Emissions

During Climate Week NYC, Evelyn Wang, MIT’s Vice President for Energy and Climate, emphasized the importance of utilizing AI to help tackle climate change, write Seth Borenstein and Jennifer McDermott for The Associated Press. Data centers adding to climate and water problems ‘is not forever,’ according to Wang, who told The Associated Press that data centers are about five years away from being water neutral and about a decade away from no longer adding to planet-warming emissions. 

Prof. John Fernández joins Edgar B. Herwick, host of GBH’s “The Curiosity Desk,” to discuss Singapore’s success creating sustainable infrastructure, from having two thirds of buildings in Singapore certified green to constructing covered walkways for public spaces, and enhancing biodiversity in the city. “They have been, for many decades, very intent on being a resource efficient country,” says Fernández. “These incremental improvements go a long way towards reducing energy consumption and emissions.”  

MIT researchers have created a new building design model that could enable engineers to construct buildings and bridges that use less materials, writes Tech Briefs’ Andrew Corselli. “Traditional topology optimization essentially starts with a blank space and tries to figure out at each point in this blank space: ‘Should there be material,’ ‘should there not be material’ from an efficiency standpoint,” says Prof. Josephine Carstensen. “Our approach populates the space with a bunch of lines that are instead candidates for ‘should there be material’ or ‘should there not be material.’ By using this line approach, we have the opportunity to have more control.” 

A study by MIT researchers has found evidence that the first signs of ozone depletion appeared in 1957 in the upper tropical stratosphere, driven by carbon tetrachloride, an industrial chemical introduced in the 1930s and widely used as a dry-cleaning and degreasing agent, writes Gizmodo reporter Ellyn Lapointe. “This finding underscores the importance of long-term atmospheric monitoring so that we can fully understand how it responds to chemical pollution,” Lapointe notes.

NPR reporter Jeff Brady spotlights a study by Prof. Jessika Trancik and Marco Miotti PhD ’20  that found “across most of the U.S., electric vehicles are cost-competitive with their gas counterparts. And it found that in most locations, EVs also reduce emissions between 40% and 60%.” 

MIT researchers have developed a new traffic navigation system that more accurately reflects travel time by including parking data, reports Catherine Parotta for Boston 25. “What we can do is figure out if you’re best off trying this parking lot first, even if it’s farther than the closest parking lot,” explains Prof. Cathy Wu. Graduate student Cameron Hickert adds that: “We hope that this can help people make better decisions." 

A new study by Prof. Daniel Varon and his colleagues has found that “parts of the U.S. may be emitting much more of one of the most potent greenhouse gases than previously thought,” reports Julia Jacobo for ABC News. “Satellite observations suggest that methane emissions in urban areas may be ‘widely underestimated’ – up to 80% higher than noted in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Greenhouse Gas Inventory,” explains Jacobo. 

A study by researchers at MIT has found that high levels of greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere is impacting the satellite orbits that typically force objects back to Earth, leading to an increased amount of space junk, reports Sachi Kitajima Mulkey for The New York Times. “[W]e’re losing this cleaning force that we rely on” says William Parker PhD '25. 

New York Times reporter Rebecca Elliott spotlights Phoenix Tailings, a startup co-founded by MIT alumni that is developing a sustainable process for refining rare-earth refining in the United States. Elliott notes that Phoenix Tailings created a closed-loop design for their manufacturing method that “distinguishes this process from the more energy-intensive techniques used in China, where workers scoop up molten metal with ladles.”

MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics Research Scientist Sreedevi Rajagopalan speaks with Associated Press reporter Aya Diab about the impact of “fast shipping” options on emissions. “For the same demand, fast shipping definitely increases emissions 10 to 12%,” explains Rajagopalan. “Given that companies want to be competitive in terms of speed, it comes at the cost of your efficiency. Vans are half full, and you make multiple rounds, multiple trips to the same location … your fuel consumption goes up, and you’re not able to consolidate.”

Fortune contributor Andrew Winston highlights an analysis from the MIT Sustainable Supply Chain Lab, part of MIT’s Center for Transportation and Logistics, examining the role of sustainability in supply chains. The researchers found that “85% of companies were maintaining or accelerating sustainable supply chain practices.”

A study by MIT researchers examining the carbon emissions of self-driving cars found that “the power required to run one billion driverless vehicles driving for one hour per day could consume as much energy as all existing data centers in the world,” reports Claire Brown for The New York Times. Graduate student Soumya Sudhakar explains that another big unknown is how autonomous vehicles could change the way people travel, adding to the uncertainty over the overall long-term emissions outlook for self-driving cars. 

Prof. Desirée Plata, director of MIT’s Methane Network, spoke with Boston Globe reporter Kate Selig about how regional supermarkets are addressing their methane footprints. Plata notes that “grocers could make an impact through improving their waste management practices. And beyond operational changes, she said supermarkets can help shape the public’s understanding of climate issues,” Selig writes. “Most people go to the grocery store,” says Plata. “They have this great opportunity to educate people.”

Writing for the Financial Times, Principal Research Scientist Florian Berg explores “reasons to be hopeful about the resilience of efforts to tackle environmental issues at the corporate level.” Berg explains: “When looking at reporting on carbon emissions, ESG data and money invested in sustainable investment strategies, we can see big increases in recent years.” 

Leah Ellis, a former MIT postdoc and co-founder of MIT startup Sublime Systems, speaks with Nature reporter Jacqui Thornton about the creation of the company. “I felt that the word Sublime encapsulated the spirit of excellence, transcendence and purity that we intend to exemplify as we build a technology and a company that we hope will change the world — and the inherent properties of cement itself.”