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      in Environment

      3 Questions: How are cities managing record-setting temperatures?

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      July 2023 was the hottest month globally since humans began keeping records. People all over the U.S. experienced punishingly high temperatures this summer. In Phoenix, there were a record-setting 31 consecutive days with a high temperature of 110 degrees Fahrenheit or more. July was the hottest month on record in Miami. A scan of high temperatures around the country often yielded some startlingly high numbers: Dallas, 110 F; Reno, 108 F; Salt Lake City, 106 F; Portland, 105 F.

      Climate change is a global and national crisis that cannot be solved by city governments alone, but cities suffering from it can try to enact new policies reducing emissions and adapting its effects. MIT’s David Hsu, an associate professor of urban and environmental planning, is an expert on metropolitan and regional climate policy. In one 2017 paper, Hsu and some colleagues estimated how 11 major U.S. cities could best reduce their carbon dioxide emissions, through energy-efficient home construction and retrofitting, improvements in vehicle gas mileage, more housing density, robust transit systems, and more. As we near the end of this historically hot summer, MIT News talked to Hsu about what cities are now doing in response to record heat, and the possibilities for new policy measures.

      Q: We’ve had record-setting temperatures in many cities across the U.S. this summer. Dealing with climate change certainly isn’t just the responsibility of those cities, but what have they been doing to make a difference, to the extent they can?

      A: I think this is a very top-of-mind question because even 10 or 15 years ago, we talked about adapting to a changed climate future, which seemed further off. But literally every week this summer we can refer to [dramatic] things that are already happening, clearly linked to climate change, and are going to get worse. We had wildfire smoke in the Northeast and throughout the Eastern Seaboard in June, this tragic wildfire in Hawaii that led to more deaths than any other wildfire in the U.S., [plus record high temperatures]. A lot of city leaders face climate challenges they thought were maybe 20 or 30 years in the future, and didn’t expect to see happen with this severity and intensity.

      One thing you’re seeing is changes in governance. A lot of cities have recently appointed a chief heat officer. Miami and Phoenix have them now, and this is someone responsible for coordinating response to heat waves, which turn out to be one of the biggest killers among climatological effects. There is an increasing realization not only among local governments, but insurance companies and the building industry, that flooding is going to affect many places. We have already seen flooding in the seaport area in Boston, the most recently built part of our city. In some sense just the realization among local governments, insurers, building owners, and residents, that some risks are here and now, already is changing how people think about those risks.

      Q: To what extent does a city being active about climate change at least signal to everyone, at the state or national level, that we have to do more? At the same time, some states are reacting against cities that are trying to institute climate initiatives and trying to prevent clean energy advances. What is possible at this point?

      A: We have this very large, heterogeneous and polarized country, and we have differences between states and within states in how they’re approaching climate change. You’ve got some cities trying to enact things like natural gas bans, or trying to limit greenhouse gas emissions, with some state governments trying to preempt them entirely. I think cities have a role in showing leadership. But one thing I harp on, having worked in city government myself, is that sometimes in cities we can be complacent. While we pride ourselves on being centers of innovation and less per-capita emissions — we’re using less than rural areas, and you’ll see people celebrating New York City as the greenest in the world — cities are responsible for consumption that produces a majority of emissions in most countries. If we’re going to decarbonize society, we have to get to zero altogether, and that requires cities to act much more aggressively.

      There is not only a pessimistic narrative. With the Inflation Reduction Act, which is rapidly accelerating the production of renewable energy, you see many of those subsidies going to build new manufacturing in red states. There’s a possibility people will see there are plenty of better paying, less dangerous jobs in [clean energy]. People don’t like monopolies wherever they live, so even places people consider fairly conservative would like local control [of energy], and that might mean greener jobs and lower prices. Yes, there is a doomscrolling loop of thinking polarization is insurmountable, but I feel surprisingly optimistic sometimes.

      Large parts of the Midwest, even in places people think of as being more conservative, have chosen to build a lot of wind energy, partly because it’s profitable. Historically, some farmers were self-reliant and had wind power before the electrical grid came. Even now in some places where people don’t want to address climate change, they’re more than happy to have wind power.

      Q: You’ve published work on which cities can pursue which policies to reduce emissions the most: better housing construction, more transit, more fuel-efficient vehicles, possibly higher housing density, and more. The exact recipe varies from place to place. But what are the common threads people can think about?

      A: It’s important to think about what the status quo is, and what we should be preparing for. The status quo simply doesn’t serve large parts of the population right now. Heat risk, flooding, and wildfires all disproportionately affect populations that are already vulnerable. If you’re elderly, or lack access to mobility, information, or warnings, you probably have a lower risk of surviving a wildfire. Many people do not have high-quality housing, and may be more exposed to heat or smoke. We know the climate has already changed, and is going to change more, but we have failed to prepare for foreseeable changes that already here. Lots of things that are climate-related but not only about climate change, like affordable housing, transportation, energy access for everyone so they can have services like cooking and the internet — those are things that we can change going forward. The hopeful message is: Cities are always changing and being built, so we should make them better. The urgent message is: We shouldn’t accept the status quo. More

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      in Environment

      New clean air and water labs to bring together researchers, policymakers to find climate solutions

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      MIT’s Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) is launching the Clean Air and Water Labs, with support from Community Jameel, to generate evidence-based solutions aimed at increasing access to clean air and water.

      Led by J-PAL’s Africa, Middle East and North Africa (MENA), and South Asia regional offices, the labs will partner with government agencies to bring together researchers and policymakers in areas where impactful clean air and water solutions are most urgently needed.

      Together, the labs aim to improve clean air and water access by informing the scaling of evidence-based policies and decisions of city, state, and national governments that serve nearly 260 million people combined.

