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    Bringing the environment to the forefront of engineering

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    In a recent podcast interview with MIT President Sally Kornbluth, Associate Professor Desirée Plata described her childhood pastime of roaming the backyards and businesses of her grandmother’s hometown of Gray, Maine. Through her wanderings, Plata noticed a disturbing pattern.

    “I was 7 or 8 when I caught wind of all the illness,” Plata recalls. “It seemed like in every other house there was somebody who had a neurological disorder or a cancer of some sort.”

    While driving home one night with her mom, Plata made her first environmental hypothesis from the back seat. “I told my mom, ‘I think there’s something in the water or air where these people live.’”

    The conversation happened in the late 1980s. Plata was a little older when she learned her intuition was correct: The Environmental Protection Agency determined that a waste disposal facility had contaminated drinking water in the area while processing more than 1 million gallons of waste between 1965 and 1978.

    “There was a New York Times article on it, but it was sort of buried in a Sunday paper and a lot of folks up in Maine didn’t hear about it,” Plata says.

    What most struck Plata was that Gray was a tight-knit community, and the people who owned the waste disposal facility were friends with everybody. Eventually, some of the owner’s children even got sick.

    “People don’t poison their neighbors on purpose,” Plata says. “A lot of industrial contamination happens either by accident or because the engineers don’t know better. As an environmental scientist and engineer, it’s part of my job to help industrial engineers of any variety design their systems and processes such that they are thinking about what’s going into the environment from the start.”

    The insight led Plata to MIT, first as a PhD student, then as a visiting professor, and today as the newly tenured associate professor of civil and environmental engineering.

    These days Plata’s work is a bit more complex than her early backseat musings. In fact, her efforts extend far beyond research and include mentoring students, entrepreneurship, coalition-building, and coordination across industry, academia, and government. But the work can still be traced back to the childhood insight that environmental optimization needs to be a more tangible and important part of everyone’s thinking.

    “People think sustainability is this nebulous thing they can’t get their hands around,” Plata says. “But there are actually a set of rigorous principles you can use, and each one of those has a metric or a thing you can measure to go with it. MIT is such an innovative place. If we can incorporate environmental objectives into design at a place like MIT, the hope is the world can engage as well.”

    Taking the plunge

    Plata was first introduced to environmental research in high school, but it wasn’t until she attended Union College and got to work in a research lab that she knew it was what she’d do for the rest of her life.

    After graduating from Union, Plata decided to skip a master’s degree and “take the plunge” into the MIT-Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) joint doctoral program.

    “Talk about drinking from a firehose,” Plata says. “Everybody you bump into knows something that can help you solve the very hard problem you’re working on.”

    Plata began the program studying oil spills, and a paper she co-authored helped spur a law that changed the way oil is transported off the coast of Massachusetts. But developments in her personal life made her want to prevent environmental disasters before they happen.

    In her last year at Union, Plata’s aunt was diagnosed with breast cancer — a disease that’s been linked to one of the chemicals dumped in Gray, Maine. While Plata was at MIT, her aunt was receiving treatment at Massachusetts General Hospital down the road, so Plata would work at the lab at night, stay with her aunt during treatments all day, and go home with her on the weekends.

    “As I’m sampling oil, I’m recognizing that nothing I’m doing is going to help women like her escape the illness,” Plata recalls.

    In her third year of the MIT-WHOI program, Plata shifted her research to explore how industrial emissions generated during the creation of materials known as carbon nanotubes could inform how those valuable new materials were forming. The work led to a dramatically more sustainable way to make the materials, which are needed for important environmental applications themselves.

    After earning her PhD, Plata served as a visiting professor at MIT for two years before working in faculty positions at Duke University and Yale University, where she studied green chemistry and green optimization. She returned to MIT as an assistant professor in civil and environmental engineering in 2018.

    Working beyond academia

    While at Yale, Plata started a company, Nth Cycle, which uses electric currents to extract critical minerals like cobalt and nickel from lithium-ion batteries and other electronic waste. The company began commercial production last year.

    Plata also works extensively with government and industry, serving on a Massachusetts committee that published a roadmap to decarbonizing the state by 2050 and advising companies both formally and informally. (She estimates she gets a call every two weeks from a new company working on a sustainability problem.)

    “It’s undeniable that industry has an enormous impact on the environment,” Plata says. “Some like to think the government can wave a magic wand and make some regulation and we won’t be in this situation, but that’s not the case. There are technical challenges that need to be solved and businesses play an incredibly important role as agents of change.”

    Plata’s research at MIT, meanwhile, is focused increasingly on methane. Last year she helped create the MIT Methane Network, which she directs.

    Plata’s research has explored ways to convert methane into less harmful carbon dioxide and other fuels in places like dairy farms and coal plants. This past summer she took a team of students to dairy barns to conduct field tests.

    “If you could take methane from coal mining out of the air globally, it’s equivalent to taking all of the combustion engine vehicles off the road, even accounting for the small generation of CO2 that we have [as the result of our process],” Plata says. “If you can fix the problem at dairy farms, it’s like all the combustion engine vehicle emissions times three. It’s a hugely impactful number.”

    Taking action

    When Plata was in fourth grade, her teacher had students pick up trash around a nearby bay. She’s since done the exercise with other fourth graders.

    “You ask them what they think they’ll find, and they say, ‘Nothing. I didn’t see any trash on the way to school today,’ but when you ask them to look, everybody fills their bag by the end of the trip, and you start to realize how much fugitive emissions of waste exists, and then you start to start thinking about all of the chemical contamination that you can’t see,” Plata says.

    One of Plata’s chief research goals can be summed up with that exercise: getting people to appreciate the importance of environmental criteria and motivating them to take action.

    “Today, I see people looking for these silver bullet solutions to solve environmental problems,” Plata says. “That’s not how we got into this mess, and it’s not how we’re going to get out of it. The problem is really distributed, so what we really need is the sum of a lot of small actions to change the system.” More

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      Explained: The 1.5 C climate benchmark

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      The summer of 2023 has been a season of weather extremes.

      In June, uncontrolled wildfires ripped through parts of Canada, sending smoke into the U.S. and setting off air quality alerts in dozens of downwind states. In July, the world set the hottest global temperature on record, which it held for three days in a row, then broke again on day four.

      From July into August, unrelenting heat blanketed large parts of Europe, Asia, and the U.S., while India faced a torrential monsoon season, and heavy rains flooded regions in the northeastern U.S. And most recently, whipped up by high winds and dry vegetation, a historic wildfire tore through Maui, devastating an entire town.

      These extreme weather events are mainly a consequence of climate change driven by humans’ continued burning of coal, oil, and natural gas. Climate scientists agree that extreme weather such as what people experienced this summer will likely grow more frequent and intense in the coming years unless something is done, on a persistent and planet-wide scale, to rein in global temperatures.

      Just how much reining-in are they talking about? The number that is internationally agreed upon is 1.5 degrees Celsius. To prevent worsening and potentially irreversible effects of climate change, the world’s average temperature should not exceed that of preindustrial times by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).

