Pollution

“The ultimate objective,” atmospheric scientist Jesse Kroll says, “is to understand what policies could help, and what changes policymakers could make to minimize the negative health and climate effects of particulate pollution.”

Zeroing in on the chemistry of the air

Jesse Kroll examines how pollutants change chemically as they waft around the globe.

February 1, 2017

Projecting food, water, energy, climate and other global changes

Marking 25 years of science and policy studies, the MIT Joint Program launches new website showcasing its expanded research portfolio.

January 27, 2017

Kevin Kung, a Tata Fellow and PhD candidate in biological engineering, feeds rice husks into the torrefaction reactor in his lab at MIT. A thermochemical process will convert the biomass to a more energy-dense form, making it easier to transport and use as fuel.

Tapping the hidden value of farm waste

MIT researchers are developing mobile torrefaction technology that can convert biomass into clean-burning fuel, unlocking potential income for farmers.

January 25, 2017

MIT grad student Maher Damak (left) and professor of chemistry Moungi Bawendi

Two from MIT honored at World Technology Awards

PhD candidate Maher Damak and Professor Moungi Bawendi recognized for advances in engineering and chemistry.

January 20, 2017

Mapping out a low-carbon future

Energy scenarios provide useful decision-support tools for policymakers and investors.

January 19, 2017

An MIT-led study finds that technological advances alone will not bring about dematerialization, or the reduction of the amount of materials needed to produce goods and services.

Study: Technological progress alone won’t stem resource use

Researchers find no evidence of an overall reduction in the world’s consumption of materials.

January 19, 2017

Timothy Hyde, architectural historian and associate professor in the History, Theory, and Criticism (HTC) section of the MIT Department of Architecture.

House rules

Research shows how rebuilding Britain’s Houses of Parliament in the 1800s helped create clean-air laws.

January 12, 2017

Researchers report that warming from short-lived compounds — greenhouse gases such as methane and chlorofluorocarbons, that linger in the atmosphere for just a year to a few decades — can cause sea levels to rise for hundreds of years after the pollutants have been cleared from the atmosphere.

Short-lived greenhouse gases cause centuries of sea-level rise

Through warming effects, methane and other gases impact rising seas long after leaving the atmosphere.

January 9, 2017

“Compared to the developed world, the state of transportation systems in China is less well-understood, and because it’s such a large, populous country, unrestricted or poorly guided growth could lead to significant negative consequences for the environment and climate,” says Paul Kishimoto, a recent recipient of a fellowship from the Martin Family Society of Graduate Fellowships in Sustaina...

Rethinking how we get around

Paul Kishimoto, a PhD student in IDSS, probes the future of transportation in China.

January 4, 2017

A new MIT system first creates a graph of vehicles (circles) and ride requests (stars) in a city, and then uses a method called “integer linear programming” to compute the best assignment of vehicles to trips.

How ride-sharing can improve traffic, save money, and help the environment

Study shows carpooling apps could reduce congestion by a factor of three while still serving the same number of people.

January 4, 2017

A destructive wildfire burned through Canada’s Northern Alberta region, razing neighborhoods in Fort McMurray and displacing tens of thousands of residents.

Climate models may be overestimating the cooling effect of wildfire aerosols

Study finds accounting for year-to-year variability enables more accurate projections of climate change and its impacts.

November 29, 2016

University students walk through dense air pollution at Anyang Normal University in Henan Province, China.

Enabling China to shift from coal to natural gas

How an enhanced cap-and-trade system can help the world’s top carbon emitter cut emissions and improve air quality.

November 18, 2016

A silver-based catalyst material with a porous honeycomb-like structure, developed by the MIT team, can selectively transform carbon dioxide (CO2) to carbon monoxide (CO).

Turning greenhouse gas into gasoline

New catalyst provides design principles for producing fuels from carbon dioxide emissions.

November 15, 2016

A new study by researchers at MIT and elsewhere has found that, rather than adopting a standard for automotive gas-mileage ratings, the EU could achieve the same results at far lower cost to the economy by simply extending their existing emissions-trading system to encompass transportation rather than just electricity generation and energy intensive industry.

What’s the best way for Europe to curb greenhouse emissions from cars?

Emissions trading would be more effective than mileage standards, new study shows.

November 8, 2016

ROBOAT, a new collaboration between researchers from MIT and partner institutions in the Netherlands, seeks to design and deploy a fleet of autonomous boats on the canals of Amsterdam.

An autonomous fleet for Amsterdam

MIT, AMS Institute will collaborate to solve complex urban problems for Amsterdam with the development of autonomous "roboats."

September 19, 2016

MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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