      The Clean Air and Water Labs expand the work of J-PAL’s King Climate Action Initiative, building on the foundational support of King Philanthropies, which significantly expanded J-PAL’s work at the nexus of climate change and poverty alleviation worldwide. 

      Air pollution, water scarcity and the need for evidence 

      Africa, MENA, and South Asia are on the front lines of global air and water crises. 

      “There is no time to waste investing in solutions that do not achieve their desired effects,” says Iqbal Dhaliwal, global executive director of J-PAL. “By co-generating rigorous real-world evidence with researchers, policymakers can have the information they need to dedicate resources to scaling up solutions that have been shown to be effective.”

      In India, about 75 percent of households did not have drinking water on premises in 2018. In MENA, nearly 90 percent of children live in areas facing high or extreme water stress. Across Africa, almost 400 million people lack access to safe drinking water. 

      Simultaneously, air pollution is one of the greatest threats to human health globally. In India, extraordinary levels of air pollution are shortening the average life expectancy by five years. In Africa, rising indoor and ambient air pollution contributed to 1.1 million premature deaths in 2019. 

      There is increasing urgency to find high-impact and cost-effective solutions to the worsening threats to human health and resources caused by climate change. However, data and evidence on potential solutions are limited.

      Fostering collaboration to generate policy-relevant evidence 

      The Clean Air and Water Labs will foster deep collaboration between government stakeholders, J-PAL regional offices, and researchers in the J-PAL network. 

      Through the labs, J-PAL will work with policymakers to:

      co-diagnose the most pressing air and water challenges and opportunities for policy innovation;
      expand policymakers’ access to and use of high-quality air and water data;
      co-design potential solutions informed by existing evidence;
      co-generate evidence on promising solutions through rigorous evaluation, leveraging existing and new data sources; and
      support scaling of air and water policies and programs that are found to be effective through evaluation. 
      A research and scaling fund for each lab will prioritize resources for co-generated pilot studies, randomized evaluations, and scaling projects. 

      The labs will also collaborate with C40 Cities, a global network of mayors of the world’s leading cities that are united in action to confront the climate crisis, to share policy-relevant evidence and identify opportunities for potential new connections and research opportunities within India and across Africa.

      This model aims to strengthen the use of evidence in decision-making to ensure solutions are highly effective and to guide research to answer policymakers’ most urgent questions. J-PAL Africa, MENA, and South Asia’s strong on-the-ground presence will further bridge research and policy work by anchoring activities within local contexts. 

      “Communities across the world continue to face challenges in accessing clean air and water, a threat to human safety that has only been exacerbated by the climate crisis, along with rising temperatures and other hazards,” says George Richards, director of Community Jameel. “Through our collaboration with J-PAL and C40 in creating climate policy labs embedded in city, state, and national governments in Africa and South Asia, we are committed to innovative and science-based approaches that can help hundreds of millions of people enjoy healthier lives.”

      J-PAL Africa, MENA, and South Asia will formally launch Clean Air and Water Labs with government partners over the coming months. J-PAL is housed in the MIT Department of Economics, within the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences. More

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      in Energy

      Ms. Nuclear Energy is winning over nuclear skeptics

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      First-year MIT nuclear science and engineering (NSE) doctoral student Kaylee Cunningham is not the first person to notice that nuclear energy has a public relations problem. But her commitment to dispel myths about the alternative power source has earned her the moniker “Ms. Nuclear Energy” on TikTok and a devoted fan base on the social media platform.

      Cunningham’s activism kicked into place shortly after a week-long trip to Iceland to study geothermal energy. During a discussion about how the country was going to achieve its net zero energy goals, a representative from the University of Reykjavik balked at Cunnigham’s suggestion of including a nuclear option in the alternative energy mix. “The response I got was that we’re a peace-loving nation, we don’t do that,” Cunningham remembers. “I was appalled by the reaction, I mean we’re talking energy not weapons here, right?” she asks. Incredulous, Cunningham made a TikTok that targeted misinformation. Overnight she garnered 10,000 followers and “Ms. Nuclear Energy” was off to the races. Ms. Nuclear Energy is now Cunningham’s TikTok handle.

      Kaylee Cunningham: Dispelling myths and winning over skeptics

      A theater and science nerd

      TikTok is a fitting platform for a theater nerd like Cunningham. Born in Melrose, Massachusetts, Cunningham’s childhood was punctuated by moves to places where her roofer father’s work took the family. She moved to North Carolina shortly after fifth grade and fell in love with theater. “I was doing theater classes, the spring musical, it was my entire world,” Cunningham remembers. When she moved again, this time to Florida halfway through her first year of high school, she found the spring musical had already been cast. But she could help behind the scenes. Through that work, Cunningham gained her first real exposure to hands-on tech. She was hooked.

      Soon Cunningham was part of a team that represented her high school at the student Astronaut Challenge, an aerospace competition run by Florida State University. Statewide winners got to fly a space shuttle simulator at the Kennedy Space Center and participate in additional engineering challenges. Cunningham’s team was involved in creating a proposal to help NASA’s Asteroid Redirect Mission, designed to help the agency gather a large boulder from a near-earth asteroid. The task was Cunningham’s induction into an understanding of radiation and “anything nuclear.” Her high school engineering teacher, Nirmala Arunachalam, encouraged Cunningham’s interest in the subject.

      The Astronaut Challenge might just have been the end of Cunningham’s path in nuclear engineering had it not been for her mother. In high school, Cunningham had also enrolled in computer science classes and her love of the subject earned her a scholarship at Norwich University in Vermont where she had pursued a camp in cybersecurity. Cunningham had already laid down the college deposit for Norwich.

      But Cunningham’s mother persuaded her daughter to pay another visit to the University of Florida, where she had expressed interest in pursuing nuclear engineering. To her pleasant surprise, the department chair, Professor James Baciak, pulled out all the stops, bringing mother and daughter on a tour of the on-campus nuclear reactor and promising Cunningham a paid research position. Cunningham was sold and Backiak has been a mentor throughout her research career.