      As more regions around the world face extreme weather, it’s worth taking stock of the 1.5-degree bar, where the planet stands in relation to this threshold, and what can be done at the global, regional, and personal level, to “keep 1.5 alive.”

      Why 1.5 C?

      In 2015, in response to the growing urgency of climate impacts, nearly every country in the world signed onto the Paris Agreement, a landmark international treaty under which 195 nations pledged to hold the Earth’s temperature to “well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels,” and going further, aim to “limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.”

      The treaty did not define a particular preindustrial period, though scientists generally consider the years from 1850 to 1900 to be a reliable reference; this time predates humans’ use of fossil fuels and is also the earliest period when global observations of land and sea temperatures are available. During this period, the average global temperature, while swinging up and down in certain years, generally hovered around 13.5 degrees Celsius, or 56.3 degrees Fahrenheit.

      The treaty was informed by a fact-finding report which concluded that, even global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius above the preindustrial average, over an extended, decades-long period, would lead to high risks for “some regions and vulnerable ecosystems.” The recommendation then, was to set the 1.5 degrees Celsius limit as a “defense line” — if the world can keep below this line, it potentially could avoid the more extreme and irreversible climate effects that would occur with a 2 degrees Celsius increase, and for some places, an even smaller increase than that.

      But, as many regions are experiencing today, keeping below the 1.5 line is no guarantee of avoiding extreme, global warming effects.

      “There is nothing magical about the 1.5 number, other than that is an agreed aspirational target. Keeping at 1.4 is better than 1.5, and 1.3 is better than 1.4, and so on,” says Sergey Paltsev, deputy director of MIT’s Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change. “The science does not tell us that if, for example, the temperature increase is 1.51 degrees Celsius, then it would definitely be the end of the world. Similarly, if the temperature would stay at 1.49 degrees increase, it does not mean that we will eliminate all impacts of climate change. What is known: The lower the target for an increase in temperature, the lower the risks of climate impacts.”

      How close are we to 1.5 C?

      In 2022, the average global temperature was about 1.15 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. According to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the cyclical weather phenomenon La Niña recently contributed to temporarily cooling and dampening the effects of human-induced climate change. La Niña lasted for three years and ended around March of 2023.

      In May, the WMO issued a report that projected a significant likelihood (66 percent) that the world would exceed the 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold in the next four years. This breach would likely be driven by human-induced climate change, combined with a warming El Niño — a cyclical weather phenomenon that temporarily heats up ocean regions and pushes global temperatures higher.

      This summer, an El Niño is currently underway, and the event typically raises global temperatures in the year after it sets in, which in this case would be in 2024. The WMO predicts that, for each of the next four years, the global average temperature is likely to swing between 1.1 and 1.8 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels.

      Though there is a good chance the world will get hotter than the 1.5-degree limit as the result of El Niño, the breach would be temporary, and for now, would not have failed the Paris Agreement, which aims to keep global temperatures below the 1.5-degree limit over the long term (averaged over several decades rather than a single year).

      “But we should not forget that this is a global average, and there are variations regionally and seasonally,” says Elfatih Eltahir, the H.M. King Bhumibol Professor and Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at MIT. “This year, we had extreme conditions around the world, even though we haven’t reached the 1.5 C threshold. So, even if we control the average at a global magnitude, we are going to see events that are extreme, because of climate change.”

      More than a number

      To hold the planet’s long-term average temperature to below the 1.5-degree threshold, the world will have to reach net zero emissions by the year 2050, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This means that, in terms of the emissions released by the burning of coal, oil, and natural gas, the entire world will have to remove as much as it puts into the atmosphere.

      “In terms of innovations, we need all of them — even those that may seem quite exotic at this point: fusion, direct air capture, and others,” Paltsev says.

      The task of curbing emissions in time is particularly daunting for the United States, which generates the most carbon dioxide emissions of any other country in the world.

      “The U.S.’s burning of fossil fuels and consumption of energy is just way above the rest of the world. That’s a persistent problem,” Eltahir says. “And the national statistics are an aggregate of what a lot of individuals are doing.”

      At an individual level, there are things that can be done to help bring down one’s personal emissions, and potentially chip away at rising global temperatures.

      “We are consumers of products that either embody greenhouse gases, such as meat, clothes, computers, and homes, or we are directly responsible for emitting greenhouse gases, such as when we use cars, airplanes, electricity, and air conditioners,” Paltsev says. “Our everyday choices affect the amount of emissions that are added to the atmosphere.”

      But to compel people to change their emissions, it may be less about a number, and more about a feeling.

      “To get people to act, my hypothesis is, you need to reach them not just by convincing them to be good citizens and saying it’s good for the world to keep below 1.5 degrees, but showing how they individually will be impacted,” says Eltahir, who specializes on the study of regional climates, focusing on how climate change impacts the water cycle and frequency of extreme weather such as heat waves.

      “True climate progress requires a dramatic change in how the human system gets its energy,” Paltsev says. “It is a huge undertaking. Are you ready personally to make sacrifices and to change the way of your life? If one gets an honest answer to that question, it would help to understand why true climate progress is so difficult to achieve.” More

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      in Environment

      How forests can cut carbon, restore ecosystems, and create jobs

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      To limit the frequency and severity of droughts, wildfires, flooding, and other adverse consequences of climate change, nearly 200 countries committed to the Paris Agreement’s long-term goal of keeping global warming well below 2 degrees Celsius. According to the latest United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Report, achieving that goal will require both large-scale greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction and removal of GHGs from the atmosphere.

      At present, the most efficient and scalable GHG-removal strategy is the massive planting of trees through reforestation or afforestation — a “natural climate solution” (NCS) that extracts atmospheric carbon dioxide through photosynthesis and soil carbon sequestration.

      Despite the potential of forestry-based NCS projects to address climate change, biodiversity loss, unemployment, and other societal needs — and their appeal to policymakers, funders, and citizens — they have yet to achieve critical mass, and often underperform due to a mix of interacting ecological, social, and financial constraints. To better understand these challenges and identify opportunities to overcome them, a team of researchers at Imperial College London and the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change recently studied how environmental scientists, local stakeholders, and project funders perceive the risks and benefits of NCS projects, and how these perceptions impact project goals and performance. To that end, they surveyed and consulted with dozens of recognized experts and organizations spanning the fields of ecology, finance, climate policy, and social science.

      The team’s analysis, which appears in the journal Frontiers in Climate, found two main factors that have hindered the success of forestry-based NCS projects.

      First, the ambition — levels of carbon removal, ecosystem restoration, job creation, and other environmental and social targets — of selected NCS projects is limited by funders’ perceptions of their overall risk. Among other things, funders aim to minimize operational risk (e.g., Will newly planted trees survive and grow?), political risk (e.g., Just how secure is their access to the land where trees will be planted?); and reputational risk (e.g., Will the project be perceived as an exercise in “greenwashing,” or fall way short of its promised environmental and social benefits?). Funders seeking a financial return on their initial investment are also concerned about the dependability of complex monitoring, reporting, and verification methods used to quantify atmospheric carbon removal, biodiversity gains, and other metrics of project performance.

