Evelyn Reynolds

The classroom in fall 2020 looked very different than it did when WGS.160/STS.021 (Science Activism: Gender, Race, and Power) ran for the first time in 2019. Zoom and virtual breakout rooms had replaced circles of chairs, but the shifts made the class no less immersive and urgent for its students.
In fact, the pandemic context made the core questions of this new survey class all the more vivid: What roles have U.S. scientists and technologists played as activists in crucial social issues and movements following WWII? What are their motivations, responsibilities, and strategies for organizing? What is their impact?Scientists have been on the front lines of active citizenship and policy engagement in recent years in very visible ways — in the People’s Climate Movement, in controlling the global Covid-19 pandemic, and in testimony about biases in facial recognition in Congress, to name just a few.
As students in the Science Activism class have learned, this engagement isn’t a new phenomenon. There is a long history of scientists championing important issues, policy positions, and public education by contributing their scientific knowledge and perspectives. Case studies in this course include the civil rights movement, the nuclear freeze campaign, climate science and action, environmental justice, Vietnam War protests, the March 4 Movement at MIT, and advocating for gender equality in STEM fields.Reflecting the layered and intersecting issues this class explores, it is listed in both the Program in Women’s and Gender Studies (WGS) and in the MIT Program in Science, Technology, and Society. From the research bench to the policy tableScientific knowledge is now critical for public understanding and sound policy for most of today’s most critical issues — from climate to human health to food security — and MIT students are eager to understand how their works interact with social realities and how they can lend their expertise to advancing better conditions and policies.“The class was informed by the increasing efforts by scientists to engage in public policy not only at the ballot box, or by providing testimony,” says Ed Bertschinger, professor of physics, who led the initial class in 2019 as well as the 2020 class. “More scientists are also taking up causes of activism. That’s been true at MIT and around the country.”
As a faculty affiliate of the WGS program, Bertschinger notes that science has never been purely objective or detached from society. “Activism is a way for groups with less power in democratic societies to have their voices heard in order to effect change,” he observes. “Scientists can no longer take for granted that their results speak for themselves.”Bertschinger recalls that his first experience with activism was in graduate school, in the 1980s, when he served as an organizer for the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign. “I was following the lead of an MIT group,” reflects Bertschinger, “including scholars such as the late Randall Forsberg and Philip Morrison, who were leaders in the nuclear disarmament effort in the U.S.”Bridging the gapHis students now are similarly broadening their areas of academic interest into awareness of the context, impact, and influence their respective fields have in society.For Eleane Lema, a senior majoring in chemistry/biology and minoring in anthropology, the draw of Science Activism came from a sense of disconnection between her academic life as a scientist and her drive to make a positive social impact. The class subjects dovetail with her explorations of environmental justice and the unequal benefits and harms scientific change has for different communities.Taking MIT’s mission “for the betterment of humankind” to heart since her first year at the Institute, Lema seeks ways to combine her technical education and her wish to engage in meaningful social work. This past summer, for instance, she had a health policy internship through MIT’s Washington Internship program, a longstanding initiative led by Charles Stewart III, the Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor of Political Science, and founding director of the nonpartisan MIT Election Data and Science Lab.
“WGS.160 is an opportunity to learn about the positive influences scientists have made in addressing the world’s biggest challenges,” says Lema. “By bridging science and social issues, this class shows us real, practical ways to embody MIT’s mission to serve humankind.” A duty to learnEmily Condon, another senior in the class this fall, also sees WGS.160 as an opportunity to understand her own social responsibilities as a scientist. “With the recent Black Lives Matter movement events and the current political climate, I felt a responsibility to educate myself on what I, as a student of science and engineering, could contribute to ending violence and discrimination against Black communities.”“The most profound idea that I’ve learned in this class is that science is not entirely objective,” reflects Condon. “There are always biases about what science implies or what scientific problems are important to study. Providing more spaces for BIPOC scientists to direct the course of research is essential to diversifying perspectives and approaches to science.”
Condon followed the tangible effects of such biases as she studied the material impacts of climate change and its roots as a social, as well as a scientific, problem. “Underserved communities are disproportionately impacted by the negative effects of climate change, and recognizing that can help scientists and engineers direct efforts to aid the people in those communities.”
