Noman Bashir, a fellow with MIT’s Climate and Sustainability Consortium, speaks with Abby Acone of FOX 13 about the environmental impacts of generative AI, and the benefits and challenges posed by increasing use of AI tools. Bashir emphasizes that the use of generative AI should be “very judicious, not a blind application of AI for all applications.”
Noman Bashir, a fellow with the MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium and a postdoc at CSAIL, speaks with Wired reporter Molly Taft about AI and energy consumption. Bashir explains that how quickly a model answers a question has a big impact on its energy use. “The goal is to provide all of this inference the quickest way possible so that you don’t leave their platform,” Bashir says. “If ChatGPT suddenly starts giving you a response after five minutes, you will go to some other tool that is giving you an immediate response.”
Vijay Gadepally, a senior scientist at MIT Lincoln Lab, discusses users can help conserve energy while using AI tools, reports Nicolás Rivero for The Washington Post. Gadepally notes that users can save energy by asking the AI to be concise when you don’t need long answers, as models use more energy for each word they process. “People often mistake these things as having some sort of sentience,” says Gadepally. “You don’t need to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you.’ It’s okay. They don’t mind.”
Senior Research Scientist C. Adam Schlosser speaks with Boston Globe reporter Lindsay Crudele about how tending to personal gardens can be an effective tool in combating climate change. “We obviously have a lot of technologies that are trying to remove carbon from the air,” Schlosser explains, but “the best way of doing that, in terms of nature, is to plant new vegetation.”
Prof. Yet-Ming Chiang and his colleagues have developed a sodium-air fuel cell that “packs three to four times more energy per pound than common lithium-ion batteries,” reports Aaron Pressman for The Boston Globe, which could serve as “a potentially groundbreaking clean power source for airplanes.” Pressman adds that: “Ultimately, a sodium-air fuel cell could power a regional jet carrying 50 to 100 passengers on flights as long as 300 miles.”
A study by Prof. Noelle Selin has found that climate change will impact our ability to curb smoke and smog pollutants, reports Vivian La for WBUR. The researchers “used computer models to predict how air pollution will develop in the Eastern United States over the next few decades,” explains La. Selin underscored the importance of policies that reduce air pollution noting that: “what we’re doing to the atmosphere has impacts and it’s important not to roll these back.”
Writing for The Boston Globe, Prof. David Mindell spotlights how “a new wave of industrial companies, many in New England, are leveraging new technologies to create jobs, empower workers, and address climate change.” Mindell notes that “young Americans — new industrialists — are devoting themselves to making things for the common good.” He adds: "The country needs this generation of builders who are excited about working with their hands, about the satisfactions of building the world, and who see that work as building our communities.”
Forbes reporter Michael Nietzel spotlights MIT’s Initiative for New Manufacturing (INM), “an institution-wide effort intended to promote and advance the future of U.S. manufacturing.” Nietzel notes that the INM is part of an effort to “rethink how MIT could help shape the future of manufacturing through workforce training, advanced technologies, and industry collaborations. It will focus on enhancing the future manufacturing capacity and sophistication of several major industries.”
Prof. Ariel Furst has been named to Chemical & Engineering News’ 2025 Talented 12, which spotlights early-career scientists who are using their “chemistry know-how to make a real-world impact.” “By combining the power of biology with chemistry and materials engineering, Furst develops technologies to tackle crucial problems such as environmental remediation, sustainable agriculture, and carbon sequestration,” writes Prachi Patel. “Pretty much everything that agrochemicals do, there are microbes that we think do it better,” says Furst. “They do it more precisely and maintain the overall balance of the ecosystem much more effectively.”
Boston Business Journal reporter Eli Chavez spotlights Sublime Systems, an MIT startup “focused on low-carbon cement production.” “Sublime’s mission is to have a swift and massive impact measured in the amount of cement we produce and sell,” says CEO Leah Ellis, a former MIT postdoc. “We are super-focused on increasing our cement production.”
Prof. Jacquelyn Pless speaks with Grist reporter Tik Root about the future of the solar power industry amid federal proposals to remove tax credit incentives that assist with residential solar costs. “Policy volatility is really my bigger concern,” says Pless. “Policy uncertainty alone can start to freeze investment, raise costs, and damage market confidence.”
Prof. Amos Winter speaks with WBUR reporter Grace Griffin about his work developing a desalination system that relies on solar power. “The majority of water you find in the ground around the world is salty,” says Winter. “The reason we use solar power is that most people around the world are going to be resource-constrained. They may have lower income levels or not have access to grid electricity. So, our technology makes desalination much more accessible in all areas around the world.”
Forbes reporter Cornelia Walther spotlights innovators from MIT Solve’s climate solver teams, which “underscore the power of AI as a catalyst for transforming change across diverse sectors.” The teams illustrate “that when carefully designed and applied, AI can deliver substantial benefits for the environment — improving operational efficiency, cutting waste and even supporting social equity,” writes Walther.
A study by MIT researchers finds “using scrubbers to treat exhaust from heavy fuel oil may offer environmental performance on par with, and in some areas superior to, burning low-sulfur fuels in maritime shipping,” reports Hassan Ahmed for Engineeringness. “The research provides data that could help policymakers and industry leaders better assess the comparative costs and benefits of available fuel options,” explains Ahmed.
Graduate student Will Parker joins Dana Taylor of the USA Today podcast The Excerpt to discuss his research on the impact of climate change on satellites. “We're seeing a cooling effect in the upper atmosphere where most of our satellites are operating, and because of that cooling effect, we're seeing that the entire atmosphere is contracting, so it's retreating away from low Earth orbit where we rely on that atmosphere for drag on our satellites,” explains Parker. “The effect of that retreat, that shrinking of the atmosphere, is that it's not doing as good a job at cleaning out low Earth orbit, and again, we rely on that cleaning force because we have no other way to remove most of this debris.”