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    Jessika Trancik named director of the Sociotechnical Systems Research Center

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    Jessika Trancik, a professor in MIT’s Institute for Data, Systems, and Society, has been named the new director of the Sociotechnical Systems Research Center (SSRC), effective July 1. The SSRC convenes and supports researchers focused on problems and solutions at the intersection of technology and its societal impacts.Trancik conducts research on technology innovation and energy systems. At the Trancik Lab, she and her team develop methods drawing on engineering knowledge, data science, and policy analysis. Their work examines the pace and drivers of technological change, helping identify where innovation is occurring most rapidly, how emerging technologies stack up against existing systems, and which performance thresholds matter most for real-world impact. Her models have been used to inform government innovation policy and have been applied across a wide range of industries.“Professor Trancik’s deep expertise in the societal implications of technology, and her commitment to developing impactful solutions across industries, make her an excellent fit to lead SSRC,” says Maria C. Yang, interim dean of engineering and William E. Leonhard (1940) Professor of Mechanical Engineering.Much of Trancik’s research focuses on the domain of energy systems, and establishing methods for energy technology evaluation, including of their costs, performance, and environmental impacts. She covers a wide range of energy services — including electricity, transportation, heating, and industrial processes. Her research has applications in solar and wind energy, energy storage, low-carbon fuels, electric vehicles, and nuclear fission. Trancik is also known for her research on extreme events in renewable energy availability.A prolific researcher, Trancik has helped measure progress and inform the development of solar photovoltaics, batteries, electric vehicle charging infrastructure, and other low-carbon technologies — and anticipate future trends. One of her widely cited contributions includes quantifying learning rates and identifying where targeted investments can most effectively accelerate innovation. These tools have been used by U.S. federal agencies, international organizations, and the private sector to shape energy R&D portfolios, climate policy, and infrastructure planning.Trancik is committed to engaging and informing the public on energy consumption. She and her team developed the app carboncounter.com, which helps users choose cars with low costs and low environmental impacts.As an educator, Trancik teaches courses for students across MIT’s five schools and the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing.“The question guiding my teaching and research is how do we solve big societal challenges with technology, and how can we be more deliberate in developing and supporting technologies to get us there?” Trancik said in an article about course IDS.521/IDS.065 (Energy Systems for Climate Change Mitigation).Trancik received her undergraduate degree in materials science and engineering from Cornell University. As a Rhodes Scholar, she completed her PhD in materials science at the University of Oxford. She subsequently worked for the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, and the Earth Institute at Columbia University. After serving as an Omidyar Research Fellow at the Santa Fe Institute, she joined MIT in 2010 as a faculty member.Trancik succeeds Fotini Christia, the Ford International Professor of Social Sciences in the Department of Political Science and director of IDSS, who previously served as director of SSRC. More

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      Surprisingly diverse innovations led to dramatically cheaper solar panels

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      The cost of solar panels has dropped by more than 99 percent since the 1970s, enabling widespread adoption of photovoltaic systems that convert sunlight into electricity.A new MIT study drills down on specific innovations that enabled such dramatic cost reductions, revealing that technical advances across a web of diverse research efforts and industries played a pivotal role.The findings could help renewable energy companies make more effective R&D investment decisions and aid policymakers in identifying areas to prioritize to spur growth in manufacturing and deployment.The researchers’ modeling approach shows that key innovations often originated outside the solar sector, including advances in semiconductor fabrication, metallurgy, glass manufacturing, oil and gas drilling, construction processes, and even legal domains.“Our results show just how intricate the process of cost improvement is, and how much scientific and engineering advances, often at a very basic level, are at the heart of these cost reductions. A lot of knowledge was drawn from different domains and industries, and this network of knowledge is what makes these technologies improve,” says study senior author Jessika Trancik, a professor in MIT’s Institute for Data, Systems, and Society.Trancik is joined on the paper by co-lead authors Goksin Kavlak, a former IDSS graduate student and postdoc who is now a senior energy associate at the Brattle Group; Magdalena Klemun, a former IDSS graduate student and postdoc who is now an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University; former MIT postdoc Ajinkya Kamat; as well as Brittany Smith and Robert Margolis of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. The research appears today in PLOS ONE.Identifying innovationsThis work builds on mathematical models that the researchers previously developed that tease out the effects of engineering technologies on the cost of photovoltaic (PV) modules and systems.In this study, the researchers aimed to dig even deeper into the scientific advances that drove those cost declines.They combined their quantitative cost model with a detailed, qualitative analysis of innovations that affected the costs of PV system materials, manufacturing steps, and deployment processes.“Our quantitative cost model guided the qualitative analysis, allowing us to look closely at innovations in areas that are hard to measure due to a lack of quantitative data,” Kavlak says.Building on earlier work identifying key cost drivers — such as the number of solar cells per module, wiring efficiency, and silicon wafer area — the researchers conducted a structured scan of the literature for innovations likely to affect these drivers. Next, they grouped these innovations to identify patterns, revealing clusters that reduced costs by improving materials or prefabricating components to streamline manufacturing and installation. Finally, the team tracked industry origins and timing for each innovation, and consulted domain experts to zero in on the most significant innovations.All told, they identified 81 unique innovations that affected PV system costs since 1970, from improvements in antireflective coated glass to the implementation of fully online permitting interfaces.“With innovations, you can always go to a deeper level, down to things like raw materials processing techniques, so it was challenging to know when to stop. Having that quantitative model to ground our qualitative analysis really helped,” Trancik says.They chose to separate PV module costs from so-called balance-of-system (BOS) costs, which cover things like mounting systems, inverters, and wiring.PV modules, which are wired together to form solar panels, are mass-produced and can be exported, while many BOS components are designed, built, and sold at the local level.“By examining innovations both at the BOS level and within the modules, we identify the different types of innovations that have emerged in these two parts of PV technology,” Kavlak says.BOS costs depend more on soft technologies, nonphysical elements such as permitting procedures, which have contributed significantly less to PV’s past cost improvement compared to hardware innovations.“Often, it comes down to delays. Time is money, and if you have delays on construction sites and unpredictable processes, that affects these balance-of-system costs,” Trancik says.Innovations such as automated permitting software, which flags code-compliant systems for fast-track approval, show promise. Though not yet quantified in this study, the team’s framework could support future analysis of their economic impact and similar innovations that streamline deployment processes.Interconnected industriesThe researchers found that innovations from the semiconductor, electronics, metallurgy, and petroleum industries played a major role in reducing both PV and BOS costs, but BOS costs were also impacted by innovations in software engineering and electric utilities.Noninnovation factors, like efficiency gains from bulk purchasing and the accumulation of knowledge in the solar power industry, also reduced some cost variables.In addition, while most PV panel innovations originated in research organizations or industry, many BOS innovations were developed by city governments, U.S. states, or professional associations.“I knew there was a lot going on with this technology, but the diversity of all these fields and how closely linked they are, and the fact that we can clearly see that network through this analysis, was interesting,” Trancik says.“PV was very well-positioned to absorb innovations from other industries — thanks to the right timing, physical compatibility, and supportive policies to adapt innovations for PV applications,” Klemun adds.The analysis also reveals the role greater computing power could play in reducing BOS costs through advances like automated engineering review systems and remote site assessment software.“In terms of knowledge spillovers, what we’ve seen so far in PV may really just be the beginning,” Klemun says, pointing to the expanding role of robotics and AI-driven digital tools in driving future cost reductions and quality improvements.In addition to their qualitative analysis, the researchers demonstrated how this methodology could be used to estimate the quantitative impact of a particular innovation if one has the numerical data to plug into the cost equation.For instance, using information about material prices and manufacturing procedures, they estimate that wire sawing, a technique which was introduced in the 1980s, led to an overall PV system cost decrease of $5 per watt by reducing silicon losses and increasing throughput during fabrication.“Through this retrospective analysis, you learn something valuable for future strategy because you can see what worked and what didn’t work, and the models can also be applied prospectively. It is also useful to know what adjacent sectors may help support improvement in a particular technology,” Trancik says.Moving forward, the researchers plan to apply this methodology to a wide range of technologies, including other renewable energy systems. They also want to further study soft technology to identify innovations or processes that could accelerate cost reductions.“Although the process of technological innovation may seem like a black box, we’ve shown that you can study it just like any other phenomena,” Trancik says.This research is funded, in part, by the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Energies Technology Office. More