For senior Kate Pearce, who is majoring in computer science and biology with a minor in math, the class is a chance to connect her longtime interest in science and activism. It has also given her a greater sense of continued agency over her own technical projects by learning how scientists have been able to anticipate and influence how their innovations will impact people, rather than simply allowing political and economic systems to determine how their work will be used.
The class, in both runs to date, has been composed primarily of MIT undergraduates focused on technical fields.Like their professor, the students come to the WGS program as interdisciplinary thinkers, pursuing a fuller and more nuanced sense of their work’s place in a volatile world. The program is designed to enable just that understanding — drawing on expertise across the Institute, from physicists to philosophers to poets, to provide analytical frameworks for the examination of gender, race, ethnicity, class, and sexuality — and how these aspects of human identity intersect with the life and issues of society.“The feminist lens of Science Activism really intrigued me,” Pearce adds, “especially as applied to how science and social change are motivated and executed.” An active MIT historyTopics in Science Activism take a broad view of recent decades, examining Vietnam War protests by scientists, genetic engineering, and the birth of modern environmentalism in the United States. There is a special focus on activism at MIT in particular, from the 1960s to present, including the March 4 Movement.
That movement began in 1969, when research and regular teaching at MIT slowed as students, faculty, and staff paused to protest the war in Vietnam and the Institute’s links to the military. Similar themes echo to the present day, with students, faculty, and staff opposing military solutions to international conflicts and broadening MIT’s engagement into social and economic justice.For Lema, the course has also provided insight into what successful activism looks like in projects like bringing awareness to the climate crisis. “MIT has played an integral role in the history of science activism, and I hope every MIT student gets the opportunity to learn about this history and discover how they can become activists for causes they are passionate about.”
Joining the conversationLike many of MIT’s humanistic courses, Science Activism is discussion-based: students build a foundational understanding from assigned readings and come to the classroom (live or virtual) prepared to debate and discuss. Guest speakers, such as Harvard Medical School Professor Jon Beckwith, who has led a Harvard University course focused on activism and the life sciences, broadened and deepened the conversation in the class’s first iteration by adding the perspectives of specialists in different disciplines.
This year the class welcomed via Zoom a number of new guest speakers, including Jin In, an advocate for women’s empowerment; Arwa Mboya, a former research assistant at the MIT Media Lab; and Steve Penn, a prominent MIT activist of the 1980s and ’90s. As a discussion-based class, the students’ insights are the engine of the class experience, and Bertschinger dedicates the majority of class time to breakout rooms so each student has a chance to thoroughly engage with ideas and questions.  “I have been so impressed by the passion and insight that my peers in this class provide,” says Pearce. “Since people are so engaged and passionate about these topics, the breakout rooms always lead to wonderful discussions, and we must struggle to end as the timer ticks down.”
For instance, the climate crisis — one of the foremost issues of the students’ lives — inspires intense, far-ranging conversations as class members trace the roots of environmentalism and think together about how best to respond to the multi-faceted crisis. The students’ experience gives the course an ever-expanding horizon as students’ insights widen discussions around intersectional equality in the sciences and in society.
“It was a great pleasure to teach the class last year; I learned a lot from working with the students and from developing case studies,” reflects Bertschinger. “It’s important for the MIT community to pay attention to the activism on campus — and to help our students develop the wisdom and the capacity to use their voices to the fullest effect in the world.”
Story by MIT SHASS CommunicationsEditorial team: Alison Lanier and Emily Hiestand More

Climate and energy are two key areas on the Biden-Harris Administration’s agenda. Here, Robert C. Armstrong, director of the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI), asks Ernest J. Moniz — professor emeritus post-tenure, MITEI’s founding director, special advisor to MIT President Rafael Reif, and former U.S. Secretary of Energy — about key challenges and targets that the new administration should consider to accelerate significant progress in these areas.
Q: What are your initial thoughts on what the top priority items should be for the Biden-Harris administration?
A: First of all, I think we should start off by saying that it’s pretty clear that the president is going to move out smartly on energy and climate. His appointments speak volumes, starting out with John Kerry in this new international envoy position; with Gina McCarthy; Brian Deese in the White House; Jennifer Granholm as the secretary of energy, who, as the governor of Michigan, did a lot with renewables and transportation; and the choice of Janet Yellen in the treasury with her well-known commitment to carbon emissions pricing.