      Merging nuclear engineering and computer science

      Undergraduate research internships, including one at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where she could combine her two loves, nuclear engineering and computer science, convinced Cunningham she wanted to pursue a similar path in graduate school.

      Cunningham’s undergraduate application to MIT had been rejected but that didn’t deter her from applying to NSE for graduate school. Having spent her early years in an elementary school barely 20 minutes from campus, she had grown up hearing that “the smartest people in the world go to MIT.” Cunningham figured that if she got into MIT, it would be “like going back home to Massachusetts” and that she could fit right in.

      Under the advisement of Professor Michael Short, Cunningham is looking to pursue her passions in both computer science and nuclear engineering in her doctoral studies.

      The activism continues

      Simultaneously, Cunningham is determined to keep her activism going.

      Her ability to digest “complex topics into something understandable to people who have no connection to academia” has helped Cunningham on TikTok. “It’s been something I’ve been doing all my life with my parents and siblings and extended family,” she says.

      Punctuating her video snippets with humor — a Simpsons reference is par for the course — helps Cunningham break through to her audience who love her goofy and tongue-in-cheek approach to the subject matter without compromising accuracy. “Sometimes I do stupid dances and make a total fool of myself, but I’ve really found my niche by being willing to engage and entertain people and educate them at the same time.”

      Such education needs to be an important part of an industry that’s received its share of misunderstandings, Cunningham says. “Technical people trying to communicate in a way that the general people don’t understand is such a concerning thing,” she adds. Case in point: the response in the wake of the Three Mile Island accident, which prevented massive contamination leaks. It was a perfect example of how well our safety regulations actually work, Cunningham says, “but you’d never guess from the PR fallout from it all.”

      As Ms. Nuclear Energy, Cunningham receives her share of skepticism. One viewer questioned the safety of nuclear reactors if “tons of pollution” was spewing out from them. Cunningham produced a TikTok that addressed this misconception. Pointing to the “pollution” in a photo, Cunningham clarifies that it’s just water vapor. The TikTok has garnered over a million views. “It really goes to show how starving for accurate information the public really is,” Cunningham says, “ in this age of having all the information we could ever want at our fingertips, it’s hard to sift through and decide what’s real and accurate and what isn’t.”

      Another reason for her advocacy: doing her part to encourage young people toward a nuclear science or engineering career. “If we’re going to start putting up tons of small modular reactors around the country, we need people to build them, people to run them, and we need regulatory bodies to inspect and keep them safe,” Cunningham points out. “ And we don’t have enough people entering the workforce in comparison to those that are retiring from the workforce,” she adds. “I’m able to engage those younger audiences and put nuclear engineering on their radar,” Cunningham says. The advocacy has been paying off: Cunningham regularly receives — and responds to — inquiries from high school junior girls looking for advice on pursuing nuclear engineering.

      All the activism is in service toward a clear end goal. “At the end of the day, the fight is to save the planet,” Cunningham says, “I honestly believe that nuclear power is the best chance we’ve got to fight climate change and keep our planet alive.” More

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      in Energy

      Q&A: Three Tata Fellows on the program’s impact on themselves and the world

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      The Tata Fellowship at MIT gives graduate students the opportunity to pursue interdisciplinary research and work with real-world applications in developing countries. Part of the MIT Tata Center for Technology and Design, this fellowship contributes to the center’s goal of designing appropriate, practical solutions for resource-constrained communities. Three Tata Fellows — Serena Patel, Rameen Hayat Malik, and Ethan Harrison — discuss the impact of this program on their research, perspectives, and time at MIT.

      Serena Patel

      Serena Patel graduated from the University of California at Berkeley with a degree in energy engineering and a minor in energy and resources. She is currently pursuing her SM in technology and policy at MIT and is a Tata Fellow focusing on decarbonization in India using techno-economic modeling. Her interest in the intersection of technology, policy, economics, and social justice led her to attend COP27, where she experienced decision-maker and activist interactions firsthand.

      Q: How did you become interested in the Tata Fellowship, and how has it influenced your time at MIT?

      A: The Tata Center appealed to my interest in searching for creative, sustainable energy technologies that center collaboration with local-leading organizations. It has also shaped my understanding of the role of technology in sustainable development planning. Our current energy system disproportionately impacts marginalized communities, and new energy systems have the potential to perpetuate and/or create inequities. I am broadly interested in how we can put people at the core of our technological solutions and support equitable energy transitions. I specifically work on techno-economic modeling to analyze the potential for an early retirement of India’s large coal fleet and conversion to long-duration thermal energy storage. This could mitigate job losses from rapid transitions, support India’s energy system decarbonization plan, and provide a cost-effective way to retire stranded assets.

      Q: Why is interdisciplinary study important to real-world solutions for global communities, and how has working at the intersection of technology and policy influenced your research?

      A: Technology and policy work together in mediating and regulating the world around us. Technological solutions can be disruptive in all the good ways, but they can also do a lot of harm and perpetuate existing inequities. Interdisciplinary studies are important to mitigate these interrelated issues so innovative ideas in the ivory towers of Western academia do not negatively impact marginalized communities. For real-world solutions to positively impact individuals, marginalized communities need to be centered within the research design process. I think the research community’s perspective on real-world, global solutions is shifting to achieve these goals, but much work remains for resources to reach the right communities.

      The energy space is especially fascinating because it impacts everyone’s quality of life in overt or nuanced ways. I’ve had the privilege of taking classes that sit at the intersection of energy technology and policy, involving land-use law, geographic representation, energy regulation, and technology policy. In general, working at the intersection of technology and policy has shaped my perspective on how regulation influences widespread technology adoption and the overall research directions and assumptions in our energy models.

