To fend off the worst impacts of climate change, “we now have to decarbonize, and do it even faster,” said William H. Green, director of the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) and Hoyt C. Hottel Professor, MIT Department of Chemical Engineering, at MITEI’s Annual Research Conference.
“But how on earth will we actually achieve this goal when the US is in the midst of a divisive election campaign, and globally, we’re facing every kind of geopolitical conflicts, trade protectionism, weather disasters, increasing demand from developing countries constructing a middle class, and data centers in countries just like the U.S.?”
Researchers, government officials, and business leaders convened in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Sept. 25-26 to wrestle with this vexing query on the conference that was themed, “A durable energy transition: The right way to stay on the right track within the face of accelerating demand and unpredictable obstacles.”
“On this room we now have a variety of power,” said Green, “if we work together, convey to all of society what we see as real pathways and policies to resolve problems, and take collective motion.”
The critical role of consensus-building in driving the energy transition arose repeatedly in conference sessions, whether the subject involved developing and adopting recent technologies, constructing and siting infrastructure, drafting and passing vital energy policies, or attracting and retaining a talented workforce.
Resolving conflicts
There may be “blowback and a social cost” in transitioning away from fossil fuels, said Stephen Ansolabehere, the Frank G. Thompson Professor of Government at Harvard University, in a panel on the social barriers to decarbonization. “Corporations need to interact otherwise and recognize the rights of communities,” he said.
Nora DeDontney, director of development at Vineyard Offshore, described her company’s two years of outreach and negotiations to bring large cables from ocean-based wind turbines onshore.
“Our motto is, ‘community first,’” she said. Her company works to mitigate any impacts towns might feel due to offshore wind infrastructure construction with projects, corresponding to sewer upgrades; provides workforce training to Tribal Nations; and lays out wind turbines in a fashion that gives protected and reliable areas for local fisheries.
Elsa A. Olivetti, professor within the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at MIT and the lead of the Decarbonization Mission of MIT’s recent Climate Project, discussed the urgent need for rapid scale-up of mineral extraction. “Estimates indicate that to impress the vehicle fleet by 2050, about six recent large copper mines need to come back on line every year,” she said. To fulfill the demand for metals in the US means pushing into Indigenous lands and environmentally sensitive habitats. “The timeline of permitting shouldn’t be aligned with the temporal acceleration needed,” she said.
Larry Susskind, the Ford Professor of Urban and Environmental Planning within the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning, is attempting to resolve such tensions with universities playing the role of mediators. He’s creating renewable energy clinics where students train to take part in emerging disputes over siting. “Seek advice from people before decisions are made, conduct joint fact finding, in order that facilities reduce harms and share the advantages,” he said.
Clean energy boom and pressure
A comparatively recent and unexpected increase in demand for energy comes from data centers, that are being built by large technology firms for brand spanking new offerings, corresponding to artificial intelligence.
“General energy demand was flat for 20 years — and now, boom,” said Sean James, Microsoft’s senior director of knowledge center research. “It caught utilities flatfooted.” With the expansion of AI, the push to provision data centers with upwards of 35 gigawatts of recent (and mainly renewable) power within the near future, intensifies pressure on big firms to balance the concerns of stakeholders across multiple domains. Google is pursuing 24/7 carbon-free energy by 2030, said Devon Swezey, the corporate’s senior manager for global energy and climate.
“We’re pursuing this by purchasing more and several types of clean energy locally, and accelerating technological innovation corresponding to next-generation geothermal projects,” he said. Pedro Gómez Lopez, strategy and development director, Ferrovial Digital, which designs and constructs data centers, incorporates renewable energy into their projects, which contributes to decarbonization goals and advantages to locales where they’re sited. “We will create a brand new supply of power, taking the warmth generated by an information center to residences or industries in neighborhoods through District Heating initiatives,” he said.