It’s pretty convincing that the Biden-Harris Administration is in fact going to carry through with their “whole of government” approach to addressing climate. Now, in terms of priorities going forward, I think it’s important to distinguish between the types of actions that he can take. Clearly, there will be a large package of executive actions that can be taken without Congress.
Frankly, some of those will be reversing what Trump rolled back. Some examples of rollback to Obama-Biden rules, possibly further strengthened under Biden-Harris, could include Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards for auto efficiency and methane emissions rules.
There will also be a restart of some major Obama-Biden activities. One that I was very close to while energy secretary was energy efficiency standards. During the Obama period, the Department of Energy issued more than 50 energy-efficiency standards. We’re talking more than half a trillion dollars of consumer savings and about two to three gigatons of CO2 avoided cumulatively to 2030. You’re going to see that come out like gangbusters, maybe even more aggressive than when we were in the Obama administration.
Rejoining the Paris Agreement is a no-brainer. Getting in as a notification on Day One, and then 30 days later we’re in. Now, what do you do with it? The very early announcement of John Kerry’s position as international climate envoy was a clear statement that we don’t want to just rejoin Paris, we want to re-establish a leadership position. Other countries haven’t taken a four-year vacation on this. They’ve been working hard at it. We have to earn our place back at the table. A major test in the next few months will be formulation of a much more aggressive nationally determined contribution for 2030 than that adopted for 2025 at the Paris climate meeting just over five years ago, while also describing a domestic program that can credibly reach the goal. It will be tough to thread this needle.
These are only a few highlights of things that will be reestablished, but there will also be some new elements as well. For example, I believe that he will order all the financial regulatory agencies to put corporate climate risk disclosures very high on the agenda, reinforcing what the private banks and investors do in terms of the environmental, social, and corporate governance movement. It’s going to be a major executive package that the administration can put in place.
Q: There have been a lot of interesting climate and energy experiments and aggressive programs at the state and regional levels around the country. What lessons can be learned from these examples and how can we take national legislative action that leverages what we have already learned?
A: Despite the newfound Democratic majority in the Senate, I don’t think we should be fooled into thinking that it’s going to be easy to get comprehensive legislation immediately. Frankly, there’s a lot of work to do in bringing the Democrats together in terms of what kinds of programs are actually needed. If we assume, and I do assume, that once again we will not have comprehensive legislation on matters such as significant carbon emissions pricing anytime soon, state and city leadership will continue to be very important because in these past few years, clearly states and cities have been the ones leading the charge, often with opposition of the federal government.
Moving forward, there will be synergy between what the states and cities and the administration want to do. One should not underestimate how that will free up a lot of state and city initiatives on the path to the UN Climate Conference in Glasgow in late 2021, reinforcing a magic year of repositioning America on climate and clean energy. For example, I’m expecting that the considerable number of net-zero declarations by cities and states (and companies too) will only be strengthened. Clearly, national comprehensive legislation is desired and will eventually be very important, but we’ve always emphasized that, even with national legislation, we should never lose sight of the fact that low-carbon solutions are fundamentally regional in nature. This is a key direction that the Biden-Harris administration can go in even without comprehensive legislation. Facilitating and encouraging these kinds of regionally focused solutions is the only way we’re going to reach the net-zero objective.
Going back to Congress, there are two areas that I feel are ripe for congressional bipartisan action: innovation and infrastructure. Innovation is where the Congress in the last four years has shown promising bipartisan support. This is the decade where we need supercharged innovation because if we don’t get that addressed in this decade, we’re not going to have the scale potential in the 2030s and ’40s that we’re going to need for the mid-century net-zero goal.
Congress knows that they cannot kick the can down the road any further on infrastructure. The money has to be found and that will include as an important subset, energy infrastructure. That will obviously include the electricity system, for example, but it will also include things such as the infrastructure that is needed for large-scale carbon management and the infrastructure for large-scale, multi-sectoral hydrogen development. With innovation and infrastructure, I do believe that we’ll be able to garner strong bipartisan support. Clearly once we get into more difficult areas, that may take more time.
Q: Many argue that clean power generation alone will not be enough to address the climate and energy crisis alone and that carbon removal technologies will prove to be essential get us there. This begs the question about what the Biden-Harris administration might do to address these areas. How could they incentivize carbon capture, utilization, and sequestration (CCUS) technology or carbon dioxide removal (CDR) to help make it more affordable and appealing for large scale implementation?