      Q: How has your experience at COP27 influenced your approach to your research?

      A: Attending COP27 at Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, last November influenced my understanding of the role of science, research, and activism in climate negotiations and action. Science and research are often promoted as necessary for sharing knowledge at the higher levels, but they were also used as a delay tactic by negotiators. I heard how institutional bodies meant to support fair science and research often did not reach intended stakeholders. Lofty goals or financial commitments to ensure global climate stability and resilience still lacked implementation and coordination with deep technology transfer and support. On the face of it, these agreements have impact and influence, but I heard many frustrations over the lack of tangible, local support. This has driven my research to be as context-specific as possible, to provide actionable insights and leverage different disciplines.

      I also observed the role of activism in the negotiations. Decision-makers are accountable to their country, and activists are spreading awareness and bringing transparency to the COP process. As a U.S. citizen, I suddenly became more aware of how political engagement and awareness in the country could push the boundaries of international climate agreements if the government were more aligned on climate action.

      Rameen Hayat Malik

      Rameen Hayat Malik graduated from the University of Sydney with a bachelor’s degree in chemical and biomolecular engineering and a Bachelor of Laws. She is currently pursuing her SM in technology and policy and is a Tata Fellow researching the impacts of electric vehicle (EV) battery production in Indonesia. Originally from Australia, she first became interested in the geopolitical landscape of resources trade and its implications for the clean energy transition while working in her native country’s Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water.

      Q: How did you become interested in the Tata Fellowship, and how has it influenced your time at MIT?

      A: I came across the Tata Fellowship while looking for research opportunities that aligned with my interest in understanding how a just energy transition will occur in a global context, with a particular focus on emerging economies. My research explores the techno-economic, social, and environmental impacts of nickel mining in Indonesia as it seeks to establish itself as a major producer of EV batteries. The fellowship’s focus on community-driven research has given me the freedom to guide the scope of my research. It has allowed me to integrate a community voice into my work that seeks to understand the impact of this mining on forest-dependent communities, Indigenous communities, and workforce development.

      Q: Battery technology and production are highly discussed in the energy sector. How does your research on Indonesia’s battery production contribute to the current discussion around batteries, and what drew you to this topic?

      A: Indonesia is one of the world’s largest exporters of coal, while also having one of the largest nickel reserves in the world — a key mineral for EV battery production. This presents an exciting opportunity for Indonesia to be a leader in the energy transition, as it both seeks to phase out coal production and establish itself as a key supplier of critical minerals. It is also an opportunity to actually apply principles of a just transition to the region, which seeks to repurpose and re-skill existing coal workforces, to bring Indigenous communities into the conversation around the future of their lands, and to explore whether it is actually possible to sustainably and ethically produce nickel for EV battery production.

      I’ve always seen battery technologies and EVs as products that, at least today, are accessible to a small, privileged customer base that can afford such technologies. I’m interested in understanding how we can make such products more widely affordable and provide our lowest-income communities with the opportunities to actively participate in the transition — especially since access to transportation is a key driver of social mobility. With nickel prices impacting EV prices in such a dramatic way, unlocking more nickel supply chains presents an opportunity to make EV batteries more accessible and affordable.

      Q: What advice would you give to new students who want to be a part of real-world solutions to the climate crisis?

      A: Bring your whole self with you when engaging these issues. Quite often we get caught up with the technology or modeling aspect of addressing the climate crisis and forget to bring people and their experiences into our work. Think about your positionality: Who is your community, what are the avenues you have to bring that community along, and what privileges do you hold to empower and amplify voices that need to be heard? Find a piece of this complex puzzle that excites you, and find opportunities to talk and listen to people who are directly impacted by the solutions you are looking to explore. It can get quite overwhelming working in this space, which carries a sense of urgency, politicization, and polarization with it. Stay optimistic, keep advocating, and remember to take care of yourself while doing this important work.

      Ethan Harrison

      After earning his degree in economics and applied science from the College of William and Mary, Ethan Harrison worked at the United Nations Development Program in its Crisis Bureau as a research officer focused on conflict prevention and predictive analysis. He is currently pursuing his SM in technology and policy at MIT. In his Tata Fellowship, he focuses on the impacts of the Ukraine-Russia conflict on global vulnerability and the global energy market.

      Q: How did you become interested in the Tata Fellowship, and how has it influenced your time at MIT?

      A: Coming to MIT, one of my chief interests was figuring out how we can leverage gains from technology to improve outcomes and build pro-poor solutions in developing and crisis contexts. The Tata Fellowship aligned with many of the conclusions I drew while working in crisis contexts and some of the outstanding questions that I was hoping to answer during my time at MIT, specifically: How can we leverage technology to build sustainable, participatory, and ethically grounded interventions in these contexts?

      My research currently examines the secondary impacts of the Ukraine-Russia conflict on low- and middle-income countries — especially fragile states — with a focus on shocks in the global energy market. This includes the development of a novel framework that systematically identifies factors of vulnerability — such as in energy, food systems, and trade dependence — and quantitatively ranks countries by their level of vulnerability. By identifying the specific mechanisms by which these countries are vulnerable, we can develop a map of global vulnerability and identify key policy solutions that can insulate countries from current and future shocks.

      Q: I understand that your research deals with the relationship between oil and gas price fluctuation and political stability. What has been the most surprising aspect of this relationship, and what are its implications for global decarbonization?

      A: One surprising aspect is the degree to which citizen grievances regarding price fluctuations can quickly expand to broader democratic demands and destabilization. In Sri Lanka last year and in Egypt during the Arab spring, initial protests around fuel prices and power outages eventually led to broader demands and the loss of power by heads of state. Another surprising aspect is the popularity of fuel subsidies despite the fact that they are economically regressive: They often comprise a large proportion of GDP in poor countries, disproportionately benefit higher-income populations, and leave countries vulnerable to fiscal stress during price spikes.