      Second, the environmental and social benefits of NCS projects are unlikely to be realized unless the local communities impacted by these projects are granted ownership over their implementation and outcomes. But while engaging with local communities is critical to project performance, it can be challenging both legally and financially to set up incentives (e.g., payment and other forms of compensation) to mobilize such engagement.

      “Many carbon offset projects raise legitimate concerns about their effectiveness,” says study lead author Bonnie Waring, a senior lecturer at the Grantham Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, Imperial College London. “However, if nature climate solution projects are done properly, they can help with sustainable development and empower local communities.”

      Drawing on surveys and consultations with NCS experts, stakeholders, and funders, the research team highlighted several recommendations on how to overcome key challenges faced by forestry-based NCS projects and boost their environmental and social performance.

      These recommendations include encouraging funders to evaluate projects based on robust internal governance, support from regional and national governments, secure land tenure, material benefits for local communities, and full participation of community members from across a spectrum of socioeconomic groups; improving the credibility and verifiability of project emissions reductions and related co-benefits; and maintaining an open dialogue and shared costs and benefits among those who fund, implement, and benefit from these projects.

      “Addressing climate change requires approaches that include emissions mitigation from economic activities paired with greenhouse gas reductions by natural ecosystems,” says Sergey Paltsev, a co-author of the study and deputy director of the MIT Joint Program. “Guided by these recommendations, we advocate for a proper scaling-up of NCS activities from project levels to help assure integrity of emissions reductions across entire countries.” More

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      in Environment

      Study: The ocean’s color is changing as a consequence of climate change

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      The ocean’s color has changed significantly over the last 20 years, and the global trend is likely a consequence of human-induced climate change, report scientists at MIT, the National Oceanography Center in the U.K., and elsewhere.  

      In a study appearing today in Nature, the team writes that they have detected changes in ocean color over the past two decades that cannot be explained by natural, year-to-year variability alone. These color shifts, though subtle to the human eye, have occurred over 56 percent of the world’s oceans — an expanse that is larger than the total land area on Earth.

      In particular, the researchers found that tropical ocean regions near the equator have become steadily greener over time. The shift in ocean color indicates that ecosystems within the surface ocean must also be changing, as the color of the ocean is a literal reflection of the organisms and materials in its waters.

      At this point, the researchers cannot say how exactly marine ecosystems are changing to reflect the shifting color. But they are pretty sure of one thing: Human-induced climate change is likely the driver.

      “I’ve been running simulations that have been telling me for years that these changes in ocean color are going to happen,” says study co-author Stephanie Dutkiewicz, senior research scientist in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences and the Center for Global Change Science. “To actually see it happening for real is not surprising, but frightening. And these changes are consistent with man-induced changes to our climate.”

      “This gives additional evidence of how human activities are affecting life on Earth over a huge spatial extent,” adds lead author B. B. Cael PhD ’19 of the National Oceanography Center in Southampton, U.K. “It’s another way that humans are affecting the biosphere.”

      The study’s co-authors also include Stephanie Henson of the National Oceanography Center, Kelsey Bisson at Oregon State University, and Emmanuel Boss of the University of Maine.

      Above the noise

      The ocean’s color is a visual product of whatever lies within its upper layers. Generally, waters that are deep blue reflect very little life, whereas greener waters indicate the presence of ecosystems, and mainly phytoplankton — plant-like microbes that are abundant in upper ocean and that contain the green pigment chlorophyll. The pigment helps plankton harvest sunlight, which they use to capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and convert it into sugars.

      Phytoplankton are the foundation of the marine food web that sustains progressively more complex organisms, on up to krill, fish, and seabirds and marine mammals. Phytoplankton are also a powerful muscle in the ocean’s ability to capture and store carbon dioxide. Scientists are therefore keen to monitor phytoplankton across the surface oceans and to see how these essential communities might respond to climate change. To do so, scientists have tracked changes in chlorophyll, based on the ratio of how much blue versus green light is reflected from the ocean surface, which can be monitored from space

      But around a decade ago, Henson, who is a co-author of the current study, published a paper with others, which showed that, if scientists were tracking chlorophyll alone, it would take at least 30 years of continuous monitoring to detect any trend that was driven specifically by climate change. The reason, the team argued, was that the large, natural variations in chlorophyll from year to year would overwhelm any anthropogenic influence on chlorophyll concentrations. It would therefore take several decades to pick out a meaningful, climate-change-driven signal amid the normal noise.

      In 2019, Dutkiewicz and her colleagues published a separate paper, showing through a new model that the natural variation in other ocean colors is much smaller compared to that of chlorophyll. Therefore, any signal of climate-change-driven changes should be easier to detect over the smaller, normal variations of other ocean colors. They predicted that such changes should be apparent within 20, rather than 30 years of monitoring.

      “So I thought, doesn’t it make sense to look for a trend in all these other colors, rather than in chlorophyll alone?” Cael says. “It’s worth looking at the whole spectrum, rather than just trying to estimate one number from bits of the spectrum.”

       The power of seven

      In the current study, Cael and the team analyzed measurements of ocean color taken by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard the Aqua satellite, which has been monitoring ocean color for 21 years. MODIS takes measurements in seven visible wavelengths, including the two colors researchers traditionally use to estimate chlorophyll.

      The differences in color that the satellite picks up are too subtle for human eyes to differentiate. Much of the ocean appears blue to our eye, whereas the true color may contain a mix of subtler wavelengths, from blue to green and even red.

      Cael carried out a statistical analysis using all seven ocean colors measured by the satellite from 2002 to 2022 together. He first looked at how much the seven colors changed from region to region during a given year, which gave him an idea of their natural variations. He then zoomed out to see how these annual variations in ocean color changed over a longer stretch of two decades. This analysis turned up a clear trend, above the normal year-to-year variability.

      To see whether this trend is related to climate change, he then looked to Dutkiewicz’s model from 2019. This model simulated the Earth’s oceans under two scenarios: one with the addition of greenhouse gases, and the other without it. The greenhouse-gas model predicted that a significant trend should show up within 20 years and that this trend should cause changes to ocean color in about 50 percent of the world’s surface oceans — almost exactly what Cael found in his analysis of real-world satellite data.

      “This suggests that the trends we observe are not a random variation in the Earth system,” Cael says. “This is consistent with anthropogenic climate change.”

      The team’s results show that monitoring ocean colors beyond chlorophyll could give scientists a clearer, faster way to detect climate-change-driven changes to marine ecosystems.

      “The color of the oceans has changed,” Dutkiewicz says. “And we can’t say how. But we can say that changes in color reflect changes in plankton communities, that will impact everything that feeds on plankton. It will also change how much the ocean will take up carbon, because different types of plankton have different abilities to do that. So, we hope people take this seriously. It’s not only models that are predicting these changes will happen. We can now see it happening, and the ocean is changing.”

