Research and analysis

MITEI raised more than $53 million in the 2024 fiscal year (FY24), with the primary objective of decarbonizing the global economy with zero- and low-carbon technologies and integrated energy systems supported by effective policy. The funding amount is the sum of multi-year commitments made in FY24 from new and renewing members. Research projects launched by MITEI in FY24 totaled $16.8 million. The areas that garnered the most new research support this year were basic energy science at $7.45 million and power distribution and energy storage at $5.2 million. The balance of this year’s research funding was allocated to support a range of other energy topics, including renewable energy, policy and economics, and built environment and infrastructure.

With support from its Members, as well as numerous foundations, donors, various government entities (state and federal), and university partners, MITEI has supported more than 1,050 projects through FY24. MITEI’s work is guided by the use of advanced system modeling and analysis techniques to understand the climate as well as financial, economic, and social impacts of available pathways against the complex backdrop of the energy system as a whole.

Research program highlights

• The Future Energy Systems Center: The Future Energy Systems Center , which examines the accelerating energy transition as technologies, policies, demographics, and economics impact energy supply and demand, awarded $4.15 million to support 22 new projects. The Center is now carrying out 43 system modeling and analysis projects. The topics range from the hurdles of small modular reactors for industrial settings to the interplay between H₂ production and renewable fuel synthesis. MITEI kicked off meetings for each of these new projects at the Center’s November 2024 Workshop.
• Future Energy Systems Center meetings and workshops: In May, the Future Energy Systems Center held its spring workshop to address pressing topics, including the role of bioenergy in the energy transition, decarbonizing buildings in cold climates, and the potential for nuclear power to play a significant role in the energy transition. It also held its advisory committee meeting and a student presentation and poster session.
• Future Energy Systems Center webinars: This series of webinars has provided an opportunity to share information about emerging technologies, policies, and sustainability issues from MIT professors across departments. The webinars also provide a venue for sharing the latest updates on the Center-supported projects.
• Funding for early-stage research: In FY24,  MITEI funded six early-stage research projects for a total of $900,000, through the MITEI Seed Fund. MITEI has supported more than 220 energy-focused seed projects with grants totaling more than $28.8 million.
• Systems modeling tools: MITEI’s internal research team has made substantial progress toward further developing a unique and powerful set of energy system analysis and optimization tools. The Sustainable Energy System Analysis Modeling Environment (SESAME), a web application incorporating a growing number of features and capabilities for modeling energy system emissions and cost scenarios, is being used and expanded in projects funded by the Future Energy Systems Center and by industry. In 2023, the climate tech software startup Sesame Sustainability was spun out of MITEI, leveraging SESAME’s unique platform for technoeconomic and life cycle analysis to accurately evaluate industrial decarbonization solutions at scale. GenX, our state-of-the-art electricity system capacity expansion model for investment planning in the power sector, is being used in a number of Future Energy Systems Center projects, and by researchers and companies around the world. GenX was released as an open-source tool in 2021. A multi-sector expansion of the GenX model released as an open-source tool in 2022, the Decision Optimization of Low-carbon Power-HYdrogen Network (DOLPHYN), was used to inform multiple high-impact articles published in journals such as Nature Energy and Nature Communications.

Global Commission to End Energy Poverty

The Global Commission to End Energy Poverty is a collaboration between MITEI and the Rockefeller Foundation initiated in late 2018 to bring electricity to the remaining billion people across the globe who currently live without it. The Commission is led by Robert Stoner, founding director of the Tata Center for Technology and Design; and co-chaired by Ernest Moniz, special advisor to the MIT President, professor emeritus, and former U.S. Secretary of Energy; Dr. Rajiv Shah, president of the Rockefeller Foundation; and Akinwumi Adesina, president of the African Development Bank. The MITEI team’s “Energy Poverty Index,” which measures the capacity of countries with substantial energy poverty to achieve universal electricity access by 2030, is now being considered by the World Bank as part of its overall energy poverty tracking process. The African School of Regulation has been launched at the recommendation of the Commission to help build electricity system regulatory capacity across Africa and is under the interim leadership of Ignacio Pérez-Arriaga, a former visiting professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management from Comillas Pontifical University in Madrid, Spain. The school is based temporarily at the Florence School of Regulation in Italy and opened points of presence in six African nations over the course of 2023.

Tata Center for Technology and Design

Entering its twelfth year, the Tata Center for Technology and Design is supporting researchers at the master’s and PhD level to conduct energy research in developing countries. Their experiences abroad inform their ongoing research with the goal of catalyzing positive social impact in the form of policy support and affordable products and services. Through support for these students, the Tata Center, which is led by Tata Center Founding Director Robert Stoner, advances its mission of bringing technical talent and experience to bear on the challenges of the developing world. Ongoing projects focus on the social and financial impacts of ongoing fuel price shocks in vulnerable countries, the greenhouse gas and social impact of lithium-ion battery manufacturing in Indonesia, and the potential of retrofitting coal plants in India as thermal batteries to support renewables deployment while also reducing greenhouse gas emissions.