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      Confronting the AI/energy conundrum

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      The explosive growth of AI-powered computing centers is creating an unprecedented surge in electricity demand that threatens to overwhelm power grids and derail climate goals. At the same time, artificial intelligence technologies could revolutionize energy systems, accelerating the transition to clean power.“We’re at a cusp of potentially gigantic change throughout the economy,” said William H. Green, director of the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) and Hoyt C. Hottel Professor in the MIT Department of Chemical Engineering, at MITEI’s Spring Symposium, “AI and energy: Peril and promise,” held on May 13. The event brought together experts from industry, academia, and government to explore solutions to what Green described as both “local problems with electric supply and meeting our clean energy targets” while seeking to “reap the benefits of AI without some of the harms.” The challenge of data center energy demand and potential benefits of AI to the energy transition is a research priority for MITEI.AI’s startling energy demandsFrom the start, the symposium highlighted sobering statistics about AI’s appetite for electricity. After decades of flat electricity demand in the United States, computing centers now consume approximately 4 percent of the nation’s electricity. Although there is great uncertainty, some projections suggest this demand could rise to 12-15 percent by 2030, largely driven by artificial intelligence applications.Vijay Gadepally, senior scientist at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory, emphasized the scale of AI’s consumption. “The power required for sustaining some of these large models is doubling almost every three months,” he noted. “A single ChatGPT conversation uses as much electricity as charging your phone, and generating an image consumes about a bottle of water for cooling.”Facilities requiring 50 to 100 megawatts of power are emerging rapidly across the United States and globally, driven both by casual and institutional research needs relying on large language programs such as ChatGPT and Gemini. Gadepally cited congressional testimony by Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, highlighting how fundamental this relationship has become: “The cost of intelligence, the cost of AI, will converge to the cost of energy.”“The energy demands of AI are a significant challenge, but we also have an opportunity to harness these vast computational capabilities to contribute to climate change solutions,” said Evelyn Wang, MIT vice president for energy and climate and the former director at the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) at the U.S. Department of Energy.Wang also noted that innovations developed for AI and data centers — such as efficiency, cooling technologies, and clean-power solutions — could have broad applications beyond computing facilities themselves.Strategies for clean energy solutionsThe symposium explored multiple pathways to address the AI-energy challenge. Some panelists presented models suggesting that while artificial intelligence may increase emissions in the short term, its optimization capabilities could enable substantial emissions reductions after 2030 through more efficient power systems and accelerated clean technology development.Research shows regional variations in the cost of powering computing centers with clean electricity, according to Emre Gençer, co-founder and CEO of Sesame Sustainability and former MITEI principal research scientist. Gençer’s analysis revealed that the central United States offers considerably lower costs due to complementary solar and wind resources. However, achieving zero-emission power would require massive battery deployments — five to 10 times more than moderate carbon scenarios — driving costs two to three times higher.“If we want to do zero emissions with reliable power, we need technologies other than renewables and batteries, which will be too expensive,” Gençer said. He pointed to “long-duration storage technologies, small modular reactors, geothermal, or hybrid approaches” as necessary complements.Because of data center energy demand, there is renewed interest in nuclear power, noted Kathryn Biegel, manager of R&D and corporate strategy at Constellation Energy, adding that her company is restarting the reactor at the former Three Mile Island site, now called the “Crane Clean Energy Center,” to meet this demand. “The data center space has become a major, major priority for Constellation,” she said, emphasizing how their needs for both reliability and carbon-free electricity are reshaping the power industry.Can AI accelerate the energy transition?Artificial intelligence could dramatically improve power systems, according to Priya Donti, assistant professor and the Silverman Family Career Development Professor in MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems. She showcased how AI can accelerate power grid optimization by embedding physics-based constraints into neural networks, potentially solving complex power flow problems at “10 times, or even greater, speed compared to your traditional models.”AI is already reducing carbon emissions, according to examples shared by Antonia Gawel, global director of sustainability and partnerships at Google. Google Maps’ fuel-efficient routing feature has “helped to prevent more than 2.9 million metric tons of GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions reductions since launch, which is the equivalent of taking 650,000 fuel-based cars off the road for a year,” she said. Another Google research project uses artificial intelligence to help pilots avoid creating contrails, which represent about 1 percent of global warming impact.AI’s potential to speed materials discovery for power applications was highlighted by Rafael Gómez-Bombarelli, the Paul M. Cook Career Development Associate Professor in the MIT Department of Materials Science and Engineering. “AI-supervised models can be trained to go from structure to property,” he noted, enabling the development of materials crucial for both computing and efficiency.Securing growth with sustainabilityThroughout the symposium, participants grappled with balancing rapid AI deployment against environmental impacts. While AI training receives most attention, Dustin Demetriou, senior technical staff member in sustainability and data center innovation at IBM, quoted a World Economic Forum article that suggested that “80 percent of the environmental footprint is estimated to be due to inferencing.” Demetriou emphasized the need for efficiency across all artificial intelligence applications.Jevons’ paradox, where “efficiency gains tend to increase overall resource consumption rather than decrease it” is another factor to consider, cautioned Emma Strubell, the Raj Reddy Assistant Professor in the Language Technologies Institute in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. Strubell advocated for viewing computing center electricity as a limited resource requiring thoughtful allocation across different applications.Several presenters discussed novel approaches for integrating renewable sources with existing grid infrastructure, including potential hybrid solutions that combine clean installations with existing natural gas plants that have valuable grid connections already in place. These approaches could provide substantial clean capacity across the United States at reasonable costs while minimizing reliability impacts.Navigating the AI-energy paradoxThe symposium highlighted MIT’s central role in developing solutions to the AI-electricity challenge.Green spoke of a new MITEI program on computing centers, power, and computation that will operate alongside the comprehensive spread of MIT Climate Project research. “We’re going to try to tackle a very complicated problem all the way from the power sources through the actual algorithms that deliver value to the customers — in a way that’s going to be acceptable to all the stakeholders and really meet all the needs,” Green said.Participants in the symposium were polled about priorities for MIT’s research by Randall Field, MITEI director of research. The real-time results ranked “data center and grid integration issues” as the top priority, followed by “AI for accelerated discovery of advanced materials for energy.”In addition, attendees revealed that most view AI’s potential regarding power as a “promise,” rather than a “peril,” although a considerable portion remain uncertain about the ultimate impact. When asked about priorities in power supply for computing facilities, half of the respondents selected carbon intensity as their top concern, with reliability and cost following. More

