Sustainability

Lisa Dyson PhD ‘04 founded Air Protein, a company looking to “bring recycled carbon cultivated into food with the taste and texture of chicken, meat, and seafood,” reports Geri Stengel for Forbes.    

Financial Times reporter Simon Mundy and Kaori Yoshida spotlight Gradiant, an MIT startup that has developed new methods of handling industrial wastewater. “Gradiant promises customers that its technology will allow them to purify and reuse larger amounts of water, reducing the amount they need to source externally,” write Mundy and Yoshia.

Boston Globe reporter Aaron Pressman highlights Gradiant, an MIT startup that has developed a water purification system based on natural evaporation and rainfall cycles to clean wastewater at factories and manufacturing facilities.

Gradiant, an MIT startup, is using water technology to “help companies reduce water usage and clean up wastewater for reuse,” reports Simon Jessop for Reuters.

Commonwealth Fusion Systems, MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center and others are working to build SPARC, a prototype device that aims to extract net energy from plasma and generate fusion power, reports Philip Ball for Scientific American. “SPARC will be a midsize tokamak in which the plasma is tightly confined by very intense magnetic fields produced by new high-temperature superconducting magnets developed at MIT and unveiled in 2021.”  

Boston Globe reporter Hiawatha Bray highlights a number of MIT startups that are focused on tackling climate change. “Boston has long been a center of clean energy, driven by innovations spinning out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and other universities,” writes Bray.

Eleven fellows have been selected for the 2023-2024 Morningside Academy for Design (MIT MAD) program, reports Designboom, which is focused on offering “opportunities for students, faculty, and the general public to explore the intersection of design, technology, and social impact.” The fellowship program is aimed at helping designers have a “real-world impact in fields such as sustainability, architecture, health, and social justice.”

Prof. Benedetto Marelli and his colleagues have created “packaging that can react to changes in the food it contains to better indicate when it has gone bad,” reports Karmela Padavic-Callaghan for New Scientist. The biodegradable plastic-like wrap, which is made from silk, changes color when it is exposed to rotting foods and degrades quickly in soil. 

Prof. Christopher Knittel speaks with Radio Boston host Tiziana Dearing about how high electric bills are impacting efforts to address climate change. The current artificial inflation of the volumetric rate “makes electrification hard, it makes it more expensive,” notes Knittel. “As we, as a Commonwealth, want to move toward electrification, it’s a big headwind that is going to push against our climate goals,” says Knittel. 

Prof. John Fernandez speaks with New York Times reporter Somini Sengupta about how to reduce the climate footprints of homes and office buildings, recommending creating airtight structures, switching to cleaner heating sources, using more environmentally-friendly building materials, and retrofitting existing homes and offices. “It’s going to be a lot easier to reduce carbon emissions in the built environment than almost everything else,” explains Fernandez.

Prof. Danielle Wood speaks with NPR Shortwave co-host Aaron Scott about the future of space sustainability. “I hope that humans pause and note that the actions we're taking now and in the next 10 years really are going to be decisive in the relationship between humans and our planet, and humans and other locations, like the Moon,” says Wood.

In an opinion piece for The Boston Globe, Prof. Christopher R. Knittel explains why electricity bills in Massachusetts can be so high and how to address the issue. “State law requires Massachusetts to cut greenhouse gas emissions relative to 1990 levels by 50 percent by 2030 and by 85 percent by 2050,” writes Knittel. “In short, we need to replace gasoline and natural gas with electricity. But how we price electricity is making this effort to address climate change harder." 

MIT researchers have found that by “encouraging strategic EV charging placement, rather than allowing EV chargers to be situated merely due to charging company convenience or preferences” it may be possible to “mitigate or eliminate EV charging problems without the need for advanced technological systems of connected devices and real-time communications, which could add to costs and energy consumption,” reports Carolyn Fortuna for CleanTechnica.

MIT researchers have found that placing EV charging stations in strategic locations and setting up charging systems to initiate charging at delayed times could help reduce the impact of EVs on the electrical grid, reports Michael Schoeck for PV Magazine.

MIT scientists have found that delayed charging and strategic placement of EV charging stations could help reduce additional energy demands caused by more widespread EV adoption, reports Grace Carroll for Fast Company. “Leveraging these two strategies together significantly eliminates any additional energy demands,” writes Carroll, “and can be tailored to specific local conditions to help cities meet their decarbonization goals.”