      This research was supported, in part, by NASA. More

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      in Environment

      Q&A: Are far-reaching fires the new normal?

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      Where there’s smoke, there is fire. But with climate change, larger and longer-burning wildfires are sending smoke farther from their source, often to places that are unaccustomed to the exposure. That’s been the case this week, as smoke continues to drift south from massive wildfires in Canada, prompting warnings of hazardous air quality, and poor visibility in states across New England, the mid-Atlantic, and the Midwest.

      As wildfire season is just getting going, many may be wondering: Are the air-polluting effects of wildfires a new normal?

      MIT News spoke with Professor Colette Heald of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, and Professor Noelle Selin of the Institute for Data, Systems and Society and the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. Heald specializes in atmospheric chemistry and has studied the climate and health effects associated with recent wildfires, while Selin works with atmospheric models to track air pollutants around the world, which she uses to inform policy decisions on mitigating  pollution and climate change. The researchers shared some of their insights on the immediate impacts of Canada’s current wildfires and what downwind regions may expect in the coming months, as the wildfire season stretches into summer.  

      Q: What role has climate change and human activity played in the wildfires we’ve seen so far this year?

      Heald: Unusually warm and dry conditions have dramatically increased fire susceptibility in Canada this year. Human-induced climate change makes such dry and warm conditions more likely. Smoke from fires in Alberta and Nova Scotia in May, and Quebec in early June, has led to some of the worst air quality conditions measured locally in Canada. This same smoke has been transported into the United States and degraded air quality here as well. Local officials have determined that ignitions have been associated with lightning strikes, but human activity has also played a role igniting some of the fires in Alberta.

      Q: What can we expect for the coming months in terms of the pattern of wildfires and their associated air pollution across the United States?

      Heald: The Government of Canada is projecting higher-than-normal fire activity throughout the 2023 fire season. Fire susceptibility will continue to respond to changing weather conditions, and whether the U.S. is impacted will depend on the winds and how air is transported across those regions. So far, the fire season in the United States has been below average, but fire risk is expected to increase modestly through the summer, so we may see local smoke influences as well.

      Q: How has air pollution from wildfires affected human health in the U.S. this year so far?

      Selin: The pollutant of most concern in wildfire smoke is fine particulate matter (PM2.5) – fine particles in the atmosphere that can be inhaled deep into the lungs, causing health damages. Exposure to PM2.5 causes respiratory and cardiovascular damage, including heart attacks and premature deaths. It can also cause symptoms like coughing and difficulty breathing. In New England this week, people have been breathing much higher concentrations of PM2.5 than usual. People who are particularly vulnerable to the effects are likely experiencing more severe impacts, such as older people and people with underlying conditions. But PM2.5 affects everyone. While the number and impact of wildfires varies from year to year, the associated air pollution from them generally lead to tens of thousands of premature deaths in the U.S. overall annually. There is also some evidence that PM2.5 from fires could be particularly damaging to health.

      While we in New England usually have relatively lower levels of pollution, it’s important also to note that some cities around the globe experience very high PM2.5 on a regular basis, not only from wildfires, but other sources such as power plants and industry. So, while we’re feeling the effects over the past few days, we should remember the broader importance of reducing PM2.5 levels overall for human health everywhere.

      Q: While firefighters battle fires directly this wildfire season, what can we do to reduce the effects of associated air pollution? And what can we do in the long-term, to prevent or reduce wildfire impacts?

      Selin: In the short term, protecting yourself from the impacts of PM2.5 is important. Limiting time outdoors, avoiding outdoor exercise, and wearing a high-quality mask are some strategies that can minimize exposure. Air filters can help reduce the concentrations of particles in indoor air. Taking measures to avoid exposure is particularly important for vulnerable groups. It’s also important to note that these strategies aren’t equally possible for everyone (for example, people who work outside) — stressing the importance of developing new strategies to address the underlying causes of increasing wildfires.

      Over the long term, mitigating climate change is important — because warm and dry conditions lead to wildfires, warming increases fire risk. Preventing the fires that are ignited by people or human activities can help.  Another way that damages can be mitigated in the longer term is by exploring land management strategies that could help manage fire intensity. More

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      in Energy

      A breakthrough on “loss and damage,” but also disappointment, at UN climate conference

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      As the 2022 United Nations climate change conference, known as COP27, stretched into its final hours on Saturday, Nov. 19, it was uncertain what kind of agreement might emerge from two weeks of intensive international negotiations.

      In the end, COP27 produced mixed results: on the one hand, a historic agreement for wealthy countries to compensate low-income countries for “loss and damage,” but on the other, limited progress on new plans for reducing the greenhouse gas emissions that are warming the planet.

      “We need to drastically reduce emissions now — and this is an issue this COP did not address,” said U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres in a statement at the conclusion of COP27. “A fund for loss and damage is essential — but it’s not an answer if the climate crisis washes a small island state off the map — or turns an entire African country to desert.”

      Throughout the two weeks of the conference, a delegation of MIT students, faculty, and staff was at the Sharm El-Sheikh International Convention Center to observe the negotiations, conduct and share research, participate in panel discussions, and forge new connections with researchers, policymakers, and advocates from around the world.

      Loss and damage

      A key issue coming in to COP27 (COP stands for “conference of the parties” to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, held for the 27th time) was loss and damage: a term used by the U.N. to refer to harms caused by climate change — either through acute catastrophes like extreme weather events or slower-moving impacts like sea level rise — to which communities and countries are unable to adapt. 

      Ultimately, a deal on loss and damage proved to be COP27’s most prominent accomplishment. Negotiators reached an eleventh-hour agreement to “establish new funding arrangements for assisting developing countries that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change.” 

      “Providing financial assistance to developing countries so they can better respond to climate-related loss and damage is not only a moral issue, but also a pragmatic one,” said Michael Mehling, deputy director of the MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, who attended COP27 and participated in side events. “Future emissions growth will be squarely centered in the developing world, and offering support through different channels is key to building the trust needed for more robust global cooperation on mitigation.”

      Youssef Shaker, a graduate student in the MIT Technology and Policy Program and a research assistant with the MIT Energy Initiative, attended the second week of the conference, where he followed the negotiations over loss and damage closely. 

      “While the creation of a fund is certainly an achievement,” Shaker said, “significant questions remain to be answered, such as the size of the funding available as well as which countries receive access to it.” A loss-and-damage fund that is not adequately funded, Shaker noted, “would not be an impactful outcome.” 

      The agreement on loss and damage created a new committee, made up of 24 country representatives, to “operationalize” the new funding arrangements, including identifying funding sources. The committee is tasked with delivering a set of recommendations at COP28, which will take place next year in Dubai.

      Advising the U.N. on net zero

      Though the decisions reached at COP27 did not include major new commitments on reducing emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels, the transition to a clean global energy system was nevertheless a key topic of conversation throughout the conference.