A: Some people argue against admitting that CDR should be part of the solution because it is interpreted as giving more life to fossil fuels. I think that’s completely the wrong way to look at it. The right way to look at it is to recognize net-zero economy-wide emissions as just one milestone on the way to net-negative emissions, and it’s a tautology that you can’t do net-negative if you don’t have negative carbon technologies. The more that one can develop, demonstrate and deploy these technologies now, the more we’re getting a leg up to the place where we really want to go in the future, and of course at the same time, it’s going to help us with the mitigation challenge along the path to net-zero.
We’ve been advancing quite strenuously this carbon dioxide removal agenda, and it’s getting a lot of traction. The energy bill that was attached to the Omnibus Appropriations Bill and signed by the former president on Dec. 21, 2020 provided a lot of support for these technologies. This includes the support of a broad research portfolio on the topic and also requires a cross-administration CDR committee. The energy bill also authorized six big CCUS demonstration projects. Moving those forward will be very important, but where I think the government has to come in in a new way is to also be looking at the simultaneous build-up of the infrastructure to service these areas.
In this decade, we could start with a set of discrete hubs to advance the infrastructure of CCUS, CDR, and hydrogen, and the federal government can play a huge role in getting that to happen in collaboration with cities, states, and regions nationwide. More

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A new study from researchers at MIT uncovers the kinds of infrastructure improvements that would make the biggest difference in increasing the number of electric cars on the road, a key step toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions from transportation.
The researchers found that installing charging stations on residential streets, rather than just in central locations such as shopping malls, could have an outsized benefit. They also found that adding on high-speed charging stations along highways and making supplementary vehicles more easily available to people who need to travel beyond the single-charge range of their electric vehicles could greatly increase the vehicle electrification potential.
The findings are reported today in the journal Nature Energy, in a paper by MIT associate professor of energy studies Jessika Trancik, graduate student Wei Wei, postdoc Sankaran Ramakrishnan, and former doctoral student Zachary Needell SM ’15, PhD ’18.
The researchers developed a new methodology to identify charging solutions that would conveniently fit into people’s daily activities. They used data collected from GPS tracking devices in cars, as well as survey results about people’s daily driving habits and needs, including detailed data from the Seattle area and more general data from the U.S. as a whole. Greatly increasing the penetration of electric cars into the personal vehicle fleet is a central feature of climate mitigation policies at local, state, and federal levels, Trancik says. A goal of this study was “to better understand how to make these plans for rapid vehicle electrification a reality,” she adds.
In deciding how to prioritize different kinds of improvements in vehicle charging infrastructure, she says, “the approach that we took methodologically was to emphasize building a better understanding of people’s detailed energy consuming behavior, throughout the day and year.”
To do that, “we examine how different people are moving from location to location throughout the day, and where they are stopping,” she says. “And from there we’re able to look at when and where they would be able to charge without interrupting their daily travel activities.”
The team looked at both regular daily activities and the variations that occur over the course of a year. “The longitudinal view is important for capturing the different kinds of trips that a driver makes over time, so that we can determine the kinds of charging infrastructure needed to support vehicle electrification,” Wei says. 
While the vast majority of people’s daily driving needs can be met by the range provided by existing lower-cost electric cars, as Trancik and her colleagues have reported, there are typically a few times when people need to drive much farther. Or, they may need to make more short trips than usual in a day, with little time to stop and recharge. These “high-energy days,” as the researchers call them, when drivers are consuming more than the usual amount of energy for their transportation needs, may only happen a handful of times per year, but they can be the deciding factor in people’s decision making about whether to go electric.
Even though battery technology is steadily improving and extending the maximum range of electric cars, that alone will not be enough to meet all drivers’ needs and achieve rapid emissions reductions. So, addressing the range issue through infrastructure is essential, Trancik says. The highest-capacity batteries tend to be the most expensive, and are not affordable to many, she points out, so getting infrastructure right is also important from an equity perspective.
Being strategic in placing infrastructure where it can be most convenient and effective — and making drivers aware of it so they can easily envision where and when they will charge — could make a huge difference, Trancik says.