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      Recovering from the past and transitioning to a better energy future

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      As the frequency and severity of extreme weather events grow, it may become increasingly necessary to employ a bolder approach to climate change, warned Emily A. Carter, the Gerhard R. Andlinger Professor in Energy and the Environment at Princeton University. Carter made her case for why the energy transition is no longer enough in the face of climate change while speaking at the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) Presents: Advancing the Energy Transition seminar on the MIT campus.“If all we do is take care of what we did in the past — but we don’t change what we do in the future — then we’re still going to be left with very serious problems,” she said. Our approach to climate change mitigation must comprise transformation, intervention, and adaption strategies, said Carter. Transitioning to a decarbonized electricity system is one piece of the puzzle. Growing amounts of solar and wind energy — along with nuclear, hydropower, and geothermal — are slowly transforming the energy electricity landscape, but Carter noted that there are new technologies farther down the pipeline.  “Advanced geothermal may come on in the next couple of decades. Fusion will only really start to play a role later in the century, but could provide firm electricity such that we can start to decommission nuclear,” said Carter, who is also a senior strategic advisor and associate laboratory director at the Department of Energy’s Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. Taking this a step further, Carter outlined how this carbon-free electricity should then be used to electrify everything we can. She highlighted the industrial sector as a critical area for transformation: “The energy transition is about transitioning off of fossil fuels. If you look at the manufacturing industries, they are driven by fossil fuels right now. They are driven by fossil fuel-driven thermal processes.” Carter noted that thermal energy is much less efficient than electricity and highlighted electricity-driven strategies that could replace heat in manufacturing, such as electrolysis, plasmas, light-emitting diodes (LEDs) for photocatalysis, and joule heating. The transportation sector is also a key area for electrification, Carter said. While electric vehicles have become increasingly common in recent years, heavy-duty transportation is not as easily electrified. The solution? “Carbon-neutral fuels for heavy-duty aviation and shipping,” she said, emphasizing that these fuels will need to become part of the circular economy. “We know that when we burn those fuels, they’re going to produce CO2 [carbon dioxide] again. They need to come from a source of CO2 that is not fossil-based.” The next step is intervention in the form of carbon dioxide removal, which then necessitates methods of storage and utilization, according to Carter. “There’s a lot of talk about building large numbers of pipelines to capture the CO2 — from fossil fuel-driven power plants, cement plants, steel plants, all sorts of industrial places that emit CO2 — and then piping it and storing it in underground aquifers,” she explained. Offshore pipelines are much more expensive than those on land, but can mitigate public concerns over their safety. Europe is exclusively focusing their efforts offshore for this very reason, and the same could be true for the United States, Carter said.  Once carbon dioxide is captured, commercial utilization may provide economic leverage to accelerate sequestration, even if only a few gigatons are used per year, Carter noted. Through mineralization, CO2 can be converted into carbonates, which could be used in building materials such as concrete and road-paving materials.  There is another form of intervention that Carter currently views as a last resort: solar geoengineering, sometimes known as solar radiation management or SRM. In 1991, Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines erupted and released sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, which caused a temporary cooling of the Earth by approximately 0.5 degree Celsius for over a year. SRM seeks to recreate that cooling effect by injecting particles into the atmosphere that reflect sunlight. According to Carter, there are three main strategies: stratospheric aerosol injection, cirrus cloud thinning (thinning clouds to let more infrared radiation emitted by the earth escape to space), and marine cloud brightening (brightening clouds with sea salt so they reflect more light).  “My view is, I hope we don’t ever have to do it, but I sure think we should understand what would happen in case somebody else just decides to do it. It’s a global security issue,” said Carter. “In principle, it’s not so difficult technologically, so we’d like to really understand and to be able to predict what would happen if that happened.” With any technology, stakeholder and community engagement is essential for deployment, Carter said. She emphasized the importance of both respectfully listening to concerns and thoroughly addressing them, stating, “Hopefully, there’s enough information given to assuage their fears. We have to gain the trust of people before any deployment can be considered.” A crucial component of this trust starts with the responsibility of the scientific community to be transparent and critique each other’s work, Carter said. “Skepticism is good. You should have to prove your proof of principle.” MITEI Presents: Advancing the Energy Transition is an MIT Energy Initiative speaker series highlighting energy experts and leaders at the forefront of the scientific, technological, and policy solutions needed to transform our energy systems. The series will continue in fall 2025. For more information on this and additional events, visit the MITEI website. More

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      New facility to accelerate materials solutions for fusion energy