      The Council of Engineers for the Energy Transition (CEET), an independent, international body of engineers and energy systems experts formed to provide advice to the U.N. on achieving net-zero emissions globally by 2050, convened for the first time at COP27. Jessika Trancik, a professor in the MIT Institute for Data, Systems, and Society and a member of CEET, spoke on a U.N.-sponsored panel on solutions for the transition to clean energy.

      Trancik noted that the energy transition will look different in different regions of the world. “As engineers, we need to understand those local contexts and design solutions around those local contexts — that’s absolutely essential to support a rapid and equitable energy transition.”

      At the same time, Trancik noted that there is now a set of “low-cost, ready-to-scale tools” available to every region — tools that resulted from a globally competitive process of innovation, stimulated by public policies in different countries, that dramatically drove down the costs of technologies like solar energy and lithium-ion batteries. The key, Trancik said, is for regional transition strategies to “tap into global processes of innovation.”

      Reinventing climate adaptation

      Elfatih Eltahir, the H. M. King Bhumibol Professor of Hydrology and Climate, traveled to COP27 to present plans for the Jameel Observatory Climate Resilience Early Warning System (CREWSnet), one of the five projects selected in April 2022 as a flagship in MIT’s Climate Grand Challenges initiative. CREWSnet focuses on climate adaptation, the term for adapting to climate impacts that are unavoidable.

      The aim of CREWSnet, Eltahir told the audience during a panel discussion, is “nothing short of reinventing the process of climate change adaptation,” so that it is proactive rather than reactive; community-led; data-driven and evidence-based; and so that it integrates different climate risks, from heat waves to sea level rise, rather than treating them individually.

      “However, it’s easy to talk about these changes,” said Eltahir. “The real challenge, which we are now just launching and engaging in, is to demonstrate that on the ground.” Eltahir said that early demonstrations will happen in a couple of key locations, including southwest Bangladesh, where multiple climate risks — rising sea levels, increasing soil salinity, and intensifying heat waves and cyclones — are combining to threaten the area’s agricultural production.

      Building on COP26

      Some members of MIT’s delegation attended COP27 to advance efforts that had been formally announced at last year’s U.N. climate conference, COP26, in Glasgow, Scotland.

      At an official U.N. side event co-organized by MIT on Nov. 11, Greg Sixt, the director of the Food and Climate Systems Transformation (FACT) Alliance led by the Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab, provided an update on the alliance’s work since its launch at COP26.

      Food systems are a major source of greenhouse gas emissions — and are increasingly vulnerable to climate impacts. The FACT Alliance works to better connect researchers to farmers, food businesses, policymakers, and other food systems stakeholders to make food systems (which include food production, consumption, and waste) more sustainable and resilient. 

      Sixt told the audience that the FACT Alliance now counts over 20 research and stakeholder institutions around the world among its members, but also collaborates with other institutions in an “open network model” to advance work in key areas — such as a new research project exploring how climate scenarios could affect global food supply chains.

      Marcela Angel, research program director for the Environmental Solutions Initiative (ESI), helped convene a meeting at COP27 of the Afro-InterAmerican Forum on Climate Change, which also launched at COP26. The forum works with Afro-descendant leaders across the Americas to address significant environmental issues, including climate risks and biodiversity loss. 

      At the event — convened with the Colombian government and the nonprofit Conservation International — ESI brought together leaders from six countries in the Americas and presented recent work that estimates that there are over 178 million individuals who identify as Afro-descendant living in the Americas, in lands of global environmental importance. 

      “There is a significant overlap between biodiversity hot spots, protected areas, and areas of high Afro-descendant presence,” said Angel. “But the role and climate contributions of these communities is understudied, and often made invisible.”    

      Limiting methane emissions

      Methane is a short-lived but potent greenhouse gas: When released into the atmosphere, it immediately traps about 120 times more heat than carbon dioxide does. More than 150 countries have now signed the Global Methane Pledge, launched at COP26, which aims to reduce methane emissions by at least 30 percent by 2030 compared to 2020 levels.

      Sergey Paltsev, the deputy director of the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change and a senior research scientist at the MIT Energy Initiative, gave the keynote address at a Nov. 17 event on methane, where he noted the importance of methane reductions from the oil and gas sector to meeting the 2030 goal.

      “The oil and gas sector is where methane emissions reductions could be achieved the fastest,” said Paltsev. “We also need to employ an integrated approach to address methane emissions in all sectors and all regions of the world because methane emissions reductions provide a near-term pathway to avoiding dangerous tipping points in the global climate system.”

      “Keep fighting relentlessly”

      Arina Khotimsky, a senior majoring in materials science and engineering and a co-president of the MIT Energy and Climate Club, attended the first week of COP27. She reflected on the experience in a social media post after returning home. 

      “COP will always have its haters. Is there greenwashing? Of course! Is everyone who should have a say in this process in the room? Not even close,” wrote Khotimsky. “So what does it take for COP to matter? It takes everyone who attended to not only put ‘climate’ on front-page news for two weeks, but to return home and keep fighting relentlessly against climate change. I know that I will.” More

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      in Environment

      Earth can regulate its own temperature over millennia, new study finds

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      The Earth’s climate has undergone some big changes, from global volcanism to planet-cooling ice ages and dramatic shifts in solar radiation. And yet life, for the last 3.7 billion years, has kept on beating.

      Now, a study by MIT researchers in Science Advances confirms that the planet harbors a “stabilizing feedback” mechanism that acts over hundreds of thousands of years to pull the climate back from the brink, keeping global temperatures within a steady, habitable range.

      Just how does it accomplish this? A likely mechanism is “silicate weathering” — a geological process by which the slow and steady weathering of silicate rocks involves chemical reactions that ultimately draw carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and into ocean sediments, trapping the gas in rocks.

      Scientists have long suspected that silicate weathering plays a major role in regulating the Earth’s carbon cycle. The mechanism of silicate weathering could provide a geologically constant force in keeping carbon dioxide — and global temperatures — in check. But there’s never been direct evidence for the continual operation of such a feedback, until now.

      The new findings are based on a study of paleoclimate data that record changes in average global temperatures over the last 66 million years. The MIT team applied a mathematical analysis to see whether the data revealed any patterns characteristic of stabilizing phenomena that reined in global temperatures on a  geologic timescale.

      They found that indeed there appears to be a consistent pattern in which the Earth’s temperature swings are dampened over timescales of hundreds of thousands of years. The duration of this effect is similar to the timescales over which silicate weathering is predicted to act.

      The results are the first to use actual data to confirm the existence of a stabilizing feedback, the mechanism of which is likely silicate weathering. This stabilizing feedback would explain how the Earth has remained habitable through dramatic climate events in the geologic past.

      “On the one hand, it’s good because we know that today’s global warming will eventually be canceled out through this stabilizing feedback,” says Constantin Arnscheidt, a graduate student in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS). “But on the other hand, it will take hundreds of thousands of years to happen, so not fast enough to solve our present-day issues.”

      The study is co-authored by Arnscheidt and Daniel Rothman, professor of geophysics at MIT.