“There are various ways to incentivize the expansion of such charging infrastructures,” she says. “There’s a role for policymakers at the federal level, for example, for incentives to encourage private sector competition in this space, and demonstration sites for testing out, through public-private partnerships, the rapid expansion of the charging infrastructure.” State and local governments can also play an important part in driving innovation by businesses, she says, and a number of them have already signaled their support for vehicle electrification.
Providing easy access to alternative transportation for those high-energy days could also play a role, the study found. Vehicle companies may even find it advantageous to provide or partner with convenient rental services to help drive their electric car sales.
In their analysis of driving habits in Seattle, for example, the team found that the impact of either adding highway fast-charging stations or increasing availability of supplementary long-range vehicles for up to four days a year meant that the number of homes that could meet their driving needs with a lower cost electric vehicle increased from 10 percent to 40 percent. This number rose to above 90 percent of households when fast-charging stations, workplace charging, overnight public charging, and up to 10 days of access to supplementary vehicles were all available. Importantly, charging options at residential locations (on or off-street) is key across all of these scenarios.
The study’s findings highlight the importance of making overnight charging capabilities available to more people. While those who have their own garages or off-street parking can often already easily charge their cars at home, many people do not have that option and use public parking. “It’s really important to provide access — reliable, predictable access — to charging for people, wherever they park for longer periods of time near home, often overnight,” Trancik says.
That includes locations such as hotels as well as residential neighborhoods, she says. “I think it’s so critical to emphasize these high-impact approaches, such as figuring out ways to do that on public streets, rather than haphazardly putting a charger at the grocery store or at the mall or any other public location.” Not that those aren’t also useful, she says, but public planning should be aiming to expand accessibility to a greater part of the population. Being strategic about infrastructure expansion will continue to be important even as fast chargers fall in cost and new designs begin to allow for more rapid charging, she adds.
Being strategic in placing infrastructure where it can be most convenient and effective could make a huge difference in the wider adoption of clean vehicles, Trancik says. Courtesy of Trancik Lab
The study should help to provide some guidance to policymakers at all levels who are looking for ways to facilitate the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, since the transportation sector accounts for about a third of those emissions overall. “If you have limited funds, which you typically always do, then it’s just really important to prioritize,” Trancik says, noting that this study could indicate the areas that could provide the greatest return for those investments. The high-impact charging solutions they identify can be mixed and matched across different cities, towns, and regions, the reseachers note in their paper.
The researchers’ approach to analyzing high-resolution, real-world driving patterns is “valuable, enabling several opportunities for further research,” says Lynette Cheah, an associate professor of engineering systems and design at Singapore University of Technology and Design, who was not associated with this work. “Real-world driving data can not only guide infrastructure and policy planning, but also optimal EV charging management and vehicle purchasing and usage decisions. … This can provide greater confidence to drivers about the feasibility and operational implications of switching to EVs.”
The study was supported by the European Regional Development Fund, the Lisbon Portugal Regional Development Program, the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology, and the U.S. Department of Energy. More

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“Some say working on climate is a marathon, not a sprint, but it’s more an ultramarathon — an endurance sport if ever there was one,” said Kate Gordon, the senior climate policy advisor to Governor Gavin Newsom of California. “And look, women excel at those: We know how to dig in and get stuff done.”
Gordon’s remarks in her first-day keynote address set the tone for the ninth annual U.S. Clean Energy Education & Empowerment (C3E) Symposium and Awards, held virtually in December. The event brings together women researchers, government leaders, and entrepreneurs to share their insights and goals around moving the world to a low- and eventually carbon-free future. It also honors nine women for their outstanding leadership and accomplishments in clean energy.
The MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) hosted the event, in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the Stanford Precourt Institute for Energy, and the Texas A&M Energy Institute.
The symposium is part of the broader U.S. C3E initiative to increase women’s participation in the clean energy transition. “While women make up about half of the total U.S. labor force, they comprise less than a third of those employed in the renewable energy sector,” said Maria T. Vargas, the senior program advisor for the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy at the DOE, who leads the agency’s involvement in C3E. “This gender gap is continuing to grow as wage inequities and inadequate advancement opportunities prompt many to seek work elsewhere, depriving the energy sector of their talent, experience, and skills.”
“It’s no longer about fairness and equality, but about increasing our chances of success in making strategic decisions around climate mitigation and adaptation,” added Martha Broad, MITEI executive director, in her opening remarks. “In order to meet a net-zero carbon emissions goal within the next few decades and fundamentally change the way we produce and consume energy, it’s obvious we need to have women at the table,” she said.
