Boston Magazine reporter Rowan Jacobsen spotlights how MIT faculty, students and alumni are leading the charge in clean energy startups. “When it comes to game-changing breakthroughs in energy, three letters keep surfacing again and again: MIT,” writes Jacobsen.
Prof. Jessika Trancik speaks with Popular Science reporter Charlotte Hu about the impact of electric vehicles on the environment. “There’s definitely a number of different modes of transport that need to be addressed and green modes of transport that need to be supported,” says Trancik. “We really need to be thinking holistically about all these ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”
Financial Times reporter Simon Mundy and Kaori Yoshida spotlight Gradiant, an MIT startup that has developed new methods of handling industrial wastewater. “Gradiant promises customers that its technology will allow them to purify and reuse larger amounts of water, reducing the amount they need to source externally,” write Mundy and Yoshia.
Boston Globe reporter Aaron Pressman highlights Gradiant, an MIT startup that has developed a water purification system based on natural evaporation and rainfall cycles to clean wastewater at factories and manufacturing facilities.
Gradiant, an MIT startup, is using water technology to “help companies reduce water usage and clean up wastewater for reuse,” reports Simon Jessop for Reuters.
Commonwealth Fusion Systems, MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center and others are working to build SPARC, a prototype device that aims to extract net energy from plasma and generate fusion power, reports Philip Ball for Scientific American. “SPARC will be a midsize tokamak in which the plasma is tightly confined by very intense magnetic fields produced by new high-temperature superconducting magnets developed at MIT and unveiled in 2021.”
Ubiquitous Energy, an MIT startup, has created a transparent photovoltaic glass coating, called UE Power, that can turn any surface into a tiny solar panel, reports Teodosia Dobriyanova for Mashable. “The company, however, is prioritizing the use of UE Power on windows in an attempt to help buildings reduce their colossal climate footprint,” writes Dobriyanova.
Prof. Christopher Knittel speaks with Radio Boston host Tiziana Dearing about how high electric bills are impacting efforts to address climate change. The current artificial inflation of the volumetric rate “makes electrification hard, it makes it more expensive,” notes Knittel. “As we, as a Commonwealth, want to move toward electrification, it’s a big headwind that is going to push against our climate goals,” says Knittel.
“The Sun Queen,” a new documentary on PBS, will highlight the life of the late former MIT Prof. Mária Telkes and her work in developing solar energy. Telkes is known for her “work on the 1948 Dover Sun House, a solar-heated model home created by an all-female team,” reports Erin Blakemore for The Washington Post.
In an opinion piece for The Boston Globe, Prof. Christopher R. Knittel explains why electricity bills in Massachusetts can be so high and how to address the issue. “State law requires Massachusetts to cut greenhouse gas emissions relative to 1990 levels by 50 percent by 2030 and by 85 percent by 2050,” writes Knittel. “In short, we need to replace gasoline and natural gas with electricity. But how we price electricity is making this effort to address climate change harder."
MIT researchers have found that placing EV charging stations in strategic locations and setting up charging systems to initiate charging at delayed times could help reduce the impact of EVs on the electrical grid, reports Michael Schoeck for PV Magazine.
MIT scientists have found that delayed charging and strategic placement of EV charging stations could help reduce additional energy demands caused by more widespread EV adoption, reports Grace Carroll for Fast Company. “Leveraging these two strategies together significantly eliminates any additional energy demands,” writes Carroll, “and can be tailored to specific local conditions to help cities meet their decarbonization goals.”
A new study by MIT researchers finds that strategic placement of EV charging stations and creating systems to help stagger charging times could help reduce or eliminate the need for new power plants to handle the impact of EV charging on the grid, reports Sharon Udasin and Saul Elbein for The Hill. The researchers found that “better availability of charging stations at workplaces could help take advantage of peak power being produced midday by solar energy facilities.”
Carlos Casanovas MS ’14 co-founded X1 Wind, a startup that has developed a floating wind turbine prototype, reports Andrew Paul for Popular Science. “Floating wind is set to play a vital role supporting the future energy transition, global decarbonization and ambitious net-zero targets,” says Casanovas.
Researchers at MIT have predicted that without improvements in hardware efficiency, energy consumption and emissions from autonomous vehicles could be “comparable to that of data centers today,” reports Sarah Wells for Popular Mechanics. “In order to reduce the future carbon footprint of AVs, scientists will need to make the computing systems of AVs, including smart sensors, far more efficient,” writes Wells.