Sustainability

Emre Gençer discusses hydrogen at the MIT Energy Initiative’s 2019 Spring Symposium.

3 Questions: Emre Gençer on the evolving role of hydrogen in the energy system

With support from renewable energy sources, the MIT research scientist says, we can consider hydrogen fuel as a tool for decarbonization.

March 5, 2020

Architect's rendering shows the new mass-timber residential building that will soon begin construction in Boston's Roxbury neighborhood.

New approach to sustainable building takes shape in Boston

A five-story mixed-use structure in Roxbury represents a new kind of net-zero-energy building, made from wood.

March 4, 2020

Ernest Moniz, former U.S. Secretary of Energy and founding director of the MIT Energy Initiative, introduced the fourth MIT symposium on climate change.

Deep cuts in greenhouse emissions are tough but doable, experts say

Speakers at MIT climate symposium outline the steps needed to achieve global carbon neutrality by midcentury.

February 27, 2020

How can an institution like MIT grow, and simultaneously work to lessen its greenhouse gas emissions and contributions to climate change?

MIT continues to advance toward greenhouse gas reduction goals

Investments in energy efficiency projects, sustainable design elements essential as campus transforms.

February 21, 2020

Perovskites, a family of materials defined by a particular kind of molecular structure as illustrated here, have great potential for new kinds of solar cells. A new study from MIT shows how these materials could gain a foothold in the solar marketplace.

Researchers develop a roadmap for growth of new solar cells

Starting with higher-value niche markets and then expanding could help perovskite-based solar panels become competitive with silicon.

February 6, 2020

Patterns of suspended 1-micrometer polystyrene particles in channel shapes are given by a new AI platform (interior boundary highlighted in white). An applied surface acoustic wave propagates from left to right.

Gift will allow MIT researchers to use artificial intelligence in a biomedical device

Device developed within the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering has the potential to replace damaged organs with lab-grown ones.

January 29, 2020

Fikile Brushett is the Cecil and Ida Green Career Development Associate Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering.

Powering the planet

Fikile Brushett and his team are designing electrochemical technology to secure the planet’s energy future.

January 29, 2020

Designed by Wilson HGA and completed in 2018, the 216,000 square-foot MIT.nano building, located in the heart of MIT’s campus, is a shared resource for MIT faculty, students, and researchers, as well as external academic and industry users.

MIT.nano receives international sustainability award

“Go Beyond” Award celebrates commitment to excellence in efficiency and sustainability.

January 28, 2020

Currently, 90 percent of the world’s solar panels are made from crystalline silicon, and the industry continues to grow at a rate of about 30 percent per year.

For cheaper solar cells, thinner really is better

Solar panel costs have dropped lately, but slimming down silicon wafers could lead to even lower costs and faster industry expansion.

January 26, 2020

“My goal is to find out how to make the combustion process more efficient, reliable, safe, and clean,” says Sili Deng, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at MIT.

Understanding combustion

Assistant Professor Sili Deng is on a quest to understand the chemistry involved in combustion and develop strategies to make it cleaner.

January 23, 2020

Julie Newman, director of sustainability at MIT, says the final project for course 2.S999 “uses the campus as a test bed for engaging and exposing students to the complexity of solving [for] global issues in their own backyard.”

Students propose plans for a carbon-neutral campus

Students in class 2.S999 (Solving for Carbon Neutrality at MIT) are charged with developing plans to make MIT’s campus carbon neutral by 2060.

January 17, 2020

“In courses like Nuclear Technology and Society, which covered the benefits and risks of nuclear energy, I saw that some people believed the solution for climate change was definitely nuclear, while others said it was wind or solar,” says doctoral student Nestor Sepulveda. “I began wondering how to determine the value of different technologies.”

Zeroing in on decarbonization

Wielding complex algorithms, nuclear science and engineering doctoral candidate Nestor Sepulveda spins out scenarios for combating climate change.

January 15, 2020

Postdoc Reshma Rao stands next to a pulsed laser deposition system, which is used to deposit well-defined thin films of catalyst materials.

The race to develop renewable energy technologies

Mechanical engineers rush to develop energy conversion and storage technologies from renewable sources such as wind, wave, solar, and thermal.

December 18, 2019

Associate Professor Elsa Olivetti studies the huge quantities of industrial waste materials generated in the manufacturing industry, in hopes of finding useful ways to reconstitute and reuse this waste for building.

Making buildings from industrial waste

Following a successful project creating bricks from pulp plant waste in northern India, Elsa Olivetti is looking for ways to repurpose slag produced by the metals industry.

December 16, 2019

Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, and it currently leaks from production wells, storage tanks, pipelines, and urban distribution pipes for natural gas.

The uncertain role of natural gas in the transition to clean energy

MIT study finds that challenges in measuring and mitigating leakage of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, prove pivotal.