Cleaner industry

Anantha Chandrakasan, MIT’s chief innovation and strategy officer and dean of MIT’s School of Engineering, speaks with Boston Globe reporter Jon Chesto about the new MIT-GE Vernova Energy and Climate Alliance. “A great amount of innovation happens in academia. We have a longer view into the future,” says Chandrakasan. He adds that while companies like GE Vernova have “the ability to get products out quickly to scale up, to manufacture, we have the ability to think past the short-term. ... It’s super smart of them to surround themselves with this incredible talent in academia. That will allow us to make the kind of breakthroughs that will keep U.S. competitiveness at its peak.”

E&E News reporter Christa Marshall writes that the new MIT-GE Vernova Energy and Climate Alliance will “scale sustainable energy systems across the globe” and advance breakthrough low-carbon technologies.

MIT engineers have developed a new system that helps pesticides adhere more effectively to plant leaves, allowing farmers to use fewer chemicals without sacrificing crop protection, reports Michigan Farm News. The new technology “adds a thin coating around droplets as they are being sprayed onto a field, increasing the stickiness of pesticides by as much as a hundredfold.”

Georgina Campbell Flatter SM '11 has been named the chief executive of Greentown Labs, the “nation’s largest clean-tech incubator,” reports Jon Chesto for The Boston Globe. “This is a pretty critical time for energy and climate, and we all need to lean in,” says Flatter. 

Prof. Jessika Trancik speaks with ABC News reporter Julia Jacobo about the role of green hydrogen in decarbonization efforts. “Hydrogen itself could be a really important component to a green transition,” says Trancik. 

MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative Program Scientist Scott Odell speaks with USA Today reporter Kate Petersen about the impact of renewable energy mining. “We can really reduce the amount of virgin metal we need to mine just by using the old metal we've already got,” says Odell. “We need to design our systems such that we have the capacity to recycle those metals.”

Prof. Admir Masic speaks with New York Times reporter Amos Zeeberg about his research studying the benefits of lime clasts – a material used in ancient Roman infrastructure. According to Masic’s research, “these lime clasts were actually reservoirs of calcium that helped fill in cracks, making the concrete self-healing,” writes Zeeberg. “As cracks formed, water would seep in and dissolve the calcium in the lime, which then formed solid calcium carbonate, essentially creating new rock that filled in the crack.”

Seonghoon Woo PhD '15, Jongwon Choi PhD '17, Young Suk Jo SM '13, PhD '16, and Hyunho Kim SM '14, PhD '18 have co-founded Amogy – a startup company that is using ammonia produced by renewable energy as a carbon-free way to fuel a tugboat, report Jennifer McDermott and Michael Hill for The Associated Press. “Without solving the problem, it’s not going to be possible to make the planet sustainable,” says Woo. “I don’t think this is the problem of the next generation. This is a really big problem for our generation.”

Anurag Bajpayee MS '08, PhD '12 and Prakash Govindan PhD '12 founded Gradiant, an MIT startup “trying to reduce both costs and energy while eliminating chemicals” in water, reports Diana Olick for CNBC. “We take highly contaminated wastewater which contains solvents, which contains dissolved salt, which contains organics, and we eliminate the entire liquid waste,” says Govindan.

Writing for Foreign Affairs, MIT Innovation Fellow Brian Deese proposes a Clean Energy Marshall Plan to combat climate change and renew U.S. leadership on a global stage, arguing this can be done in a way that promotes U.S. interests and supports aligned countries. “In this moment of domestic economic strength—stark against the backdrop of heightened competition, a fracturing world, and a raging climate crisis—the United States can do something generous for people across the globe in a way that benefits Americans,” writes Deese. “It should take that leap, not just because it is the morally right thing to do but also because it is the strategically necessary thing to do.” 

Prof. Kripa Varanasi and Vishnu Jayaprakash SM '19, PhD '22  founded AgZen, a company aimed at reducing pesticide use by employing a feedback-optimized spraying system, reports Steven Savage for Forbes. Savage notes that for the researchers behind AgZen, “MIT turned out to be a good place to work on the specific imaging technology and on the AI needed to translate that into a practical solution for farmers.”

Writing for Fast Company, Moshe Tanach highlights how researchers from the MIT Lincoln Laboratory Supercomputing Center are developing new technologies to reduce AI energy costs, such as power-capping hardware and tools that can halt AI training. 

An analysis by The Atlantic’s Ronald Brownstein notes despite Republican resistance to electric vehicles, many new production facilities are located in GOP-represented states. MIT Innovation Fellow Brian Deese explains EV companies are simply seeking space and nearby manufacturing and construction capacity, but said “it’s pretty hard to think of a technology where there was a cheaper, better technology to solve a consumer need and consumers prioritized a cultural or political patina over lower costs and higher quality.”

Prof. Kripa Varanasi and Vishnu Jayaprakash SM '19, PhD '21 co-founded AgZen, an MIT spinoff that is developing new technologies to improve the performance and effectiveness of pesticide treatments, reports The Economist. The new technologies “could reduce the total amount of fungicides and insecticides sprayed over complete crops by some 90%, as well as cutting the amount of adjuvants required,” writes The Economist.

Prof. Jacopo Buongiorno talks with Steve Curwood of Living on Earth about new investments in nuclear power generation, advanced reactors and waste disposal. He notes roughly half the clean energy in the U.S. comes from nuclear, with great potential due to its adaptability. “The nice thing about nuclear is that it’s a fairly versatile energy source,” explains Buongiorno. “It can give you heat, if you want heat. It can give you electricity if you want electricity. It can give you hydrogen if you need hydrogen, or some kind of synthetic fuel for transportation."