With the support of member companies, the CLEAR initiative will provide standardized techno-economic analysis and lifecycle assessment frameworks that will enable investors and policy makers to reliably compare the costs and emissions impact of emerging energy and climate technologies.
About
The Consistent Lifecycle and Economic Assessment Recommendations (CLEAR) Steering Committee, co-chaired by William H. Green, the director of MITEI and Hoyt C. Hottel Professor of Chemical Engineering, and Elsa Olivetti, the Jerry McAfee Professor of Engineering, consists of prominent experts in techno-economic analysis (TEA) and lifecycle assessment (LCA) from U.S. and European universities and U.S. national laboratories. The CLEAR initiative will agree on best-practice TEA and LCA frameworks and publish examples demonstrating the application of the guidelines.
Value
Under the guidance of the expert Steering Committee, CLEAR subcommittees will develop and disseminate educational materials about the recommended guidelines to inform the current and next generation of TEA and LCA professionals charged with evaluating emerging energy and climate technologies. The CLEAR initiative will also promote standardized TEA and LCA procedures to the international engineering and sustainability communities at professional conferences and workshops. Some software suppliers are collaborating with the CLEAR initiative, intending to incorporate recommended approaches into their packages. To ensure that the best-practice guidelines for TEA and LCA are rooted in real-world use cases, CLEAR’s subcommittees include technical experts from leading companies.
CLEAR will deliver:
- Peer-reviewed papers that will identify problems with the current TEA/LCA approaches and apply the new, consistent approaches to example processes
- Educational materials (e.g., slide decks, lecture notes, videos, and exercises) to teach the new standards and approaches to current and next-generation TEA/LCA professionals
- Collaborative changes to common TEA/LCA software to incorporate CLEAR recommendations
Company and foundation supporters of CLEAR may provide an expert to participate in the effort and will have access to webinars and brief reports, hybrid meetings, and pre-publication versions of peer-reviewed papers resulting from the effort.
The CLEAR initiative is an opportunity for MIT to collaborate with experts at other universities, national laboratories, and leading companies to establish clear protocols for producing rigorous, credible techno-economic analyses and lifecycle assessments of emerging energy and climate technologies. By accelerating the deployment of the most promising technologies, the CLEAR initiative will support the energy transition and spur progress towards climate and sustainability goals.
Standardizing analysis of energy technologies
The viability of emerging energy and climate technologies is frequently obscured by inconsistent approaches or assumptions within techno-economic analyses and lifecycle assessments. The lack of agreement erodes confidence in technology assessments and can delay adoption of innovative decarbonization solutions. A standardized framework would enable investors, policy makers, and the public to compare emerging energy and climate technologies on a level playing field.