The Inflation Reduction Act and other laws has ramped up employment opportunities in clean energy nationwide, touching every region, including those most tied to fossil fuels. “At the beginning of 2024 there have been about 3.5 million clean energy jobs, with ‘red’ states showing the fastest growth in clean energy jobs,” said David S. Miller, managing partner at Clean Energy Ventures. “The bulk (58 percent) of recent jobs in energy at the moment are in clean energy — that transition has happened. And one-in-16 recent jobs nationwide were in clean energy, with clean energy jobs growing greater than thrice faster than job growth economy-wide”
On this rapid expansion, the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) is prioritizing economically marginalized places, in accordance with Zoe Lipman, lead for good jobs and labor standards within the Office of Energy Jobs on the DoE. “The community profit process is integrated into our funding,” she said. “We’re creating the muse of a virtuous circle,” encouraging advantages to flow to disadvantaged and energy communities, spurring workforce training partnerships, and promoting well-paid union jobs. “These policies incentivize proactive community and labor engagement, and deliver community advantages, each of that are key to constructing support for technological change.”
Hydrogen opportunity and challenge
While engagement with stakeholders helps clear the trail for implementation of technology and the spread of infrastructure, there remain enormous policy, scientific, and engineering challenges to resolve, said multiple conference participants. In a “fireside chat,” Prasanna V. Joshi, vp of low-carbon-solutions technology at ExxonMobil, and Ernest J. Moniz, professor of physics and special advisor to the president at MIT, discussed efforts to switch natural gas and coal with zero-carbon hydrogen so as to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in such major industries as steel and fertilizer manufacturing.
“We’ve gone into an era of commercial policy,” said Moniz, citing a brand new DoE program offering incentives to generate demand for hydrogen — more costly than conventional fossil fuels — in end-use applications. “We’re going to need to transition from our current approach, which I might call carrots-and-twigs, to ultimately, carrots-and-sticks,” Moniz warned, so as to create “a self-sustaining, major, scalable, inexpensive hydrogen economy.”
To realize net zero emissions by 2050, ExxonMobil intends to make use of carbon capture and sequestration in natural gas-based hydrogen and ammonia production. Ammonia may also function a zero-carbon fuel. Industry is exploring burning ammonia directly in coal-fired power plants to increase the hydrogen value chain. But there are challenges. “How do you burn 100% ammonia?”, asked Joshi. “That is one in all the important thing technology breakthroughs that is needed.” Joshi believes that collaboration with MIT’s “ecosystem of breakthrough innovation” shall be essential to breaking logjams across the hydrogen and ammonia-based industries.
MIT ingenuity essential
The energy transition is placing very different demands on different regions around the globe. Take India, where today per capita power consumption is one in all the bottom. But Indians “are an aspirational people … and with increasing urbanization and industrial activity, the expansion in power demand is anticipated to triple by 2050,” said Praveer Sinha, CEO and managing director of the Tata Power Co. Ltd., in his keynote speech. For that nation, which currently relies on coal, the move to wash energy means bringing one other 300 gigawatts of zero-carbon capability online in the following five years. Sinha sees this power coming from wind, solar, and hydro, supplemented by nuclear energy.
“India plans to triple nuclear power generation capability by 2032, and is specializing in advancing small modular reactors,” said Sinha. “The country also needs the rapid deployment of storage solutions to firm up the intermittent power.” The goal is to supply reliable electricity 24/7 to a population living each in large cities and in geographically distant villages, with the assistance of long-range transmission lines and native microgrids. “India’s energy transition would require progressive and inexpensive technology solutions, and there is no such thing as a higher place to go than MIT, where you’ve the most effective brains, startups, and technology,” he said.
These assets were on full display on the conference. Amongst them a cluster of young businesses, including:
- the MIT spinout Form Energy, which has developed a 100-hour iron battery as a backstop to renewable energy sources in case of multi-day interruptions;
- startup Noya that goals for direct air capture of atmospheric CO2 using carbon-based materials;
- the firm Lively Surfaces, with a light-weight material for putting solar photovoltaics in previously inaccessible places;
- Copernic Catalysts, with recent chemistry for making ammonia and sustainable aviation fuel much more inexpensively than current processes; and
- Sesame Sustainability, a software platform spun out of MITEI that provides industries a full financial evaluation of the prices and advantages of decarbonization.
The pipeline of research talent prolonged into the undergraduate ranks, with a conference “slam” competition showcasing students’ summer research projects in areas from carbon capture using enzymes to 3D design for the coils utilized in fusion energy confinement.
“MIT students like me want to be the following generation of energy leaders, searching for careers where we will apply our engineering skills to tackle exciting climate problems and make a tangible impact,” said Trent Lee, a junior in mechanical engineering researching improvements in lithium-ion energy storage. “We’re stoked by the energy transition, since it’s not only the longer term, but our likelihood to construct it.”