An opportunity for deeper structural transformation
The two-day event took place at the tail end of a year like no other: unprecedented environmental destruction from climate change, the Covid-19 pandemic, an economic downturn. The symposium acknowledged these complex and interlinked issues, inviting its participants to consider the topic, “Accelerating the clean energy transition in a changing world.”
But for many women speaking in panel discussions and presentations, accelerating this transition was not so much a matter of reacting to a changing world as it was changing that world. Without gender equality, racial and economic justice, they made clear, the most ambitious climate mitigation and adaptation plans would sputter.
The eight U.S. C3E mid-career award winners, professionals with outstanding accomplishments and leadership abilities, spoke passionately about expanding the reach of clean energy technologies to transform lives.
Elizabeth Kaiga, recipient of the 2020 business leadership award, is an account director for Renewable Energy, DNV GL. “Energy transition and a more inclusive future are intertwined,” she said. “We must provide equitable access for underrepresented communities.” Kaiga plans to use her award to help train women living in off-grid communities in Africa to deliver electricity directly to their homes.
This year’s international leadership award winner, María Hilda Rivera, grew up in Puerto Rico without reliable electricity. Today, as energy advisor for Power Africa, she is providing electricity to poor communities in sub-Saharan Africa. “To meet the needs of these end users, we are building and growing energy markets, with minigrids and batteries delivered to homes,” she said.
Advocacy awardee Cristina Garcia, assistant director of New York City’s Building Electrification Initiative, strives to “increase inclusivity with those disproportionately excluded from the conversation about climate change,” she said. She provides internship and job opportunities in the sustainability field to Latino students. “We need all hands on deck, with gender, ethnic, and racial diversity, to generate better outcomes.”
In a panel devoted to equitable access to clean energy, speakers hammered home the importance of ensuring underserved communities’ ownership of policy, design, resource allocation, and economic benefits. “We can’t have big wins on climate without having front-line engagement,” said Shalanda H. Baker, a professor of law, public policy, and urban affairs at Northeastern University. “The energy transition is an opportunity for deeper structural transformation, by giving communities a way to change their circumstances.”
Removing barriers for future generations
The work of these women in diversity and clean energy builds on the efforts of an earlier generation, well represented at the symposium. C3E lifetime achievement award winner Bobi Garrett served as chief operating officer and deputy laboratory chief of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), and began some of the government’s earliest research into energy efficiency renewables, biomass, solar, and wind. “When I arrived, energy was not a consistent part of the national dialogue, only cropping up during a power outage or a spike in oil prices,” she recalled. “NREL went from a $200 million budget to a half-billion today.”
Garrett also helped launch and build the NREL’s Women’s Network. “I saw my most important role as championing staff and removing barriers,” she said.
Second-day keynote speaker Kristina M. Johnson, president of Ohio State University, described her accomplishments as a DOE undersecretary in the first Obama administration. She disbursed billions of dollars in stimulus money to energy and environment projects to help the nation’s recovery from the Great Recession, and she spearheaded design of the administration’s plan for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 85 percent by 2050, relative to 2005. But among her proudest ventures, she said, is helping organize C3E.
“At the Copenhagen Climate meeting in 2009, I noticed that lots of energy and environment leaders from around the world were women, and I thought it made sense for us to get together,” she recalled. As a mentor and a boss, she has “always looked for opportunities to involve women and underrepresented minorities, both because it’s the right thing to do, and because it’s a necessity for the workforce.”
Johnson counseled C3E participants to find their passions: “Be able to state your ‘why,’” she said. Her own passion is decarbonizing the electric sector. She figures the cost of doing so amounts to a trillion dollars over the course of 25 years — 0.23 percent of GDP. “The last time we invested those kinds of resources was for the interstate highway system, between 1955 and 1980, when we spent 0.46 percent of our GDP,” she said. “Are we willing to do it again?  We need to decide now.”
A sense of historic moment
Many panelists discussed the increasing urgency of addressing global warming. “Climate policy has been uneven at best, and we’ve lost valuable time, which makes it extremely important to use resources wisely,” said Jessika Trancik, an associate professor in MIT’s Institute for Data, Systems and Society.