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      Fusion energy has the potential to enable the energy transition from fossil fuels, enhance domestic energy security, and power artificial intelligence. Private companies have already invested more than $8 billion to develop commercial fusion and seize the opportunities it offers. An urgent challenge, however, is the discovery and evaluation of cost-effective materials that can withstand extreme conditions for extended periods, including 150-million-degree plasmas and intense particle bombardment.To meet this challenge, MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC) has launched the Schmidt Laboratory for Materials in Nuclear Technologies, or LMNT (pronounced “element”). Backed by a philanthropic consortium led by Eric and Wendy Schmidt, LMNT is designed to speed up the discovery and selection of materials for a variety of fusion power plant components. By drawing on MIT’s expertise in fusion and materials science, repurposing existing research infrastructure, and tapping into its close collaborations with leading private fusion companies, the PSFC aims to drive rapid progress in the materials that are necessary for commercializing fusion energy on rapid timescales. LMNT will also help develop and assess materials for nuclear power plants, next-generation particle physics experiments, and other science and industry applications.Zachary Hartwig, head of LMNT and an associate professor in the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE), says, “We need technologies today that will rapidly develop and test materials to support the commercialization of fusion energy. LMNT’s mission includes discovery science but seeks to go further, ultimately helping select the materials that will be used to build fusion power plants in the coming years.”A different approach to fusion materialsFor decades, researchers have worked to understand how materials behave under fusion conditions using methods like exposing test specimens to low-energy particle beams, or placing them in the core of nuclear fission reactors. These approaches, however, have significant limitations. Low-energy particle beams only irradiate the thinnest surface layer of materials, while fission reactor irradiation doesn’t accurately replicate the mechanism by which fusion damages materials. Fission irradiation is also an expensive, multiyear process that requires specialized facilities.To overcome these obstacles, researchers at MIT and peer institutions are exploring the use of energetic beams of protons to simulate the damage materials undergo in fusion environments. Proton beams can be tuned to match the damage expected in fusion power plants, and protons penetrate deep enough into test samples to provide insights into how exposure can affect structural integrity. They also offer the advantage of speed: first, intense proton beams can rapidly damage dozens of material samples at once, allowing researchers to test them in days, rather than years. Second, high-energy proton beams can be generated with a type of particle accelerator known as a cyclotron commonly used in the health-care industry. As a result, LMNT will be built around a cost-effective, off-the-shelf cyclotron that is easy to obtain and highly reliable.LMNT will surround its cyclotron with four experimental areas dedicated to materials science research. The lab is taking shape inside the large shielded concrete vault at PSFC that once housed the Alcator C-Mod tokamak, a record-setting fusion experiment that ran at the PSFC from 1992 to 2016. By repurposing C-Mod’s former space, the center is skipping the need for extensive, costly new construction and accelerating the research timeline significantly. The PSFC’s veteran team — who have led major projects like the Alcator tokamaks and advanced high-temperature superconducting magnet development — are overseeing the facilities design, construction, and operation, ensuring LMNT moves quickly from concept to reality. The PSFC expects to receive the cyclotron by the end of 2025, with experimental operations starting in early 2026.“LMNT is the start of a new era of fusion research at MIT, one where we seek to tackle the most complex fusion technology challenges on timescales commensurate with the urgency of the problem we face: the energy transition,” says Nuno Loureiro, director of the PSFC, a professor of nuclear science and engineering, and the Herman Feshbach Professor of Physics. “It’s ambitious, bold, and critical — and that’s exactly why we do it.”“What’s exciting about this project is that it aligns the resources we have today — substantial research infrastructure, off-the-shelf technologies, and MIT expertise — to address the key resource we lack in tackling climate change: time. Using the Schmidt Laboratory for Materials in Nuclear Technologies, MIT researchers advancing fusion energy, nuclear power, and other technologies critical to the future of energy will be able to act now and move fast,” says Elsa Olivetti, the Jerry McAfee Professor in Engineering and a mission director of MIT’s Climate Project.In addition to advancing research, LMNT will provide a platform for educating and training students in the increasingly important areas of fusion technology. LMNT’s location on MIT’s main campus gives students the opportunity to lead research projects and help manage facility operations. It also continues the hands-on approach to education that has defined the PSFC, reinforcing that direct experience in large-scale research is the best approach to create fusion scientists and engineers for the expanding fusion industry workforce.Benoit Forget, head of NSE and the Korea Electric Power Professor of Nuclear Engineering, notes, “This new laboratory will give nuclear science and engineering students access to a unique research capability that will help shape the future of both fusion and fission energy.”Accelerating progress on big challengesPhilanthropic support has helped LMNT leverage existing infrastructure and expertise to move from concept to facility in just one-and-a-half years — a fast timeline for establishing a major research project.“I’m just as excited about this research model as I am about the materials science. It shows how focused philanthropy and MIT’s strengths can come together to build something that’s transformational — a major new facility that helps researchers from the public and private sectors move fast on fusion materials,” emphasizes Hartwig.By utilizing this approach, the PSFC is executing a major public-private partnership in fusion energy, realizing a research model that the U.S. fusion community has only recently started to explore, and demonstrating the crucial role that universities can play in the acceleration of the materials and technology required for fusion energy.“Universities have long been at the forefront of tackling society’s biggest challenges, and the race to identify new forms of energy and address climate change demands bold, high-risk, high-reward approaches,” says Ian Waitz, MIT’s vice president for research. “LMNT is helping turn fusion energy from a long-term ambition into a near-term reality.” More

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      How can India decarbonize its coal-dependent electric power system?

