Most people only think about the systems that power their cities when something goes wrong. Unfortunately, many people in the San Francisco Bay Area had a lot to think about recently when their utility company began scheduled power outages in an attempt to prevent wildfires. The decision came after devastating fires last year were found […] More
Materials called perovskites show strong potential for a new generation of solar cells, but they’ve had trouble gaining traction in a market dominated by silicon-based solar cells. Now, a study by researchers at MIT and elsewhere outlines a roadmap for how this promising technology could move from the laboratory to a significant place in the […] More
Most efforts to reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions have focused on the transportation and residential sectors. Little attention has been paid to industrial manufacturing, even though it consumes more energy than either of those sectors and emits high levels of CO2 in the process. To help address that situation, Assistant Professor Karthish Manthiram, postdoc Kyoungsuk Jin, […] More
New research by engineers at MIT and elsewhere could lead to batteries that can pack more power per pound and last longer, based on the long-sought goal of using pure lithium metal as one of the battery’s two electrodes, the anode. The new electrode concept comes from the laboratory of Ju Li, the Battelle […] More
Before Fikile Brushett wanted to be an engineer, he wanted to be a soccer player. Today, however, Brushett is the Cecil and Ida Green Career Development Associate Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering. Building 66 might not look much like a soccer field, but Brushett says the sport taught him a fundamental lesson that […] More
Costs of solar panels have plummeted over the last several years, leading to rates of solar installations far greater than most analysts had expected. But with most of the potential areas for cost savings already pushed to the extreme, further cost reductions are becoming more challenging to find. Now, researchers at MIT and at the […] More
Much of the conversation around energy sustainability is dominated by clean-energy technologies like wind, solar, and thermal. However, with roughly 80 percent of energy use in the United States coming from fossil fuels, combustion remains the dominant method of energy conversion for power generation, electricity, and transportation. “People think of combustion as a dirty technology, […] More
Five-hundred-year floods. Persistent droughts and heat waves. More devastating wildfires. As these and other planetary perils become more commonplace, they pose serious risks to natural, managed, and built environments around the world. Assessing the magnitude of these risks over multiple decades and identifying strategies to prepare for them at local, regional, and national scales will […] More