      Stability in data

      Scientists have previously seen hints of a climate-stabilizing effect in the Earth’s carbon cycle: Chemical analyses of ancient rocks have shown that the flux of carbon in and out of Earth’s surface environment has remained relatively balanced, even through dramatic swings in global temperature. Furthermore, models of silicate weathering predict that the process should have some stabilizing effect on the global climate. And finally, the fact of the Earth’s enduring habitability points to some inherent, geologic check on extreme temperature swings.

      “You have a planet whose climate was subjected to so many dramatic external changes. Why did life survive all this time? One argument is that we need some sort of stabilizing mechanism to keep temperatures suitable for life,” Arnscheidt says. “But it’s never been demonstrated from data that such a mechanism has consistently controlled Earth’s climate.”

      Arnscheidt and Rothman sought to confirm whether a stabilizing feedback has indeed been at work, by looking at data of global temperature fluctuations through geologic history. They worked with a range of global temperature records compiled by other scientists, from the chemical composition of ancient marine fossils and shells, as well as preserved Antarctic ice cores.

      “This whole study is only possible because there have been great advances in improving the resolution of these deep-sea temperature records,” Arnscheidt notes. “Now we have data going back 66 million years, with data points at most thousands of years apart.”

      Speeding to a stop

      To the data, the team applied the mathematical theory of stochastic differential equations, which is commonly used to reveal patterns in widely fluctuating datasets.

      “We realized this theory makes predictions for what you would expect Earth’s temperature history to look like if there had been feedbacks acting on certain timescales,” Arnscheidt explains.

      Using this approach, the team analyzed the history of average global temperatures over the last 66 million years, considering the entire period over different timescales, such as tens of thousands of years versus hundreds of thousands, to see whether any patterns of stabilizing feedback emerged within each timescale.

      “To some extent, it’s like your car is speeding down the street, and when you put on the brakes, you slide for a long time before you stop,” Rothman says. “There’s a timescale over which frictional resistance, or a stabilizing feedback, kicks in, when the system returns to a steady state.”

      Without stabilizing feedbacks, fluctuations of global temperature should grow with timescale. But the team’s analysis revealed a regime in which fluctuations did not grow, implying that a stabilizing mechanism reigned in the climate before fluctuations grew too extreme. The timescale for this stabilizing effect — hundreds of thousands of years — coincides with what scientists predict for silicate weathering.

      Interestingly, Arnscheidt and Rothman found that on longer timescales, the data did not reveal any stabilizing feedbacks. That is, there doesn’t appear to be any recurring pull-back of global temperatures on timescales longer than a million years. Over these longer timescales, then, what has kept global temperatures in check?

      “There’s an idea that chance may have played a major role in determining why, after more than 3 billion years, life still exists,” Rothman offers.

      In other words, as the Earth’s temperatures fluctuate over longer stretches, these fluctuations may just happen to be small enough in the geologic sense, to be within a range that a stabilizing feedback, such as silicate weathering, could periodically keep the climate in check, and more to the point, within a habitable zone.

      “There are two camps: Some say random chance is a good enough explanation, and others say there must be a stabilizing feedback,” Arnscheidt says. “We’re able to show, directly from data, that the answer is probably somewhere in between. In other words, there was some stabilization, but pure luck likely also played a role in keeping Earth continuously habitable.”

      This research was supported, in part, by a MathWorks fellowship and the National Science Foundation. More

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      in Energy

      Advancing the energy transition amidst global crises

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      “The past six years have been the warmest on the planet, and our track record on climate change mitigation is drastically short of what it needs to be,” said Robert C. Armstrong, MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) director and the Chevron Professor of Chemical Engineering, introducing MITEI’s 15th Annual Research Conference.

      At the symposium, participants from academia, industry, and finance acknowledged the deepening difficulties of decarbonizing a world rocked by geopolitical conflicts and suffering from supply chain disruptions, energy insecurity, inflation, and a persistent pandemic. In spite of this grim backdrop, the conference offered evidence of significant progress in the energy transition. Researchers provided glimpses of a low-carbon future, presenting advances in such areas as long-duration energy storage, carbon capture, and renewable technologies.

      In his keynote remarks, Ernest J. Moniz, the Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physics and Engineering Systems Emeritus, founding director of MITEI, and former U.S. secretary of energy, highlighted “four areas that have materially changed in the last year” that could shake up, and possibly accelerate, efforts to address climate change.

      Extreme weather seems to be propelling the public and policy makers of both U.S. parties toward “convergence … at least in recognition of the challenge,” Moniz said. He perceives a growing consensus that climate goals will require — in diminishing order of certainty — firm (always-on) power to complement renewable energy sources, a fuel (such as hydrogen) flowing alongside electricity, and removal of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2).

      Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with its “weaponization of natural gas” and global energy impacts, underscores the idea that climate, energy security, and geopolitics “are now more or less recognized widely as one conversation.” Moniz pointed as well to new U.S. laws on climate change and infrastructure that will amplify the role of science and technology and “address the drive to technological dominance by China.”

      The rapid transformation of energy systems will require a comprehensive industrial policy, Moniz said. Government and industry must select and rapidly develop low-carbon fuels, firm power sources (possibly including nuclear power), CO2 removal systems, and long-duration energy storage technologies. “We will need to make progress on all fronts literally in this decade to come close to our goals for climate change mitigation,” he concluded.

      Global cooperation?

      Over two days, conference participants delved into many of the issues Moniz raised. In one of the first panels, scholars pondered whether the international community could forge a coordinated climate change response. The United States’ rift with China, especially over technology trade policies, loomed large.

      “Hatred of China is a bipartisan hobby and passion, but a blanket approach isn’t right, even for the sake of national security,” said Yasheng Huang, the Epoch Foundation Professor of Global Economics and Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management. “Although the United States and China working together would have huge effects for both countries, it is politically unpalatable in the short term,” said F. Taylor Fravel, the Arthur and Ruth Sloan Professor of Political Science and director of the MIT Security Studies Program. John E. Parsons, deputy director for research at the MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, suggested that the United States should use this moment “to get our own act together … and start doing things,” such as building nuclear power plants in a cost-effective way.

      Debating carbon removal

      Several panels took up the matter of carbon emissions and the most promising technologies for contending with them. Charles Harvey, MIT professor of civil and environmental engineering, and Howard Herzog, a senior research engineer at MITEI, set the stage early, debating whether capturing carbon was essential to reaching net-zero targets.

      “I have no trouble getting to net zero without carbon capture and storage,” said David Keith, the Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Physics at Harvard University, in a subsequent roundtable. Carbon capture seems more risky to Keith than solar geoengineering, which involves injecting sulfur into the stratosphere to offset CO2 and its heat-trapping impacts.