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      As the world struggles to reduce climate-warming carbon emissions, India has pledged to do its part, and its success is critical: In 2023, India was the third-largest carbon emitter worldwide. The Indian government has committed to having net-zero carbon emissions by 2070.To fulfill that promise, India will need to decarbonize its electric power system, and that will be a challenge: Fully 60 percent of India’s electricity comes from coal-burning power plants that are extremely inefficient. To make matters worse, the demand for electricity in India is projected to more than double in the coming decade due to population growth and increased use of air conditioning, electric cars, and so on.Despite having set an ambitious target, the Indian government has not proposed a plan for getting there. Indeed, as in other countries, in India the government continues to permit new coal-fired power plants to be built, and aging plants to be renovated and their retirement postponed.To help India define an effective — and realistic — plan for decarbonizing its power system, key questions must be addressed. For example, India is already rapidly developing carbon-free solar and wind power generators. What opportunities remain for further deployment of renewable generation? Are there ways to retrofit or repurpose India’s existing coal plants that can substantially and affordably reduce their greenhouse gas emissions? And do the responses to those questions differ by region?With funding from IHI Corp. through the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI), Yifu Ding, a postdoc at MITEI, and her colleagues set out to answer those questions by first using machine learning to determine the efficiency of each of India’s current 806 coal plants, and then investigating the impacts that different decarbonization approaches would have on the mix of power plants and the price of electricity in 2035 under increasingly stringent caps on emissions.First step: Develop the needed datasetAn important challenge in developing a decarbonization plan for India has been the lack of a complete dataset describing the current power plants in India. While other studies have generated plans, they haven’t taken into account the wide variation in the coal-fired power plants in different regions of the country. “So, we first needed to create a dataset covering and characterizing all of the operating coal plants in India. Such a dataset was not available in the existing literature,” says Ding.Making a cost-effective plan for expanding the capacity of a power system requires knowing the efficiencies of all the power plants operating in the system. For this study, the researchers used as their metric the “station heat rate,” a standard measurement of the overall fuel efficiency of a given power plant. The station heat rate of each plant is needed in order to calculate the fuel consumption and power output of that plant as plans for capacity expansion are being developed.Some of the Indian coal plants’ efficiencies were recorded before 2022, so Ding and her team used machine-learning models to predict the efficiencies of all the Indian coal plants operating now. In 2024, they created and posted online the first comprehensive, open-sourced dataset for all 806 power plants in 30 regions of India. The work won the 2024 MIT Open Data Prize. This dataset includes each plant’s power capacity, efficiency, age, load factor (a measure indicating how much of the time it operates), water stress, and more.In addition, they categorized each plant according to its boiler design. A “supercritical” plant operates at a relatively high temperature and pressure, which makes it thermodynamically efficient, so it produces a lot of electricity for each unit of heat in the fuel. A “subcritical” plant runs at a lower temperature and pressure, so it’s less thermodynamically efficient. Most of the Indian coal plants are still subcritical plants running at low efficiency.Next step: Investigate decarbonization optionsEquipped with their detailed dataset covering all the coal power plants in India, the researchers were ready to investigate options for responding to tightening limits on carbon emissions. For that analysis, they turned to GenX, a modeling platform that was developed at MITEI to help guide decision-makers as they make investments and other plans for the future of their power systems.Ding built a GenX model based on India’s power system in 2020, including details about each power plant and transmission network across 30 regions of the country. She also entered the coal price, potential resources for wind and solar power installations, and other attributes of each region. Based on the parameters given, the GenX model would calculate the lowest-cost combination of equipment and operating conditions that can fulfill a defined future level of demand while also meeting specified policy constraints, including limits on carbon emissions. The model and all data sources were also released as open-source tools for all viewers to use.Ding and her colleagues — Dharik Mallapragada, a former principal research scientist at MITEI who is now an assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular energy at NYU Tandon School of Engineering and a MITEI visiting scientist; and Robert J. Stoner, the founding director of the MIT Tata Center for Technology and Design and former deputy director of MITEI for science and technology — then used the model to explore options for meeting demands in 2035 under progressively tighter carbon emissions caps, taking into account region-to-region variations in the efficiencies of the coal plants, the price of coal, and other factors. They describe their methods and their findings in a paper published in the journal Energy for Sustainable Development.In separate runs, they explored plans involving various combinations of current coal plants, possible new renewable plants, and more, to see their outcome in 2035. Specifically, they assumed the following four “grid-evolution scenarios:”Baseline: The baseline scenario assumes limited onshore wind and solar photovoltaics development and excludes retrofitting options, representing a business-as-usual pathway.High renewable capacity: This scenario calls for the development of onshore wind and solar power without any supply chain constraints.Biomass co-firing: This scenario assumes the baseline limits on renewables, but here all coal plants — both subcritical and supercritical — can be retrofitted for “co-firing” with biomass, an approach in which clean-burning biomass replaces some of the coal fuel. Certain coal power plants in India already co-fire coal and biomass, so the technology is known.Carbon capture and sequestration plus biomass co-firing: This scenario is based on the same assumptions as the biomass co-firing scenario with one addition: All of the high-efficiency supercritical plants are also retrofitted for carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), a technology that captures and removes carbon from a power plant’s exhaust stream and prepares it for permanent disposal. Thus far, CCS has not been used in India. This study specifies that 90 percent of all carbon in the power plant exhaust is captured.Ding and her team investigated power system planning under each of those grid-evolution scenarios and four assumptions about carbon caps: no cap, which is the current situation; 1,000 million tons (Mt) of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, which reflects India’s announced targets for 2035; and two more-ambitious targets, namely 800 Mt and 500 Mt. For context, CO2 emissions from India’s power sector totaled about 1,100 Mt in 2021. (Note that transmission network expansion is allowed in all scenarios.)Key findingsAssuming the adoption of carbon caps under the four scenarios generated a vast array of detailed numerical results. But taken together, the results show interesting trends in the cost-optimal mix of generating capacity and the cost of electricity under the different scenarios.Even without any limits on carbon emissions, most new capacity additions will be wind and solar generators — the lowest-cost option for expanding India’s electricity-generation capacity. Indeed, this is observed to be the case now in India. However, the increasing demand for electricity will still require some new coal plants to be built. Model results show a 10 to 20 percent increase in coal plant capacity by 2035 relative to 2020.Under the baseline scenario, renewables are expanded up to the maximum allowed under the assumptions, implying that more deployment would be economical. More coal capacity is built, and as the cap on emissions tightens, there is also investment in natural gas power plants, as well as batteries to help compensate for the now-large amount of intermittent solar and wind generation. When a 500 Mt cap on carbon is imposed, the cost of electricity generation is twice as high as it was with no cap.The high renewable capacity scenario reduces the development of new coal capacity and produces the lowest electricity cost of the four scenarios. Under the most stringent cap — 500 Mt — onshore wind farms play an important role in bringing the cost down. “Otherwise, it’ll be very expensive to reach such stringent carbon constraints,” notes Ding. “Certain coal plants that remain run only a few hours per year, so are inefficient as well as financially unviable. But they still need to be there to support wind and solar.” She explains that other backup sources of electricity, such as batteries, are even more costly. The biomass co-firing scenario assumes the same capacity limit on renewables as in the baseline scenario, and the results are much the same, in part because the biomass replaces such a low fraction — just 20 percent — of the coal in the fuel feedstock. “This scenario would be most similar to the current situation in India,” says Ding. “It won’t bring down the cost of electricity, so we’re basically saying that adding this technology doesn’t contribute effectively to decarbonization.”But CCS plus biomass co-firing is a different story. It also assumes the limits on renewables development, yet it is the second-best option in terms of reducing costs. Under the 500 Mt cap on CO2 emissions, retrofitting for both CCS and biomass co-firing produces a 22 percent reduction in the cost of electricity compared to the baseline scenario. In addition, as the carbon cap tightens, this option reduces the extent of deployment of natural gas plants and significantly improves overall coal plant utilization. That increased utilization “means that coal plants have switched from just meeting the peak demand to supplying part of the baseline load, which will lower the cost of coal generation,” explains Ding.Some concernsWhile those trends are enlightening, the analyses also uncovered some concerns for India to consider, in particular, with the two approaches that yielded the lowest electricity costs.The high renewables scenario is, Ding notes, “very ideal.” It assumes that there will be little limiting the development of wind and solar capacity, so there won’t be any issues with supply chains, which is unrealistic. More importantly, the analyses showed that implementing the high renewables approach would create uneven investment in renewables across the 30 regions. Resources for onshore and offshore wind farms are mainly concentrated in a few regions in western and southern India. “So all the wind farms would be put in those regions, near where the rich cities are,” says Ding. “The poorer cities on the eastern side, where the coal power plants are, will have little renewable investment.”So the approach that’s best in terms of cost is not best in terms of social welfare, because it tends to benefit the rich regions more than the poor ones. “It’s like [the government will] need to consider the trade-off between energy justice and cost,” says Ding. Enacting state-level renewable generation targets could encourage a more even distribution of renewable capacity installation. Also, as transmission expansion is planned, coordination among power system operators and renewable energy investors in different regions could help in achieving the best outcome.CCS plus biomass co-firing — the second-best option for reducing prices — solves the equity problem posed by high renewables, and it assumes a more realistic level of renewable power adoption. However, CCS hasn’t been used in India, so there is no precedent in terms of costs. The researchers therefore based their cost estimates on the cost of CCS in China and then increased the required investment by 10 percent, the “first-of-a-kind” index developed by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Based on those costs and other assumptions, the researchers conclude that coal plants with CCS could come into use by 2035 when the carbon cap for power generation is less than 1,000 Mt.But will CCS actually be implemented in India? While there’s been discussion about using CCS in heavy industry, the Indian government has not announced any plans for implementing the technology in coal-fired power plants. Indeed, India is currently “very conservative about CCS,” says Ding. “Some researchers say CCS won’t happen because it’s so expensive, and as long as there’s no direct use for the captured carbon, the only thing you can do is put it in the ground.” She adds, “It’s really controversial to talk about whether CCS will be implemented in India in the next 10 years.”Ding and her colleagues hope that other researchers and policymakers — especially those working in developing countries — may benefit from gaining access to their datasets and learning about their methods. Based on their findings for India, she stresses the importance of understanding the detailed geographical situation in a country in order to design plans and policies that are both realistic and equitable. More