Trancik’s career is dedicated to providing government with scientifically validated instruments, such as market stimulation or research funding, for achieving specific, measurable goals. Her computational models enable precise measurements of benefits and costs to inform better policies. “Putting quantitative targets out there will enable people to accelerate work in electric vehicles and grid-scale energy storage, among other technologies,” she said.
C3E participants shared a sense of historic moment. “It’s really exciting seeing the decreasing cost of technology like offshore wind, solar, and batteries, and watching renewables become independent of government interventions financially,” said Johanna Doyle of Reactive Technologies Limited.
Some of these new technologies were featured in the symposium’s poster competition, where winners showcased low-cost, high-efficiency solar cells, weatherproofing of city housing for energy savings, and radiation-tolerant materials for advanced nuclear reactors.
“We’re at a potential inflection point around energy choices and deployment,” said Sue Reid, principal advisor in Mission 2020, a group moving the global finance sector toward the Paris Agreement’s goals. “There’s momentum around zero emissions commitments, with financial behemoths aiming for net zero by or before 2050.” She sees the next decade offering an historic opportunity as energy systems and resource distribution change rapidly “to get to enduring, resilient viable systems that work for humanity.”
Expanding the ranks
Meeting these clean energy goals will require rapidly expanding the ranks of qualified energy professionals. “We need to keep breaking down systemic barriers to women’s advancement in these sectors, and your participation and leadership is absolutely critical for our shared success in this challenge,” Robert C. Armstrong, MITEI’s director, told symposium participants. The virtual format, a necessity during the pandemic, may actually prove a productive, ongoing tool for catalyzing the connections and mentorship that flow from such gatherings, he suggested.
One sign of the power of online communications: More than 1,100 people attended each day of this virtual symposium, almost five times the number of people who normally attend in person. One newcomer, Neil Hoffman, a retired architect, wrote the organizers: “I appreciate being able to ‘sit in’ on these events and learn about the great work women are doing in the Climate Crisis. I am inspired and reassured about my grandchildren’s future listening to you all.” More

Anyone who has ever hesitated in front of a trash bin knows the problem: It’s hard to determine what can be recycled. Consider the average potato chip bag. It’s got film plastic, metal, dyes, and food residue; it’s complicated. Today’s recycling doesn’t handle complexity well, so the typical chip bag is destined for the landfill.
Landfills take up space, of course, but there is a much more serious problem associated with them — one that was underscored for Daniel R. Cohn, currently an MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) research scientist, when he was the executive director of MITEI’s Future of Natural Gas study. That problem is greenhouse gas emissions.
“About 130 million tons of waste per year go into landfills in the U.S., and that produces at least 130 million tons of CO2-equivalent emissions,” Cohn says, noting that most of these emissions come in the form of methane, a naturally occurring gas that is much worse for the climate than carbon dioxide (CO2).
For Cohn, working on the MITEI study made it clear that the time was ripe for InEnTec — a company he co-founded — to expand its business. Spun out of MIT in 1995, InEnTec uses a process called plasma gasification to turn any kind of trash — even biological, radioactive, and other hazardous waste — into valuable chemical products and clean fuels. (The company’s name originally stood for Integrated Environmental Technologies.)
The process is more expensive than throwing trash in a landfill, however, and climate change considerations weren’t a major driver of investment 25 years ago. “Back in the early ’90s, global warming was more of an academic pursuit,” says InEnTec president, CEO, and co-founder Jeffrey E. Surma, adding that many people at the time didn’t even believe in the phenomenon.
As a result, for many years the company concentrated on providing niche services to heavy industries and governments with serious toxic waste problems. Now, however, Surma says the company is expanding with projects that include plastics recycling and low-cost distributed hydrogen fuel production — using advanced versions of their core technologies to keep waste out of landfills and greenhouse gases out of the air.
“People today understand that decarbonization of our energy and industrial system has to occur,” says Surma. Diverting one ton of municipal solid waste from landfills is equivalent — “at a minimum” — to preventing one ton of CO2 from reaching the atmosphere, he notes. “It’s very significant.”
Roots at MIT
The story of InEnTec begins at the MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC) in the early 1990s. Cohn, who was then head of the Plasma Technology Division at the PSFC, wanted to identify new ways to use technologies being developed for nuclear fusion. “Fusion is very long-term, so I wondered if we could find something that would be useful for societal benefit more near-term,” he says. “We decided to look into an environmental application.”