      Regarding implications for global decarbonization, one project we are pursuing examines the implications of directing financing from fuel subsidies toward investments in renewable energy. Countries that rely on fossil fuels for electricity have been hit especially hard 
by price spikes from the Ukraine-Russia conflict, especially since many were carrying costly fuel subsidies to keep the price of fuel and energy artificially low. Much of the international community is advocating for low-income countries to invest in renewables and reduce their fossil fuel burden, but it’s important to explore how global decarbonization can align with efforts to end energy poverty and other Sustainable Development Goals.

      Q: How does your research impact the Tata Center’s goal of transforming policy research into real-world solutions, and why is this important?

      A: The crisis in Ukraine has shifted the international community’s focus away from other countries in crisis, such as Yemen and Lebanon. By developing a global map of vulnerability, we’re building a large evidence base on which countries have been most impacted by this crisis. Most importantly, by identifying individual channels of vulnerability for each country, we can also identify the most effective policy solutions to insulate vulnerable populations from shocks. Whether that’s advocating for short-term social protection programs or identifying more medium-term policy solutions — like fuel banks or investment in renewables — we hope providing a detailed map of sources of vulnerability can help inform the global response to shocks imposed by the Russia-Ukraine conflict and post-Covid recovery. More

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      in Environment

      Dyanna Jaye: Bringing the urgency of organizing to climate policy

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      Growing up in the Tidewater region of Virginia, Dyanna Jaye had a front row seat to the climate crisis. She recalls beach stabilization efforts that pumped sand from the bottom of the ocean to the shore in response to rising sea levels. And every hurricane season, the streets would flood.

      “I was thinking at a younger age about some pretty big questions,” says Jaye. “Can I call this place home for the rest of my life? Probably not. The changes that we will endure because of climate change will probably make the place where I grew up unlivable in my lifetime.”

      Jaye attended the University of Virginia, where she studied environmental science and global development studies. She also started to get involved in organizing efforts around climate policy. The first campaign she was a part of aimed to retire UVA’s coal plant and move to more renewable energy.

      “We didn’t really win, but I learned a lot in that first campaign,” she says.

      Jaye went on to co-found the Sunrise Movement, which helped launch the Green New Deal as a framework for ambitious, holistic climate policy across the country.

      Now pursuing a master’s in city planning at MIT, Jaye is seeking a deeper understanding of how to implement climate-conscious policy across all levels of government. She hopes to bring the lessons learned back to her home state.

      “My goal is to make it back to Virginia and have a better of an idea of how to plan a multidecade transition that decarbonizes our economy while also building good jobs and protecting the fundamental things that we need in our life,” says Jaye. “Virginia was this place where I felt like I could see both ends of the climate crisis, and realized you need a holistic solution to address all aspects of this.”

      A foundation in organizing

      After graduating from the University of Virginia, Jaye led a delegation of young people from the U.S. to the United Nations to campaign for a global commitment to phase out fossil fuels and fund equitable climate solutions. At the time, the Paris climate agreement was being negotiated. Witnessing that process firsthand was eye-opening.

      Jaye realized to push the U.S. forward in the fight against climate change, she needed to help build a nationwide movement that could push the federal government to enact ambitious policy. Along with six like-minded friends, Jaye co-founded the Sunrise Movement.

      “It feels silly to say this now, but part of Sunrise was just to get climate change to be a more urgent issue, because at the time it was politically unpopular to even talk about it,” Jaye says. “The vision that became the Green New Deal was this plan to decarbonize our society within 10 years and bring all the benefits we can to build a stronger, more connected, and healthier society.”

      Jaye describes her five years with Sunrise as a “wild whirlwind.” As the national organizing director, she worked on engagement strategies to recruit new people to the movement. Following a few key wins at the polls, Sunrise grew from a handful of chapters concentrated in swing states to over 500 chapters across the nation.

      On the other side, crafting policy

      Though she is no longer directly involved with the Sunrise Movement, Jaye has moved onto a different stage of the fight. For the final year of her master’s, she will be writing her thesis while working with the Massachusetts Office of Climate Innovation and Resilience. The office is newly established as of this year, evidence of the federal funding wins that Sunrise helped make possible.

      “Transparently, we wanted to win a lot more,” says Jaye. “We had huge goals, but we did win a lot of things at the federal level. So, the time is now to get federal funding and move it through state implementation and planning, and it’s urgent.”

      The flexibility of the city planning program allows students to study theory while also putting that theory in practice in local government. Jaye’s thesis will focus on the best planning approach for full government strategy, informed by her work in the climate office. While previous climate policy focused purely on the environmental sector, effectively addressing climate change will take a multipronged approach touching every sector, from transportation to housing to energy distribution to food production.

      “What’s really cool about being in the government right now in Massachusetts is getting to see a model as they’re trying to take climate from being an environmental priority to a number one, whole-of-government challenge,” says Jaye. “It’s an issue that’s embedded into every department and level of our government.”

      As she finishes her master’s, Jaye is still keeping an eye toward home. While she isn’t in a rush to leave Massachusetts, she is always thinking about the lessons she’s learning can apply to Virginia. And by building skills in both planning and organizing, Jaye will be well-equipped to make an impact wherever she lands.

      “I still feel very committed to community organizing. We’re living in a divided time where our democracy is being challenged, and organizing is what we need to do to respond to that,” says Jaye. “We also need a lot more people diving in on the work of policy and governance to determine how we transition our economy and our energy system, how are we going to go about doing something like that. Right now, I’m feeling excited to be on that side of the work.” 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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      Cutting urban carbon emissions by retrofitting buildings

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      To support the worldwide struggle to reduce carbon emissions, many cities have made public pledges to cut their carbon emissions in half by 2030, and some have promised to be carbon neutral by 2050. Buildings can be responsible for more than half a municipality’s carbon emissions. Today, new buildings are typically designed in ways that minimize energy use and carbon emissions. So attention focuses on cleaning up existing buildings.

