News

Robert Jaffe (Physics) and Joel Jean SM ’13 PhD ’17, co-founder and CEO of Swift Solar (a solar technology start-up), comment on the roles that World Expos have played in promoting energy technology development throughout history.

Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, a negative emissions process that converts biomass into energy and captures and stores the carbon, could be an economically effective tool to meet global climate goals when paired with dramatic emissions-reduction measures, says a new study from MITEI and the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change.

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2021/03/31/lithium-battery-costs-have-fallen-by-98-in-three-decades

Innovative, low-cost long duration energy storage technologies could make a large impact in a more affordable and reliable energy transition. A new paper in Nature Energy by researchers at MITEI and Princeton University’s Andlinger Center for Energy and Environment evaluates the role and value that these technologies could have in securing a carbon-free electric grid and find that they have the potential to lower electricity prices in a carbon-free system by up to 40%.

SolidEnergy Systems, a spinout of MIT, and General Motors will jointly develop next-generation electric vehicle batteries, featuring lithium metal instead of lithium-ion, that are expected to cut the cost of the technology by 60%.

MITEI Research Scientist Dharik Mallapragada discusses how decreased costs of wind and solar have paved the way towards falling costs in other low-carbon sectors as well. His comments are from a panel discussion at the 2021 CERAWeek conference.

Commonwealth Fusion Systems announced that it will build a 47-acre research and manufacturing campus in Devens, Massachussetts, with the goal of bringing fusion power to market. The campus will house their experimental fusion device, SPARC, and the company expects to double its workforce. CFS is an MIT spinoff for which MITEI helped facilitate initial collaborations and funding through member company Eni S.p.A.

Susan Hockfield, MIT President Emerita, and Ernest J. Moniz, 13th U.S. Secretary of Energy and founding director of MITEI, memorialize the late George Shultz, a leader of U.S. domestic and foreign policy, noted academic, and champion for climate action. Secretary Shultz served as the inaugural chair of MITEI’s External Advisory Board for over a decade and was a central figure in shaping MITEI and its initiatives.

Electric vehicles are a key mechanism to decrease transportation-based carbon emissions, yet their adoption has been remarkably slow in the U.S. Jessika Trancik (Institute for Data, Systems, and Society) comments on the need for more charging stations in strategic locations to increase the likelihood of adoption.

MITEI Research Scientist Apurba Sakti weighs in on the relatively low risks of lithium-ion batteries in an article about the potential use of lithium-iron-phosphate in home energy storage systems.

Brandon Sorbom, co-founder and chief science officer of MIT spinout Commonwealth Fusion Systems, discusses his energy journey and the role of nuclear fusion in the clean energy transition.