He teamed up with Surma, who was working on nuclear waste cleanup at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), and they obtained U.S. Department of Energy funding to build and operate an experimental waste treatment furnace facility at MIT using plasma — a superheated, highly ionized gas. Plasma is at the core of fusion research, which aims to replicate the energy-producing powers of the sun, which is essentially a ball of plasma. MIT provided the critical large-scale space and facilities support for building the plasma furnace.
After the MIT project ended, Cohn and Surma teamed up with an engineer from General Electric, Charles H. Titus, to combine the plasma technology with a joule-heating melter, a device Surma had been developing to trap hazardous wastes in molten glass. They filed for patents, and with business help from a fourth co-founder, Larry Dinkin, InEnTec was born; a facility was established in Richland, Washington, near PNNL.
InEnTec’s technology, which the team developed and tested for years before opening the company’s first commercial-scale production facility in 2008, “allows waste to come into a chamber and be exposed to extreme temperatures — a controlled bolt of lightning of over 10,000 degrees Celsius,” Surma explains. “When waste material enters that zone, it breaks down into its elements.”
Depending on the size of the unit, InEnTec processors can handle from 25 to 150 tons of waste a day — waste that might otherwise be landfilled, or even incinerated, Cohn points out. For example, in a project now under way in California, the company will produce ethanol using agricultural biomass waste that would typically have been burned and thus would have both generated CO2 and contributed to air pollution in the Central Valley, he says.
Supporting the hydrogen economy
Unlike incineration, which releases contaminants into the air, InEnTec’s process traps hazardous elements in molten glass while producing a useful feedstock fuel called synthesis gas, or “syngas,” which can be transformed into such fuels as ethanol, methanol, and hydrogen. “It’s an extremely clean process,” Surma says.
Hydrogen is a key product focus for InEnTec, which hopes to produce inexpensive, fuel cell–grade hydrogen at sites across the country — work that could support the expanded use of electric vehicles powered by hydrogen fuel cells. “We see this as an enormous opportunity,” Surma says.
While 99 percent of hydrogen today is produced from fossil fuels, InEnTec can generate hydrogen from any waste product. And its plants have a small footprint — typically one-half to two acres — allowing hydrogen to be produced almost anywhere. “You’re reducing the distance waste has to travel and converting it into a virtually zero-carbon fuel,” Surma adds, explaining that the InEnTec process itself produces no direct emissions.
Already InEnTec has built a plant in Oregon that will make fuel cell-grade hydrogen for the Northwest market from waste material and biomass. The plant has the potential to make 1,500 kilograms of hydrogen a day, roughly enough to fuel 2,500 cars for the average daily commute.
“We can generate hydrogen at very low cost, which is what’s needed to compete with gasoline,” Surma says.
Recycling plastic
Another initiative at InEnTec zeroes in on plastics recycling, which faces the kind of complexity illustrated by the chip bag. Different grades of plastic have different chemical compositions and cannot simply be melted down together to make new plastic — which is why less than 10 percent of plastic waste in the United States today is recycled, Cohn says.
InEnTec solves this problem with what it calls “molecular recycling.” “We’ve partnered with chemical companies pursuing plastic circularity [making new plastics from old plastics], because our technology allows us to get back to molecules, the virgin form of plastics,” Surma explains.
Recently, InEnTec teamed up with a major car-shredding company to process its plastic waste. “We can recycle the materials back into molecules that can be feedstock for new dashboards, seats, et cetera,” Surma says, noting that 40-45 percent of the material in the waste generated from recycling vehicles today is plastic. “We think this will be a very significant part of our business going forward.”
InEnTec’s technology is also being used to recycle plastic for environmental cleanup. Notably, a small unit is being deployed on a boat to process ocean plastics. That project will likely require subsidies, Surma concedes, since InEnTec’s business model depends on waste disposal payments. However, it illustrates the range of projects InEnTec can address, and it shows that — in both large and small ways — InEnTec is keeping waste out of landfills.
“We initially put a lot of effort into medical and hazardous waste because we got more money for disposing of those,” says Cohn, but he emphasizes that the team has always had broader ambitions. “We’re just arriving now at the point of getting more customers who believe that an environmentally superior product has more value. It’s taken a long time to get to this point.”
This article appears in the Autumn 2020 issue of Energy Futures. More