      A decade ago, leaders in some cities took the first step in that process: They quantified their problem. Based on data from their utilities on natural gas and electricity consumption and standard pollutant-emission rates, they calculated how much carbon came from their buildings. They then adopted policies to encourage retrofits, such as adding insulation, switching to double-glazed windows, or installing rooftop solar panels. But will those steps be enough to meet their pledges?

      “In nearly all cases, cities have no clear plan for how they’re going to reach their goal,” says Christoph Reinhart, a professor in the Department of Architecture and director of the Building Technology Program. “That’s where our work comes in. We aim to help them perform analyses so they can say, ‘If we, as a community, do A, B, and C to buildings of a certain type within our jurisdiction, then we are going to get there.’”

      To support those analyses, Reinhart and a team in the MIT Sustainable Design Lab (SDL) — PhD candidate Zachary M. Berzolla SM ’21; former doctoral student Yu Qian Ang PhD ’22, now a research collaborator at the SDL; and former postdoc Samuel Letellier-Duchesne, now a senior building performance analyst at the international building engineering and consulting firm Introba — launched a publicly accessible website providing a series of simulation tools and a process for using them to determine the impacts of planned steps on a specific building stock. Says Reinhart: “The takeaway can be a clear technology pathway — a combination of building upgrades, renewable energy deployments, and other measures that will enable a community to reach its carbon-reduction goals for their built environment.”

      Analyses performed in collaboration with policymakers from selected cities around the world yielded insights demonstrating that reaching current goals will require more effort than city representatives and — in a few cases — even the research team had anticipated.

      Exploring carbon-reduction pathways

      The researchers’ approach builds on a physics-based “building energy model,” or BEM, akin to those that architects use to design high-performance green buildings. In 2013, Reinhart and his team developed a method of extending that concept to analyze a cluster of buildings. Based on publicly available geographic information system (GIS) data, including each building’s type, footprint, and year of construction, the method defines the neighborhood — including trees, parks, and so on — and then, using meteorological data, how the buildings will interact, the airflows among them, and their energy use. The result is an “urban building energy model,” or UBEM, for a neighborhood or a whole city.

      The website developed by the MIT team enables neighborhoods and cities to develop their own UBEM and to use it to calculate their current building energy use and resulting carbon emissions, and then how those outcomes would change assuming different retrofit programs or other measures being implemented or considered. “The website — UBEM.io — provides step-by-step instructions and all the simulation tools that a team will need to perform an analysis,” says Reinhart.

      The website starts by describing three roles required to perform an analysis: a local sustainability champion who is familiar with the municipality’s carbon-reduction efforts; a GIS manager who has access to the municipality’s urban datasets and maintains a digital model of the built environment; and an energy modeler — typically a hired consultant — who has a background in green building consulting and individual building energy modeling.

      The team begins by defining “shallow” and “deep” building retrofit scenarios. To explain, Reinhart offers some examples: “‘Shallow’ refers to things that just happen, like when you replace your old, failing appliances with new, energy-efficient ones, or you install LED light bulbs and weatherstripping everywhere,” he says. “‘Deep’ adds to that list things you might do only every 20 years, such as ripping out walls and putting in insulation or replacing your gas furnace with an electric heat pump.”

      Once those scenarios are defined, the GIS manager uploads to UBEM.io a dataset of information about the city’s buildings, including their locations and attributes such as geometry, height, age, and use (e.g., commercial, retail, residential). The energy modeler then builds a UBEM to calculate the energy use and carbon emissions of the existing building stock. Once that baseline is established, the energy modeler can calculate how specific retrofit measures will change the outcomes.

      Workshop to test-drive the method

      Two years ago, the MIT team set up a three-day workshop to test the website with sample users. Participants included policymakers from eight cities and municipalities around the world: namely, Braga (Portugal), Cairo (Egypt), Dublin (Ireland), Florianopolis (Brazil), Kiel (Germany), Middlebury (Vermont, United States), Montreal (Canada), and Singapore. Taken together, the cities represent a wide range of climates, socioeconomic demographics, cultures, governing structures, and sizes.

      Working with the MIT team, the participants presented their goals, defined shallow- and deep-retrofit scenarios for their city, and selected a limited but representative area for analysis — an approach that would speed up analyses of different options while also generating results valid for the city as a whole.

      They then performed analyses to quantify the impacts of their retrofit scenarios. Finally, they learned how best to present their findings — a critical part of the exercise. “When you do this analysis and bring it back to the people, you can say, ‘This is our homework over the next 30 years. If we do this, we’re going to get there,’” says Reinhart. “That makes you part of the community, so it’s a joint goal.”

      Sample results

      After the close of the workshop, Reinhart and his team confirmed their findings for each city and then added one more factor to the analyses: the state of the city’s electric grid. Several cities in the study had pledged to make their grid carbon-neutral by 2050. Including the grid in the analysis was therefore critical: If a building becomes all-electric and purchases its electricity from a carbon-free grid, then that building will be carbon neutral — even with no on-site energy-saving retrofits.

      The final analysis for each city therefore calculated the total kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent emitted per square meter of floor space assuming the following scenarios: the baseline; shallow retrofit only; shallow retrofit plus a clean electricity grid; deep retrofit only; deep retrofit plus rooftop photovoltaic solar panels; and deep retrofit plus a clean electricity grid. (Note that “clean electricity grid” is based on the area’s most ambitious decarbonization target for their power grid.)

      The following paragraphs provide highlights of the analyses for three of the eight cities. Included are the city’s setting, emission-reduction goals, current and proposed measures, and calculations of how implementation of those measures would affect their energy use and carbon emissions.

