Emissions

Joe Higgins, MIT’s vice president for campus services and stewardship, speaks with Boston Globe reporter Sabrina Shankman about the Consortium for Climate Solutions, a new effort led by MIT, Harvard and Mass General Brigham to enable the development of large-scale renewable energy projects. “The science is telling us that we need to triple the amount of renewable energy on the power grids by 2030 and it’s not happening fast enough,” says Higgins. “It really came down to, we need new models … and how do we come together to do that with much greater impact, at a much greater speed?”

The Consortium for Climate Solutions, which is led by MIT, Harvard and Mass General Brigham, is enabling the development of a solar farm in Texas and a wind farm in North Dakota, which should generate enough renewable energy annually to power 130,000 homes, reports Martha Bebinger for WBUR. The effort is intended to “cut annual carbon dioxide emissions by 950,000 tons, about the equivalent of the carbon that trees covering 600,000 acres of forest would absorb in a year.”

David Zipper, a senior fellow at the Mobility Imitative, writes for Fast Company about the future of the electric vehicle market. “With EVs comprising less than one in ten new car purchases, most Americans are still forming their impressions and figuring out how to evaluate them,” writes Zipper. “It remains to be seen whether they’ll ultimately care most about range, engine power, or something else entirely.” 

Writing for Bloomberg, David Zipper, senior fellow at the MIT Mobility Initiative, highlights the impact of the robotaxi industry on public transportation. “Transit-robotaxi synergy is an enticing message at a time when public transportation agencies face a dire funding shortage, and it could especially resonate among left-leaning residents in places like the Bay Area who value buses and trains even if they seldom use them,” writes Zipper. “But caveat emptor: The robotaxi industry’s embrace of public transportation conceals a wolf in sheep’s clothing.” 

Prof. Jessika Trancik speaks with BBC reporter Isabelle Gerretsen about the future of electric vehicles and how shifting to EVs can help reduce carbon emissions. Trancik and her research lab developed an online tool, dubbed Carboncounter, that can analyze the climate impact of different vehicles. “A shift to an electric vehicle is one of the single most impactful decisions that someone can make if they want to reduce their own emissions," explains Trancik. 

David Zipper, a senior fellow at the MIT Mobility Initiative, speaks with ABC News reporter Michael Dobuski about the rising popularity of small “micromobility” vehicles. “In the last fifteen years or so, you’ve seen a lot of cities in the US, and frankly in other parts of the world too, invest a lot of money and resources in creating safe spaces for people who want to use a scooter, or a bicycle, or any of these other versions of micromobility that we’re talking about,” explains Zipper. 

Los Angeles Times reporter Rosanna Xia spotlights Prof. Susan Solomon’s new book, “Solvable: How We Healed the Earth, and How We Can Do It Again,” as a hopeful remedy to climate anxiety. “An atmospheric chemist at MIT whose research was key to healing the giant gaping hole in our ozone layer, Solomon gives us much-needed inspiration — and some tangible ways forward,” explains Xia. 

Graduate student Zoe Fisher speaks with Yusuf Khan of The Wall Street Journal’s  about what inspired her to pursue a career in nuclear engineering, noting that being able to fight climate change firsthand is one of the key reasons she wanted to make a career in nuclear.. “It’s a cool thing to study that is going to have a lot of broader impacts,” Fisher says.

Alum Brian Ketcham, “an engineer and influential environmentalist who promoted mass transit and favored bridge tolls, bus lanes, limits on parking and other curbs on vehicular traffic,” has died at age 85, reports Sam Roberts for The New York Times. As a long-time city official and consultant, “no one in New York City or anywhere accomplished as much as Brian in reducing the societal harms of urban auto use,” says former city environmental analyst Charles Komanoff.

Prof. Asegun Henry has been named a 2024 Grist honoree for his work developing a “sun in a box,” a new cost-effective system for storing renewable energy, reports Grist. Based on his research, Prof. Henry has founded Fourth Power, a startup working to build a prototype system that will hopefully “allow us to decarbonize electricity,” says Henry. 

A Nature editorial discusses the live music industry’s increasing commitment to sustainability, going beyond actions such as bottle recycling to addressing band travel, equipment shipping and set construction. Researchers from MIT’s Environmental Solutions Initiative have “undertaken a project co-funded by the Warner Music Group, Live Nation and Coldplay to analyze the carbon footprint of the live music industry, initially in the United Kingdom and United States, and suggest practical mitigating measures.”

Writing for The Hill, graduate student Shomik Verma explores the potential impact of the Climate Superfund Act, a bill that would require “fossil fuel companies who have emitted more than 1 billion tons over the past 20 years to pay into a superfund for their climate damages.”  “With the saturated field of climate policies nowadays, this unique bill has the potential to be truly impactful,” writes Verma. “We need to make sure it is.”

Prof. Jessika Trancik speaks with New York Times reporter Austyn Gaffney about new research detailing the true impact of climate policies designed to reduce emissions. “Many of the technological tools that are needed to address climate change are now available,” says Trancik.  “And ready to be adopted at scale because of a host of different types of policies that came before.”

Prof. John Sterman speaks with Guardian reporters Oliver Milman and Nina Lakhani about the expansion of fossil fuel developments in wealthy countries despite climate commitments. “The developed countries don’t show any significant efforts to limit drilling, but it’s not just them. Guyana and countries in south-east Asia are also aggressively seeking to expand exploitation activity. This is about national policy but it’s also being driven by the oil companies,” says Sterman. “We can’t keep going on this like.”

In an interview with The New York Times, Prof. Susan Solomon speaks about her latest book “Solvable: How We Healed the Earth, and How We Can Do it Again,” which offers learnings from past environmental fights to affect future change. “People need to have some hope. We imagine that we never solve anything…but it’s really important to go back and look at how much we succeeded in the past and what are the common threads of those successes,” Solomon says.