      There are new ways of moving carbon from where it’s a problem to where it’s safer. Kripa K. Varanasi, MIT professor of mechanical engineering, described a process for modulating the pH of ocean water to remove CO2. Timothy Krysiek, managing director for Equinor Ventures, talked about construction of a 900-kilometer pipeline transporting CO2 from northern Germany to a large-scale storage site located in Norwegian waters 3,000 meters below the seabed. “We can use these offshore Norwegian assets as a giant carbon sink for Europe,” he said.

      A startup showcase featured additional approaches to the carbon challenge. Mantel, which received MITEI Seed Fund money, is developing molten salt material to capture carbon for long-term storage or for use in generating electricity. Verdox has come up with an electrochemical process for capturing dilute CO2 from the atmosphere.

      But while much of the global warming discussion focuses on CO2, other greenhouse gases are menacing. Another panel discussed measuring and mitigating these pollutants. “Methane has 82 times more warming power than CO2 from the point of emission,” said Desirée L. Plata, MIT associate professor of civil and environmental engineering. “Cutting methane is the strongest lever we have to slow climate change in the next 25 years — really the only lever.”

      Steven Hamburg, chief scientist and senior vice president of the Environmental Defense Fund, cautioned that emission of hydrogen molecules into the atmosphere can cause increases in other greenhouse gases such as methane, ozone, and water vapor. As researchers and industry turn to hydrogen as a fuel or as a feedstock for commercial processes, “we will need to minimize leakage … or risk increasing warming,” he said.

      Supply chains, markets, and new energy ventures

      In panels on energy storage and the clean energy supply chain, there were interesting discussions of challenges ahead. High-density energy materials such as lithium, cobalt, nickel, copper, and vanadium for grid-scale energy storage, electric vehicles (EVs), and other clean energy technologies, can be difficult to source. “These often come from water-stressed regions, and we need to be super thoughtful about environmental stresses,” said Elsa Olivetti, the Esther and Harold E. Edgerton Associate Professor in Materials Science and Engineering. She also noted that in light of the explosive growth in demand for metals such as lithium, recycling EVs won’t be of much help. “The amount of material coming back from end-of-life batteries is minor,” she said, until EVs are much further along in their adoption cycle.

      Arvind Sanger, founder and managing partner of Geosphere Capital, said that the United States should be developing its own rare earths and minerals, although gaining the know-how will take time, and overcoming “NIMBYism” (not in my backyard-ism) is a challenge. Sanger emphasized that we must continue to use “denser sources of energy” to catalyze the energy transition over the next decade. In particular, Sanger noted that “for every transition technology, steel is needed,” and steel is made in furnaces that use coal and natural gas. “It’s completely woolly-headed to think we can just go to a zero-fossil fuel future in a hurry,” he said.

      The topic of power markets occupied another panel, which focused on ways to ensure the distribution of reliable and affordable zero-carbon energy. Integrating intermittent resources such as wind and solar into the grid requires a suite of retail markets and new digital tools, said Anuradha Annaswamy, director of MIT’s Active-Adaptive Control Laboratory. Tim Schittekatte, a postdoc at the MIT Sloan School of Management, proposed auctions as a way of insuring consumers against periods of high market costs.

      Another panel described the very different investment needs of new energy startups, such as longer research and development phases. Hooisweng Ow, technology principal at Eni Next LLC Ventures, which is developing drilling technology for geothermal energy, recommends joint development and partnerships to reduce risk. Michael Kearney SM ’11, PhD ’19, SM ’19 is a partner at The Engine, a venture firm built by MIT investing in path-breaking technology to solve the toughest challenges in climate and other problems. Kearney believes the emergence of new technologies and markets will bring on “a labor transition on an order of magnitude never seen before in this country,” he said. “Workforce development is not a natural zone for startups … and this will have to change.”

      Supporting the global South

      The opportunities and challenges of the energy transition look quite different in the developing world. In conversation with Robert Armstrong, Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan, the coordinating minister for maritime affairs and investment of the Republic of Indonesia, reported that his “nation is rich with solar, wind, and energy transition minerals like nickel and copper,” but cannot on its own tackle developing renewable energy or reducing carbon emissions and improving grid infrastructure. “Education is a top priority, and we are very far behind in high technologies,” he said. “We need help and support from MIT to achieve our target,” he said.

      Technologies that could springboard Indonesia and other nations of the global South toward their climate goals are emerging in MITEI-supported projects and at young companies MITEI helped spawn. Among the promising innovations unveiled at the conference are new materials and designs for cooling buildings in hot climates and reducing the environmental costs of construction, and a sponge-like substance that passively sucks moisture out of the air to lower the energy required for running air conditioners in humid climates.

      Other ideas on the move from lab to market have great potential for industrialized nations as well, such as a computational framework for maximizing the energy output of ocean-based wind farms; a process for using ammonia as a renewable fuel with no CO2 emissions; long-duration energy storage derived from the oxidation of iron; and a laser-based method for unlocking geothermal steam to drive power plants. More

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      in Environment

      Methane research takes on new urgency at MIT

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      One of the most notable climate change provisions in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act is the first U.S. federal tax on a greenhouse gas (GHG). That the fee targets methane (CH4), rather than carbon dioxide (CO2), emissions is indicative of the urgency the scientific community has placed on reducing this short-lived but powerful gas. Methane persists in the air about 12 years — compared to more than 1,000 years for CO2 — yet it immediately causes about 120 times more warming upon release. The gas is responsible for at least a quarter of today’s gross warming. 

      “Methane has a disproportionate effect on near-term warming,” says Desiree Plata, the director of MIT Methane Network. “CH4 does more damage than CO2 no matter how long you run the clock. By removing methane, we could potentially avoid critical climate tipping points.” 

      Because GHGs have a runaway effect on climate, reductions made now will have a far greater impact than the same reductions made in the future. Cutting methane emissions will slow the thawing of permafrost, which could otherwise lead to massive methane releases, as well as reduce increasing emissions from wetlands.  

      “The goal of MIT Methane Network is to reduce methane emissions by 45 percent by 2030, which would save up to 0.5 degree C of warming by 2100,” says Plata, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at MIT and director of the Plata Lab. “When you consider that governments are trying for a 1.5-degree reduction of all GHGs by 2100, this is a big deal.” 

      Under normal concentrations, methane, like CO2, poses no health risks. Yet methane assists in the creation of high levels of ozone. In the lower atmosphere, ozone is a key component of air pollution, which leads to “higher rates of asthma and increased emergency room visits,” says Plata. 

      Methane-related projects at the Plata Lab include a filter made of zeolite — the same clay-like material used in cat litter — designed to convert methane into CO2 at dairy farms and coal mines. At first glance, the technology would appear to be a bit of a hard sell, since it converts one GHG into another. Yet the zeolite filter’s low carbon and dollar costs, combined with the disproportionate warming impact of methane, make it a potential game-changer.

      The sense of urgency about methane has been amplified by recent studies that show humans are generating far more methane emissions than previously estimated, and that the rates are rising rapidly. Exactly how much methane is in the air is uncertain. Current methods for measuring atmospheric methane, such as ground, drone, and satellite sensors, “are not readily abundant and do not always agree with each other,” says Plata.  