      Singapore

      Singapore is generally hot and humid, and its building energy use is largely in the form of electricity for cooling. The city is dominated by high-rise buildings, so there’s not much space for rooftop solar installations to generate the needed electricity. Therefore, plans for decarbonizing the current building stock must involve retrofits. The shallow-retrofit scenario focuses on installing energy-efficient lighting and appliances. To those steps, the deep-retrofit scenario adds adopting a district cooling system. Singapore’s stated goals are to cut the baseline carbon emissions by about a third by 2030 and to cut it in half by 2050.

      The analysis shows that, with just the shallow retrofits, Singapore won’t achieve its 2030 goal. But with the deep retrofits, it should come close. Notably, decarbonizing the electric grid would enable Singapore to meet and substantially exceed its 2050 target assuming either retrofit scenario.

      Dublin

      Dublin has a mild climate with relatively comfortable summers but cold, humid winters. As a result, the city’s energy use is dominated by fossil fuels, in particular, natural gas for space heating and domestic hot water. The city presented just one target — a 40 percent reduction by 2030.

      Dublin has many neighborhoods made up of Georgian row houses, and, at the time of the workshop, the city already had a program in place encouraging groups of owners to insulate their walls. The shallow-retrofit scenario therefore focuses on weatherization upgrades (adding weatherstripping to windows and doors, insulating crawlspaces, and so on). To that list, the deep-retrofit scenario adds insulating walls and installing upgraded windows. The participants didn’t include electric heat pumps, as the city was then assessing the feasibility of expanding the existing district heating system.

      Results of the analyses show that implementing the shallow-retrofit scenario won’t enable Dublin to meet its 2030 target. But the deep-retrofit scenario will. However, like Singapore, Dublin could make major gains by decarbonizing its electric grid. The analysis shows that a decarbonized grid — with or without the addition of rooftop solar panels where possible — could more than halve the carbon emissions that remain in the deep-retrofit scenario. Indeed, a decarbonized grid plus electrification of the heating system by incorporating heat pumps could enable Dublin to meet a future net-zero target.

      Middlebury

      Middlebury, Vermont, has warm, wet summers and frigid winters. Like Dublin, its energy demand is dominated by natural gas for heating. But unlike Dublin, it already has a largely decarbonized electric grid with a high penetration of renewables.

      For the analysis, the Middlebury team chose to focus on an aging residential neighborhood similar to many that surround the city core. The shallow-retrofit scenario calls for installing heat pumps for space heating, and the deep-retrofit scenario adds improvements in building envelopes (the façade, roof, and windows). The town’s targets are a 40 percent reduction from the baseline by 2030 and net-zero carbon by 2050.

      Results of the analyses showed that implementing the shallow-retrofit scenario won’t achieve the 2030 target. The deep-retrofit scenario would get the city to the 2030 target but not to the 2050 target. Indeed, even with the deep retrofits, fossil fuel use remains high. The explanation? While both retrofit scenarios call for installing heat pumps for space heating, the city would continue to use natural gas to heat its hot water.

      Lessons learned

      For several policymakers, seeing the results of their analyses was a wake-up call. They learned that the strategies they had planned might not be sufficient to meet their stated goals — an outcome that could prove publicly embarrassing for them in the future.

      Like the policymakers, the researchers learned from the experience. Reinhart notes three main takeaways.

      First, he and his team were surprised to find how much of a building’s energy use and carbon emissions can be traced to domestic hot water. With Middlebury, for example, even switching from natural gas to heat pumps for space heating didn’t yield the expected effect: On the bar graphs generated by their analyses, the gray bars indicating carbon from fossil fuel use remained. As Reinhart recalls, “I kept saying, ‘What’s all this gray?’” While the policymakers talked about using heat pumps, they were still going to use natural gas to heat their hot water. “It’s just stunning that hot water is such a big-ticket item. It’s huge,” says Reinhart.

      Second, the results demonstrate the importance of including the state of the local electric grid in this type of analysis. “Looking at the results, it’s clear that if we want to have a successful energy transition, the building sector and the electric grid sector both have to do their homework,” notes Reinhart. Moreover, in many cases, reaching carbon neutrality by 2050 would require not only a carbon-free grid but also all-electric buildings.

      Third, Reinhart was struck by how different the bar graphs presenting results for the eight cities look. “This really celebrates the uniqueness of different parts of the world,” he says. “The physics used in the analysis is the same everywhere, but differences in the climate, the building stock, construction practices, electric grids, and other factors make the consequences of making the same change vary widely.”

      In addition, says Reinhart, “there are sometimes deeply ingrained conflicts of interest and cultural norms, which is why you cannot just say everybody should do this and do this.” For instance, in one case, the city owned both the utility and the natural gas it burned. As a result, the policymakers didn’t consider putting in heat pumps because “the natural gas was a significant source of municipal income, and they didn’t want to give that up,” explains Reinhart.

      Finally, the analyses quantified two other important measures: energy use and “peak load,” which is the maximum electricity demanded from the grid over a specific time period. Reinhart says that energy use “is probably mostly a plausibility check. Does this make sense?” And peak load is important because the utilities need to keep a stable grid.

      Middlebury’s analysis provides an interesting look at how certain measures could influence peak electricity demand. There, the introduction of electric heat pumps for space heating more than doubles the peak demand from buildings, suggesting that substantial additional capacity would have to be added to the grid in that region. But when heat pumps are combined with other retrofitting measures, the peak demand drops to levels lower than the starting baseline.

      The aftermath: An update

      Reinhart stresses that the specific results from the workshop provide just a snapshot in time; that is, where the cities were at the time of the workshop. “This is not the fate of the city,” he says. “If we were to do the same exercise today, we’d no doubt see a change in thinking, and the outcomes would be different.”