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      Using liquid air for grid-scale energy storage

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      As the world moves to reduce carbon emissions, solar and wind power will play an increasing role on electricity grids. But those renewable sources only generate electricity when it’s sunny or windy. So to ensure a reliable power grid — one that can deliver electricity 24/7 — it’s crucial to have a means of storing electricity when supplies are abundant and delivering it later, when they’re not. And sometimes large amounts of electricity will need to be stored not just for hours, but for days, or even longer.Some methods of achieving “long-duration energy storage” are promising. For example, with pumped hydro energy storage, water is pumped from a lake to another, higher lake when there’s extra electricity and released back down through power-generating turbines when more electricity is needed. But that approach is limited by geography, and most potential sites in the United States have already been used. Lithium-ion batteries could provide grid-scale storage, but only for about four hours. Longer than that and battery systems get prohibitively expensive.A team of researchers from MIT and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) has been investigating a less-familiar option based on an unlikely-sounding concept: liquid air, or air that is drawn in from the surroundings, cleaned and dried, and then cooled to the point that it liquefies. “Liquid air energy storage” (LAES) systems have been built, so the technology is technically feasible. Moreover, LAES systems are totally clean and can be sited nearly anywhere, storing vast amounts of electricity for days or longer and delivering it when it’s needed. But there haven’t been conclusive studies of its economic viability. Would the income over time warrant the initial investment and ongoing costs? With funding from the MIT Energy Initiative’s Future Energy Systems Center, the researchers developed a model that takes detailed information on LAES systems and calculates when and where those systems would be economically viable, assuming future scenarios in line with selected decarbonization targets as well as other conditions that may prevail on future energy grids.They found that under some of the scenarios they modeled, LAES could be economically viable in certain locations. Sensitivity analyses showed that policies providing a subsidy on capital expenses could make LAES systems economically viable in many locations. Further calculations showed that the cost of storing a given amount of electricity with LAES would be lower than with more familiar systems such as pumped hydro and lithium-ion batteries. They conclude that LAES holds promise as a means of providing critically needed long-duration storage when future power grids are decarbonized and dominated by intermittent renewable sources of electricity.The researchers — Shaylin A. Cetegen, a PhD candidate in the MIT Department of Chemical Engineering (ChemE); Professor Emeritus Truls Gundersen of the NTNU Department of Energy and Process Engineering; and MIT Professor Emeritus Paul I. Barton of ChemE — describe their model and their findings in a new paper published in the journal Energy.The LAES technology and its benefitsLAES systems consists of three steps: charging, storing, and discharging. When supply on the grid exceeds demand and prices are low, the LAES system is charged. Air is then drawn in and liquefied. A large amount of electricity is consumed to cool and liquefy the air in the LAES process. The liquid air is then sent to highly insulated storage tanks, where it’s held at a very low temperature and atmospheric pressure. When the power grid needs added electricity to meet demand, the liquid air is first pumped to a higher pressure and then heated, and it turns back into a gas. This high-pressure, high-temperature, vapor-phase air expands in a turbine that generates electricity to be sent back to the grid.According to Cetegen, a primary advantage of LAES is that it’s clean. “There are no contaminants involved,” she says. “It takes in and releases only ambient air and electricity, so it’s as clean as the electricity that’s used to run it.” In addition, a LAES system can be built largely from commercially available components and does not rely on expensive or rare materials. And the system can be sited almost anywhere, including near other industrial processes that produce waste heat or cold that can be used by the LAES system to increase its energy efficiency.Economic viabilityIn considering the potential role of LAES on future power grids, the first question is: Will LAES systems be attractive to investors? Answering that question requires calculating the technology’s net present value (NPV), which represents the sum of all discounted cash flows — including revenues, capital expenditures, operating costs, and other financial factors — over the project’s lifetime. (The study assumed a cash flow discount rate of 7 percent.)To calculate the NPV, the researchers needed to determine how LAES systems will perform in future energy markets. In those markets, various sources of electricity are brought online to meet the current demand, typically following a process called “economic dispatch:” The lowest-cost source that’s available is always deployed next. Determining the NPV of liquid air storage therefore requires predicting how that technology will fare in future markets competing with other sources of electricity when demand exceeds supply — and also accounting for prices when supply exceeds demand, so excess electricity is available to recharge the LAES systems.For their study, the MIT and NTNU researchers designed a model that starts with a description of an LAES system, including details such as the sizes of the units where the air is liquefied and the power is recovered, and also capital expenses based on estimates reported in the literature. The model then draws on state-of-the-art pricing data that’s released every year by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and is widely used by energy modelers worldwide. The NREL dataset forecasts prices, construction and retirement of specific types of electricity generation and storage facilities, and more, assuming eight decarbonization scenarios for 18 regions of the United States out to 2050.The new model then tracks buying and selling in energy markets for every hour of every day in a year, repeating the same schedule for five-year intervals. Based on the NREL dataset and details of the LAES system — plus constraints such as the system’s physical storage capacity and how often it can switch between charging and discharging — the model calculates how much money LAES operators would make selling power to the grid when it’s needed and how much they would spend buying electricity when it’s available to recharge their LAES system. In line with the NREL dataset, the model generates results for 18 U.S. regions and eight decarbonization scenarios, including 100 percent decarbonization by 2035 and 95 percent decarbonization by 2050, and other assumptions about future energy grids, including high-demand growth plus high and low costs for renewable energy and for natural gas.Cetegen describes some of their results: “Assuming a 100-megawatt (MW) system — a standard sort of size — we saw economic viability pop up under the decarbonization scenario calling for 100 percent decarbonization by 2035.” So, positive NPVs (indicating economic viability) occurred only under the most aggressive — therefore the least realistic — scenario, and they occurred in only a few southern states, including Texas and Florida, likely because of how those energy markets are structured and operate.The researchers also tested the sensitivity of NPVs to different storage capacities, that is, how long the system could continuously deliver power to the grid. They calculated the NPVs of a 100 MW system that could provide electricity supply for one day, one week, and one month. “That analysis showed that under aggressive decarbonization, weekly storage is more economically viable than monthly storage, because [in the latter case] we’re paying for more storage capacity than we need,” explains Cetegen.Improving the NPV of the LAES systemThe researchers next analyzed two possible ways to improve the NPV of liquid air storage: by increasing the system’s energy efficiency and by providing financial incentives. Their analyses showed that increasing the energy efficiency, even up to the theoretical limit of the process, would not change the economic viability of LAES under the most realistic decarbonization scenarios. On the other hand, a major improvement resulted when they assumed policies providing subsidies on capital expenditures on new installations. Indeed, assuming subsidies of between 40 percent and 60 percent made the NPVs for a 100 MW system become positive under all the realistic scenarios.Thus, their analysis showed that financial incentives could be far more effective than technical improvements in making LAES economically viable. While engineers may find that outcome disappointing, Cetegen notes that from a broader perspective, it’s good news. “You could spend your whole life trying to optimize the efficiency of this process, and it wouldn’t translate to securing the investment needed to scale the technology,” she says. “Policies can take a long time to implement as well. But theoretically you could do it overnight. So if storage is needed [on a future decarbonized grid], then this is one way to encourage adoption of LAES right away.”Cost comparison with other energy storage technologiesCalculating the economic viability of a storage technology is highly dependent on the assumptions used. As a result, a different measure — the “levelized cost of storage” (LCOS) — is typically used to compare the costs of different storage technologies. In simple terms, the LCOS is the cost of storing each unit of energy over the lifetime of a project, not accounting for any income that results.On that measure, the LAES technology excels. The researchers’ model yielded an LCOS for liquid air storage of about $60 per megawatt-hour, regardless of the decarbonization scenario. That LCOS is about a third that of lithium-ion battery storage and half that of pumped hydro. Cetegen cites another interesting finding: the LCOS of their assumed LAES system varied depending on where it’s being used. The standard practice of reporting a single LCOS for a given energy storage technology may not provide the full picture.Cetegen has adapted the model and is now calculating the NPV and LCOS for energy storage using lithium-ion batteries. But she’s already encouraged by the LCOS of liquid air storage. “While LAES systems may not be economically viable from an investment perspective today, that doesn’t mean they won’t be implemented in the future,” she concludes. “With limited options for grid-scale storage expansion and the growing need for storage technologies to ensure energy security, if we can’t find economically viable alternatives, we’ll likely have to turn to least-cost solutions to meet storage needs. This is why the story of liquid air storage is far from over. We believe our findings justify the continued exploration of LAES as a key energy storage solution for the future.” More