      The Plata Lab is collaborating with Tim Swager in the MIT Department of Chemistry to develop low-cost methane sensors. “We are developing chemiresisitive sensors that cost about a dollar that you could place near energy infrastructure to back-calculate where leaks are coming from,” says Plata.  

      The researchers are working on improving the accuracy of the sensors using machine learning techniques and are planning to integrate internet-of-things technology to transmit alerts. Plata and Swager are not alone in focusing on data collection: the Inflation Reduction Act adds significant funding for methane sensor research. 

      Other research at the Plata Lab includes the development of nanomaterials and heterogeneous catalysis techniques for environmental applications. The lab also explores mitigation solutions for industrial waste, particularly those related to the energy transition. Plata is the co-founder of an lithium-ion battery recycling startup called Nth Cycle. 

      On a more fundamental level, the Plata Lab is exploring how to develop products with environmental and social sustainability in mind. “Our overarching mission is to change the way that we invent materials and processes so that environmental objectives are incorporated along with traditional performance and cost metrics,” says Plata. “It is important to do that rigorous assessment early in the design process.”

      Play video

      MIT amps up methane research 

      The MIT Methane Network brings together 26 researchers from MIT along with representatives of other institutions “that are dedicated to the idea that we can reduce methane levels in our lifetime,” says Plata. The organization supports research such as Plata’s zeolite and sensor projects, as well as designing pipeline-fixing robots, developing methane-based fuels for clean hydrogen, and researching the capture and conversion of methane into liquid chemical precursors for pharmaceuticals and plastics. Other members are researching policies to encourage more sustainable agriculture and land use, as well as methane-related social justice initiatives. 

      “Methane is an especially difficult problem because it comes from all over the place,” says Plata. A recent Global Carbon Project study estimated that half of methane emissions are caused by humans. This is led by waste and agriculture (28 percent), including cow and sheep belching, rice paddies, and landfills.  

      Fossil fuels represent 18 percent of the total budget. Of this, about 63 percent is derived from oil and gas production and pipelines, 33 percent from coal mining activities, and 5 percent from industry and transportation. Human-caused biomass burning, primarily from slash-and-burn agriculture, emits about 4 percent of the global total.  

      The other half of the methane budget includes natural methane emissions from wetlands (20 percent) and other natural sources (30 percent). The latter includes permafrost melting and natural biomass burning, such as forest fires started by lightning.  

      With increases in global warming and population, the line between anthropogenic and natural causes is getting fuzzier. “Human activities are accelerating natural emissions,” says Plata. “Climate change increases the release of methane from wetlands and permafrost and leads to larger forest and peat fires.”  

      The calculations can get complicated. For example, wetlands provide benefits from CO2 capture, biological diversity, and sea level rise resiliency that more than compensate for methane releases. Meanwhile, draining swamps for development increases emissions. 

      Over 100 nations have signed onto the U.N.’s Global Methane Pledge to reduce at least 30 percent of anthropogenic emissions within the next 10 years. The U.N. report estimates that this goal can be achieved using proven technologies and that about 60 percent of these reductions can be accomplished at low cost. 

      Much of the savings would come from greater efficiencies in fossil fuel extraction, processing, and delivery. The methane fees in the Inflation Reduction Act are primarily focused on encouraging fossil fuel companies to accelerate ongoing efforts to cap old wells, flare off excess emissions, and tighten pipeline connections.  

      Fossil fuel companies have already made far greater pledges to reduce methane than they have with CO2, which is central to their business. This is due, in part, to the potential savings, as well as in preparation for methane regulations expected from the Environmental Protection Agency in late 2022. The regulations build upon existing EPA oversight of drilling operations, and will likely be exempt from the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that limits the federal government’s ability to regulate GHGs. 

      Zeolite filter targets methane in dairy and coal 

      The “low-hanging fruit” of gas stream mitigation addresses most of the 20 percent of total methane emissions in which the gas is released in sufficiently high concentrations for flaring. Plata’s zeolite filter aims to address the thornier challenge of reducing the 80 percent of non-flammable dilute emissions. 

      Plata found inspiration in decades-old catalysis research for turning methane into methanol. One strategy has been to use an abundant, low-cost aluminosilicate clay called zeolite.  

      “The methanol creation process is challenging because you need to separate a liquid, and it has very low efficiency,” says Plata. “Yet zeolite can be very efficient at converting methane into CO2, and it is much easier because it does not require liquid separation. Converting methane to CO2 sounds like a bad thing, but there is a major anti-warming benefit. And because methane is much more dilute than CO2, the relative CO2 contribution is minuscule.”  

      Using zeolite to create methanol requires highly concentrated methane, high temperatures and pressures, and industrial processing conditions. Yet Plata’s process, which dopes the zeolite with copper, operates in the presence of oxygen at much lower temperatures under typical pressures. “We let the methane proceed the way it wants from a thermodynamic perspective from methane to methanol down to CO2,” says Plata. 

      Researchers around the world are working on other dilute methane removal technologies. Projects include spraying iron salt aerosols into sea air where they react with natural chlorine or bromine radicals, thereby capturing methane. Most of these geoengineering solutions, however, are difficult to measure and would require massive scale to make a difference.  

      Plata is focusing her zeolite filters on environments where concentrations are high, but not so high as to be flammable. “We are trying to scale zeolite into filters that you could snap onto the side of a cross-ventilation fan in a dairy barn or in a ventilation air shaft in a coal mine,” says Plata. “For every packet of air we bring in, we take a lot of methane out, so we get more bang for our buck.”  

      The major challenge is creating a filter that can handle high flow rates without getting clogged or falling apart. Dairy barn air handlers can push air at up to 5,000 cubic feet per minute and coal mine handlers can approach 500,000 CFM. 

      Plata is exploring engineering options including fluidized bed reactors with floating catalyst particles. Another filter solution, based in part on catalytic converters, features “higher-order geometric structures where you have a porous material with a long path length where the gas can interact with the catalyst,” says Plata. “This avoids the challenge with fluidized beds of containing catalyst particles in the reactor. Instead, they are fixed within a structured material.”  

      Competing technologies for removing methane from mine shafts “operate at temperatures of 1,000 to 1,200 degrees C, requiring a lot of energy and risking explosion,” says Plata. “Our technology avoids safety concerns by operating at 300 to 400 degrees C. It reduces energy use and provides more tractable deployment costs.” 

      Potentially, energy and dollar costs could be further reduced in coal mines by capturing the heat generated by the conversion process. “In coal mines, you have enrichments above a half-percent methane, but below the 4 percent flammability threshold,” says Plata. “The excess heat from the process could be used to generate electricity using off-the-shelf converters.” 

      Plata’s dairy barn research is funded by the Gerstner Family Foundation and the coal mining project by the U.S. Department of Energy. “The DOE would like us to spin out the technology for scale-up within three years,” says Plata. “We cannot guarantee we will hit that goal, but we are trying to develop this as quickly as possible. Our society needs to start reducing methane emissions now.”  More