Energy
“If one advance could transform America's prospects, it would be ready access, at scale, to a range of affordable, renewable, low-carbon energy technologies. Only one path will lead to such transformative technologies: research.” - Susan Hockfield
With nations preparing for the global climate talks in Paris under the UN Framework on Climate Change (COP21), an MIT delegation traveled to France on Oct. 27 to meet with European government,...
On Oct. 21, at the conclusion of a year-and-a-half process of discussion, consultation, and gathering of ideas, President L. Rafael Reif announced a...
Big data may soon make buildings greener. With a recent major acquisition, MIT alumni-founded Retroficiency, which has assessed hundreds of thousands of buildings, is poised to bring its advanced...
Big hopes are riding on the 2015 United Nations climate change conference planned for Nov. 30-Dec. 11 in Paris, where more than 190 nations will strive to hammer out an international agreement...
What will it take to limit global warming and the risk of catastrophic outcomes? Can the world unite behind a plan to limit greenhouse gases? That is the challenge before the world leaders who...
Here’s a paradox facing today’s nuclear power industry: On one hand, an exciting range of new fission and fusion reactor technologies has spawned a number of startups. But at the same time, market...
Melanie Kenderdine, as the first executive director of the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI), helped to launch an international program to increase women’s participation and leadership in the energy...
Moore’s Law enabled smaller, cheaper, faster electronic devices for five decades, but it will take a new paradigm like quantum materials to make the next technological leap, Materials Processing...
Researchers at MIT and elsewhere have found a way to significantly boost the energy that can be harnessed from sunlight, a finding that could lead to better solar cells or light detectors....
Participants from the U.S., Canada, Brazil, European Union, the United Kingdom, China, and Africa will gather on the MIT campus for three days, Nov. 10-12, for the first...
With the intensifying drought in California, the state has accelerated the construction of desalination plants. Yet due to high construction and operating costs, as well as environmental concerns...
At a kickoff event for the inaugural MIT Solve conference, Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, commented on the growing need for the world to apply scientific...
Boiling water, with its commotion of bubbles that rise from a surface as water comes to a boil, is central to most electric power plants, heating and cooling systems, and desalination plants. Now...
This December’s international climate negotiations in Paris are expected to yield reductions in manmade greenhouse gas emissions, but unless deeper cuts follow, the global temperature is likely to...
MIT is launching a multifaceted five-year plan aimed at fighting climate change, representing a new phase in the Institute’s commitment to an issue that, the plan says, “demands society’s urgent...
Aditi Verma’s first encounter with nuclear policy was nearly her last. She represented Germany at a high school version of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and was frustrated by the...
Catherine Drennan, a professor of chemistry and biology, likes to wax poetic about the complex chemistry of microbes. "I think they’re elegant and beautiful," she says. Of course, she also sees...
John E. Fernandez, a professor of building technology in the Department of Architecture, has been named as the new director of MIT’s Environmental Solutions Initiative (ESI), a campuswide...
Harbor seals have an amazingly fine-tuned sense for detecting prey, as marine biologists have noted for years. Even when blindfolded, trained seals are able to chase the precise path of an object...
How can we use information technology to improve health care outcomes? How can we make the Internet accessible to people everywhere? How will we provide a secure food supply for 9.6 billion people...
Over the past decade, many countries and regions seeking to reduce climate-warming carbon dioxide emissions have adopted more aggressive fuel economy standards designed to boost the efficiency of...
Deep in the jungles of the Yucatan peninsula, residents of the remote Mexican village of La Mancalona are producing clean drinking water using the power of the sun.
For nearly two years...
The challenges of providing clean, reliable energy, water, and food to people everywhere — and especially in parts of the developing world — is a key focus of Solve, a four-day conference taking...
Buildings are the largest energy consumers worldwide, so it seems the sector is ripe for energy investment and savings potential. In order to reduce buildings’ energy impact, strategies have been...
MIT’s inaugural Solve conference opened with a splash on Monday, as a diverse group of technologists, entrepreneurs, and experts hailed the importance of addressing our most urgent global problems...