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      Taking the “training wheels” off clean energy

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      Renewable power sources have seen unprecedented levels of investment in recent years. But with political uncertainty clouding the future of subsidies for green energy, these technologies must begin to compete with fossil fuels on equal footing, said participants at the 2025 MIT Energy Conference.“What these technologies need less is training wheels, and more of a level playing field,” said Brian Deese, an MIT Institute Innovation Fellow, during a conference-opening keynote panel.The theme of the two-day conference, which is organized each year by MIT students, was “Breakthrough to deployment: Driving climate innovation to market.” Speakers largely expressed optimism about advancements in green technology, balanced by occasional notes of alarm about a rapidly changing regulatory and political environment.Deese defined what he called “the good, the bad, and the ugly” of the current energy landscape. The good: Clean energy investment in the United States hit an all-time high of $272 billion in 2024. The bad: Announcements of future investments have tailed off. And the ugly: Macro conditions are making it more difficult for utilities and private enterprise to build out the clean energy infrastructure needed to meet growing energy demands.“We need to build massive amounts of energy capacity in the United States,” Deese said. “And the three things that are the most allergic to building are high uncertainty, high interest rates, and high tariff rates. So that’s kind of ugly. But the question … is how, and in what ways, that underlying commercial momentum can drive through this period of uncertainty.”A shifting clean energy landscapeDuring a panel on artificial intelligence and growth in electricity demand, speakers said that the technology may serve as a catalyst for green energy breakthroughs, in addition to putting strain on existing infrastructure. “Google is committed to building digital infrastructure responsibly, and part of that means catalyzing the development of clean energy infrastructure that is not only meeting the AI need, but also benefiting the grid as a whole,” said Lucia Tian, head of clean energy and decarbonization technologies at Google.Across the two days, speakers emphasized that the cost-per-unit and scalability of clean energy technologies will ultimately determine their fate. But they also acknowledged the impact of public policy, as well as the need for government investment to tackle large-scale issues like grid modernization.Vanessa Chan, a former U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) official and current vice dean of innovation and entrepreneurship at the University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, warned of the “knock-on” effects of the move to slash National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding for indirect research costs, for example. “In reality, what you’re doing is undercutting every single academic institution that does research across the nation,” she said.During a panel titled “No clean energy transition without transmission,” Maria Robinson, former director of the DoE’s Grid Deployment Office, said that ratepayers alone will likely not be able to fund the grid upgrades needed to meet growing power demand. “The amount of investment we’re going to need over the next couple of years is going to be significant,” she said. “That’s where the federal government is going to have to play a role.”David Cohen-Tanugi, a clean energy venture builder at MIT, noted that extreme weather events have changed the climate change conversation in recent years. “There was a narrative 10 years ago that said … if we start talking about resilience and adaptation to climate change, we’re kind of throwing in the towel or giving up,” he said. “I’ve noticed a very big shift in the investor narrative, the startup narrative, and more generally, the public consciousness. There’s a realization that the effects of climate change are already upon us.”“Everything on the table”The conference featured panels and keynote addresses on a range of emerging clean energy technologies, including hydrogen power, geothermal energy, and nuclear fusion, as well as a session on carbon capture.Alex Creely, a chief engineer at Commonwealth Fusion Systems, explained that fusion (the combining of small atoms into larger atoms, which is the same process that fuels stars) is safer and potentially more economical than traditional nuclear power. Fusion facilities, he said, can be powered down instantaneously, and companies like his are developing new, less-expensive magnet technology to contain the extreme heat produced by fusion reactors.By the early 2030s, Creely said, his company hopes to be operating 400-megawatt power plants that use only 50 kilograms of fuel per year. “If you can get fusion working, it turns energy into a manufacturing product, not a natural resource,” he said.Quinn Woodard Jr., senior director of power generation and surface facilities at geothermal energy supplier Fervo Energy, said his company is making the geothermal energy more economical through standardization, innovation, and economies of scale. Traditionally, he said, drilling is the largest cost in producing geothermal power. Fervo has “completely flipped the cost structure” with advances in drilling, Woodard said, and now the company is focused on bringing down its power plant costs.“We have to continuously be focused on cost, and achieving that is paramount for the success of the geothermal industry,” he said.One common theme across the conference: a number of approaches are making rapid advancements, but experts aren’t sure when — or, in some cases, if — each specific technology will reach a tipping point where it is capable of transforming energy markets.“I don’t want to get caught in a place where we often descend in this climate solution situation, where it’s either-or,” said Peter Ellis, global director of nature climate solutions at The Nature Conservancy. “We’re talking about the greatest challenge civilization has ever faced. We need everything on the table.”The road aheadSeveral speakers stressed the need for academia, industry, and government to collaborate in pursuit of climate and energy goals. Amy Luers, senior global director of sustainability for Microsoft, compared the challenge to the Apollo spaceflight program, and she said that academic institutions need to focus more on how to scale and spur investments in green energy.“The challenge is that academic institutions are not currently set up to be able to learn the how, in driving both bottom-up and top-down shifts over time,” Luers said. “If the world is going to succeed in our road to net zero, the mindset of academia needs to shift. And fortunately, it’s starting to.”During a panel called “From lab to grid: Scaling first-of-a-kind energy technologies,” Hannan Happi, CEO of renewable energy company Exowatt, stressed that electricity is ultimately a commodity. “Electrons are all the same,” he said. “The only thing [customers] care about with regards to electrons is that they are available when they need them, and that they’re very cheap.”Melissa Zhang, principal at Azimuth Capital Management, noted that energy infrastructure development cycles typically take at least five to 10 years — longer than a U.S. political cycle. However, she warned that green energy technologies are unlikely to receive significant support at the federal level in the near future. “If you’re in something that’s a little too dependent on subsidies … there is reason to be concerned over this administration,” she said.World Energy CEO Gene Gebolys, the moderator of the lab-to-grid panel, listed off a number of companies founded at MIT. “They all have one thing in common,” he said. “They all went from somebody’s idea, to a lab, to proof-of-concept, to scale. It’s not like any of this stuff ever ends. It’s an ongoing process.” More