      For example, heat pumps are now familiar technology and have demonstrated their ability to handle even bitterly cold climates. And in some regions, they’ve become economically attractive, as the war in Ukraine has made natural gas both scarce and expensive. Also, there’s now awareness of the need to deal with hot water production.

      Reinhart notes that performing the analyses at the workshop did have the intended impact: It brought about change. Two years after the project had ended, most of the cities reported that they had implemented new policy measures or had expanded their analysis across their entire building stock. “That’s exactly what we want,” comments Reinhart. “This is not an academic exercise. It’s meant to change what people focus on and what they do.”

      Designing policies with socioeconomics in mind

      Reinhart notes a key limitation of the UBEM.io approach: It looks only at technical feasibility. But will the building owners be willing and able to make the energy-saving retrofits? Data show that — even with today’s incentive programs and subsidies — current adoption rates are only about 1 percent. “That’s way too low to enable a city to achieve its emission-reduction goals in 30 years,” says Reinhart. “We need to take into account the socioeconomic realities of the residents to design policies that are both effective and equitable.”

      To that end, the MIT team extended their UBEM.io approach to create a socio-techno-economic analysis framework that can predict the rate of retrofit adoption throughout a city. Based on census data, the framework creates a UBEM that includes demographics for the specific types of buildings in a city. Accounting for the cost of making a specific retrofit plus financial benefits from policy incentives and future energy savings, the model determines the economic viability of the retrofit package for representative households.

      Sample analyses for two Boston neighborhoods suggest that high-income households are largely ineligible for need-based incentives or the incentives are insufficient to prompt action. Lower-income households are eligible and could benefit financially over time, but they don’t act, perhaps due to limited access to information, a lack of time or capital, or a variety of other reasons.

      Reinhart notes that their work thus far “is mainly looking at technical feasibility. Next steps are to better understand occupants’ willingness to pay, and then to determine what set of federal and local incentive programs will trigger households across the demographic spectrum to retrofit their apartments and houses, helping the worldwide effort to reduce carbon emissions.”

      This work was supported by Shell through the MIT Energy Initiative. Zachary Berzolla was supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. Samuel Letellier-Duchesne was supported by the postdoctoral fellowship of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

      This article appears in the Spring 2023 issue of Energy Futures, the magazine of the MIT Energy Initiative. More

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      MIT welcomes Brian Deese as its next Institute Innovation Fellow

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      MIT has appointed former White House National Economic Council (NEC) director Brian Deese as an MIT Innovation Fellow, focusing on the impact of economic policies that strengthen the United States’ industrial capacity and on accelerating climate investment and innovation. Deese will begin his appointment this summer. 

      “From climate change to U.S. industrial strategy, the people of MIT strive to make serious positive change at scale — and in Brian Deese, we have found a brilliant ally, guide, and inspiration,“ says MIT President Sally Kornbluth. “He pairs an easy command of technological questions with a rare grasp of contemporary policy and the politics it takes for such policies to succeed. We are extremely fortunate to have Brian with us for this pivotal year.” 

      Deese is an accomplished public policy innovator. As President Joe Biden’s top economic advisor, he was instrumental in shaping several pieces of legislation — the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act  — that together are expected to yield more than $3 trillion over the next decade in public and private investments in physical infrastructure, semiconductors, and clean energy, as well as a major expansion of scientific research. 

      “I was attracted to MIT by its combination of extraordinary capabilities in engineering, science, and economics, and the desire and enthusiasm to translate those capabilities into real-world outcomes,” says Deese. 

      Climate and economic policy expertise

      Deese’s public service career has spanned multiple periods of global economic crisis. He has helped shape policies ranging from clean energy infrastructure investments to addressing supply chain disruptions triggered by the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. 

      As NEC director in the Biden White House, Deese oversaw the development of domestic and international economic policy. Previously, he served as the global head of sustainable investing at BlackRock, Inc., one of the world’s leading asset management firms; before that, he held several key posts in the Obama White House, serving as the president’s top advisor on climate policy; deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget; and deputy director of the NEC. Early in the Obama Administration, Deese played a key role in developing and implementing the rescue of the U.S. auto industry during the Great Recession. Deese earned a bachelor of arts degree from Middlebury College and his JD from Yale Law School.

      Despite recent legislative progress, the world still faces daunting climate and energy challenges, including the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, increase energy capacity, and fill infrastructure gaps, Deese notes.

      “Our biggest challenge is our biggest opportunity,” he says. “We need to build at a speed not seen in generations.”  

      Deese is also thinking about how to effectively design and implement industrial strategy approaches that build on recent efforts to restore the U.S. semiconductor industry. What’s needed, he says, is an approach that can foster innovation and build manufacturing capacity — especially in economically disadvantaged areas of the country — while learning lessons from previous successes and failures in this field. 

      “This is a timely and important appointment because Brian has enormous experience at the top levels of government in shaping public policies for climate, technology, manufacturing, and energy, and the consequences for  shared prosperity nationally and globally — all subjects of intense interest to the MIT community,” says MIT Associate Provost Richard Lester. “I fully expect that faculty and student engagement with Brian while he is with us will help advance MIT research, innovation, and impact in these critical areas.”

      Innovation fellowship

      Previous MIT Innovation Fellows, typically in residence for a year or more, have included luminaries from industry and government, including most recently Virginia M. “Ginny” Rometty, former chair, president, and CEO of IBM; Eric Schmidt, former executive chair of Google’s parent company, Alphabet; the late Ash Carter, former U.S. secretary of defense; and former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick.

      During his time at MIT, Deese will work on a project detailing and mapping private investment in clean energy and other climate-related activities. He will also interact with students, staff, and faculty from across the Institute. 

      “I hope my role at MIT can largely be about forging partnerships within the Institute and outside of the Institute to significantly reduce the time between innovation and outcomes into the world,” says Deese. More