do policymakers respond to crises? The Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) answers this question by focusing on the contest over policy narratives. This paper focuses on the individuals constructing those policy narratives, conceptualizing them as policy narrators. Using a case study approach, we analyze seven counties located in a major oil and gas formation in Texas, which in early 2020 faced both an oil bust and the onset of COVID‐19. We expl…
Towards codes of practice for navigating the academic peer review process
Peer review is the bedrock of modern academic research and its lasting contributions to science and society. And yet, reviewers can submit “poor” peer review reports, authors can blatantly ignore referee advice, and editors can contravene and undermine the peer review process itself. In this paper, we, the Editors of Energy Research & Social Science (ER&SS), seek to establish peer review codes of practice for the general energy and social science…
The grassroots are always greener
Structural Effects of Agent Heterogeneity in Agent-Based Models
Modeling human behavior in the context of social systems in which we are embedded realistically requires capturing the underlying heterogeneity in human populations. However, trade-offs associated with different approaches to introducing heterogeneity could either enhance or obfuscate our understanding of outcomes and the processes by which they are generated. Thus, the question arises: how to incorporate heterogeneity when modeling human behavio…
Cascading risks
The Texas freeze of February 2021 left more than 4.5 million customers (more than 10 million people) without electricity at its peak, some for several days. The freeze had cascading effects on other services reliant upon electricity including drinking water treatment and medical services. Economic losses from lost output and damage are estimated to be $130 billion in Texas alone. In the wake of the freeze, there has been major fallout among regul…
Pathways to urban sustainability through individual behaviors
Not so gameful
In order to help mitigate climate change and reduce the health-related consequences of air pollution, consumers need to be empowered to make better and more effective decisions regarding energy use. Utilities, government, and commercial entities offer numerous programs and consumer products to help individuals set or reach goals related to energy use. Many of these interventions and products have related apps that use gamification in some capacit…
Evolution of consumer information preferences with market maturity in solar PV adoption
Residential adoption of solar photovoltaics (PV) is spreading rapidly, supported by policy initiatives at the federal, state, and local levels. Potential adopters navigate increasingly complex decision-making landscapes in their path to adoption. Much is known about the individual-level drivers of solar PV diffusion that steer adopters through this process, but relatively little is known about the evolution of these drivers as solar PV markets ma…
Play and learn
Data for development
Overcoming barriers and uncertainties in the adoption of residential solar PV
Agent-based modeling of energy technology adoption
Public perceptions and information gaps in solar energy in Texas
Studying the behavioral aspects of the individual decision-making process is important in identifying and addressing barriers in the adoption of residential solar photovoltaic (PV). However, there is little systematic research focusing on these aspects of residential PV in Texas, an important, large, populous state, with a range of challenges in the electricity sector including increasing demand, shrinking reserve margins, constrained water suppl…
Expert elicitation methods for studying technological change under uncertainty
The recent study by Anadón et al (2013 Environ. Res. Lett. 8 034020) employs multiple expert elicitation to study the potential impact of public RD&D on nuclear power costs through 2030. This study achieves a rare depth and variation in multiple expert elicitation on the same problem, which allows the authors to carefully identify expert-level drivers of variations in assessments of outcomes and associated uncertainties. An important parameter—ch…
Diffusion of environmentally-friendly energy technologies
Diffusion of microgeneration technologies, particularly rooftop photovoltaic (PV), represents a key option in reducing emissions in the residential sector. We use a uniquely rich dataset from the burgeoning residential PV market in Texas to study the nature of the consumer's decision-making process in the adoption of these technologies. In particular, focusing on the financial metrics and the information decision-makers use to base their decision…
Effective information channels for reducing costs of environmentally- friendly technologies
Realizing the environmental benefits of solar photovoltaics (PV) will require reducing costs associated with perception, informational gaps and technological uncertainties. To identify opportunities to decrease costs associated with residential PV adoption, in this letter we use multivariate regression models to analyze a unique, household-level dataset of PV adopters in Texas (USA) to systematically quantify the effect of different information c…
International low carbon technology transfer
The role of policy narrators during crisis
How do policymakers respond to crises? The Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) answers this question by focusing on the contest over policy narratives. This paper focuses on the individuals constructing those policy narratives, conceptualizing them as policy narrators. Using a case study approach, we analyze seven counties located in a major oil and gas formation in Texas, which in early 2020 faced both an oil bust and the onset of COVID‐19. We expl…
Play and learn
Cascading risks
The Texas freeze of February 2021 left more than 4.5 million customers (more than 10 million people) without electricity at its peak, some for several days. The freeze had cascading effects on other services reliant upon electricity including drinking water treatment and medical services. Economic losses from lost output and damage are estimated to be $130 billion in Texas alone. In the wake of the freeze, there has been major fallout among regul…
The grassroots are always greener