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      Surprise discovery could lead to improved catalysts for industrial reactions

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      The process of catalysis — in which a material speeds up a chemical reaction — is crucial to the production of many of the chemicals used in our everyday lives. But even though these catalytic processes are widespread, researchers often lack a clear understanding of exactly how they work.A new analysis by researchers at MIT has shown that an important industrial synthesis process, the production of vinyl acetate, requires a catalyst to take two different forms, which cycle back and forth from one to the other as the chemical process unfolds.Previously, it had been thought that only one of the two forms was needed. The new findings are published today in the journal Science, in a paper by MIT graduate students Deiaa Harraz and Kunal Lodaya, Bryan Tang PhD ’23, and MIT professor of chemistry and chemical engineering Yogesh Surendranath.There are two broad classes of catalysts: homogeneous catalysts, which consist of dissolved molecules, and heterogeneous catalysts, which are solid materials whose surface provides the site for the chemical reaction. “For the longest time,” Surendranath says, “there’s been a general view that you either have catalysis happening on these surfaces, or you have them happening on these soluble molecules.” But the new research shows that in the case of vinyl acetate — an important material that goes into many polymer products such as the rubber in the soles of your shoes — there is an interplay between both classes of catalysis.“What we discovered,” Surendranath explains, “is that you actually have these solid metal materials converting into molecules, and then converting back into materials, in a cyclic dance.”He adds: “This work calls into question this paradigm where there’s either one flavor of catalysis or another. Really, there could be an interplay between both of them in certain cases, and that could be really advantageous for having a process that’s selective and efficient.”The synthesis of vinyl acetate has been a large-scale industrial reaction since the 1960s, and it has been well-researched and refined over the years to improve efficiency. This has happened largely through a trial-and-error approach, without a precise understanding of the underlying mechanisms, the researchers say.While chemists are often more familiar with homogeneous catalysis mechanisms, and chemical engineers are often more familiar with surface catalysis mechanisms, fewer researchers study both. This is perhaps part of the reason that the full complexity of this reaction was not previously captured. But Harraz says he and his colleagues are working at the interface between disciplines. “We’ve been able to appreciate both sides of this reaction and find that both types of catalysis are critical,” he says.The reaction that produces vinyl acetate requires something to activate the oxygen molecules that are one of the constituents of the reaction, and something else to activate the other ingredients, acetic acid and ethylene. The researchers found that the form of the catalyst that worked best for one part of the process was not the best for the other. It turns out that the molecular form of the catalyst does the key chemistry with the ethylene and the acetic acid, while it’s the surface that ends up doing the activation of the oxygen.They found that the underlying process involved in interconverting the two forms of the catalyst is actually corrosion, similar to the process of rusting. “It turns out that in rusting, you actually go through a soluble molecular species somewhere in the sequence,” Surendranath says.The team borrowed techniques traditionally used in corrosion research to study the process. They used electrochemical tools to study the reaction, even though the overall reaction does not require a supply of electricity. By making potential measurements, the researchers determined that the corrosion of the palladium catalyst material to soluble palladium ions is driven by an electrochemical reaction with the oxygen, converting it to water. Corrosion is “one of the oldest topics in electrochemistry,” says Lodaya, “but applying the science of corrosion to understand catalysis is much newer, and was essential to our findings.”By correlating measurements of catalyst corrosion with other measurements of the chemical reaction taking place, the researchers proposed that it was the corrosion rate that was limiting the overall reaction. “That’s the choke point that’s controlling the rate of the overall process,” Surendranath says.The interplay between the two types of catalysis works efficiently and selectively “because it actually uses the synergy of a material surface doing what it’s good at and a molecule doing what it’s good at,” Surendranath says. The finding suggests that, when designing new catalysts, rather than focusing on either solid materials or soluble molecules alone, researchers should think about how the interplay of both may open up new approaches.“Now, with an improved understanding of what makes this catalyst so effective, you can try to design specific materials or specific interfaces that promote the desired chemistry,” Harraz says. Since this process has been worked on for so long, these findings may not necessarily lead to improvements in this specific process of making vinyl acetate, but it does provide a better understanding of why the materials work as they do, and could lead to improvements in other catalytic processes.Understanding that “catalysts can transit between molecule and material and back, and the role that electrochemistry plays in those transformations, is a concept that we are really excited to expand on,” Lodaya says.Harraz adds: “With this new understanding that both types of catalysis could play a role, what other catalytic processes are out there that actually involve both? Maybe those have a lot of room for improvement that could benefit from this understanding.”This work is “illuminating, something that will be worth teaching at the undergraduate level,” says Christophe Coperet, a professor of inorganic chemistry at ETH Zurich, who was not associated with the research. “The work highlights new ways of thinking. … [It] is notable in the sense that it not only reconciles homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysis, but it describes these complex processes as half reactions, where electron transfers can cycle between distinct entities.”The research was supported, in part, by the National Science Foundation as a Phase I Center for Chemical Innovation; the Center for Interfacial Ionics; and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. More