Pathways to urban sustainability through individual behaviors
International low carbon technology transfer
Structural Effects of Agent Heterogeneity in Agent-Based Models
Modeling human behavior in the context of social systems in which we are embedded realistically requires capturing the underlying heterogeneity in human populations. However, trade-offs associated with different approaches to introducing heterogeneity could either enhance or obfuscate our understanding of outcomes and the processes by which they are generated. Thus, the question arises: how to incorporate heterogeneity when modeling human behavio…
Data for development
Expert elicitation methods for studying technological change under uncertainty
The recent study by Anadón et al (2013 Environ. Res. Lett. 8 034020) employs multiple expert elicitation to study the potential impact of public RD&D on nuclear power costs through 2030. This study achieves a rare depth and variation in multiple expert elicitation on the same problem, which allows the authors to carefully identify expert-level drivers of variations in assessments of outcomes and associated uncertainties. An important parameter—ch…
Diffusion of environmentally-friendly energy technologies
Diffusion of microgeneration technologies, particularly rooftop photovoltaic (PV), represents a key option in reducing emissions in the residential sector. We use a uniquely rich dataset from the burgeoning residential PV market in Texas to study the nature of the consumer's decision-making process in the adoption of these technologies. In particular, focusing on the financial metrics and the information decision-makers use to base their decision…
Effective information channels for reducing costs of environmentally- friendly technologies
Realizing the environmental benefits of solar photovoltaics (PV) will require reducing costs associated with perception, informational gaps and technological uncertainties. To identify opportunities to decrease costs associated with residential PV adoption, in this letter we use multivariate regression models to analyze a unique, household-level dataset of PV adopters in Texas (USA) to systematically quantify the effect of different information c…
International low carbon technology transfer
Agent-based modeling of energy technology adoption
Public perceptions and information gaps in solar energy in Texas
Studying the behavioral aspects of the individual decision-making process is important in identifying and addressing barriers in the adoption of residential solar photovoltaic (PV). However, there is little systematic research focusing on these aspects of residential PV in Texas, an important, large, populous state, with a range of challenges in the electricity sector including increasing demand, shrinking reserve margins, constrained water suppl…
Overcoming barriers and uncertainties in the adoption of residential solar PV
Evolution of consumer information preferences with market maturity in solar PV adoption
Residential adoption of solar photovoltaics (PV) is spreading rapidly, supported by policy initiatives at the federal, state, and local levels. Potential adopters navigate increasingly complex decision-making landscapes in their path to adoption. Much is known about the individual-level drivers of solar PV diffusion that steer adopters through this process, but relatively little is known about the evolution of these drivers as solar PV markets ma…
Play and learn
Data for development
Not so gameful
In order to help mitigate climate change and reduce the health-related consequences of air pollution, consumers need to be empowered to make better and more effective decisions regarding energy use. Utilities, government, and commercial entities offer numerous programs and consumer products to help individuals set or reach goals related to energy use. Many of these interventions and products have related apps that use gamification in some capacit…
Pathways to urban sustainability through individual behaviors
Cascading risks
The Texas freeze of February 2021 left more than 4.5 million customers (more than 10 million people) without electricity at its peak, some for several days. The freeze had cascading effects on other services reliant upon electricity including drinking water treatment and medical services. Economic losses from lost output and damage are estimated to be $130 billion in Texas alone. In the wake of the freeze, there has been major fallout among regul…
Towards codes of practice for navigating the academic peer review process
Peer review is the bedrock of modern academic research and its lasting contributions to science and society. And yet, reviewers can submit “poor” peer review reports, authors can blatantly ignore referee advice, and editors can contravene and undermine the peer review process itself. In this paper, we, the Editors of Energy Research & Social Science (ER&SS), seek to establish peer review codes of practice for the general energy and social science…
The grassroots are always greener
Structural Effects of Agent Heterogeneity in Agent-Based Models
Modeling human behavior in the context of social systems in which we are embedded realistically requires capturing the underlying heterogeneity in human populations. However, trade-offs associated with different approaches to introducing heterogeneity could either enhance or obfuscate our understanding of outcomes and the processes by which they are generated. Thus, the question arises: how to incorporate heterogeneity when modeling human behavio…
Pursuing energy security via technologies and human behavior
The role of policy narrators during crisis
How do policymakers respond to crises? The Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) answers this question by focusing on the contest over policy narratives. This paper focuses on the individuals constructing those policy narratives, conceptualizing them as policy narrators. Using a case study approach, we analyze seven counties located in a major oil and gas formation in Texas, which in early 2020 faced both an oil bust and the onset of COVID‐19. We expl…
Business (13 works) · Computer Science (10 works) · Economics (9 works) · Political science (9 works) · Engineering (8 works) · Energy and Environment Impacts (7 works) · Environmental economics (7 works) · Environmental Education and Sustainability (5 works) · Photovoltaic system (5 works) · Psychology (5 works)