CS3 In the Media

Valerie Karplus and Michael Davidson | MIT Joint Program

After two weeks of negotiations, the Paris climate talks that ended on December 12 delivered the foundations of a post-2020 climate regime.

To advance climate change mitigation efforts, the new agreement incorporates national targets for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for 2025/2030, a new five-year cycle to establish subsequent targets, a reporting and review placeholder, and official stocktaking two years prior to those submissions to compare global progress against long-term goals.

In Paris, 189 of 195 participating countries pledged action in the form of intended nationally determined contributions, or INDCs. These pledges will be assessed in 2018 to encourage countries, where possible, to increase the level of ambition.

The review mechanism agreed on in Paris is a crucial first step. The new climate regime has also been lauded for its transparency provisions, which will be essential to establishing trust in the review process.

Implementing the pledge review process laid out in Paris will not be easy, but it is necessary to have a chance of ratcheting up efforts over time to meet the agreement’s ultimate goal of limiting global temperature rise to well below 2 degrees Celsius.

It is here that research universities and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) will have an important role to play.

A transparent review process

A functioning review process will require open and collaborative participation of signatory countries but should not rely solely on an expanded global bureaucracy. The vast majority of third-party analysis on countries’ energy and climate policies comes from academic and nongovernmental organizations, which should be strengthened following Paris.

Official reporting and review processes have existed since the framework convention in 1992. Over time, they have evolved to include periodic communications and highly structured reviews – differentiated by developing and developed countries – performed by a small set of accredited UN experts and other countries themselves. Paris strengthened these requirements by requiring, among other items, all major economies to submit biennial reports and a unified review of all countries' submissions.

Many parts of the current agreement are placeholders for detailed provisions to be decided over the coming years. We argue that in the new architecture of bottom-up pledges, the international community has an increased responsibility to assess levels of effort and abilities to scale up successful approaches.

Because of the complexity of nations' institutions, these mechanisms should be designed to enhance both the quality and impact of research outside formal UN processes. In particular, to both assess and support country pledges with an aim to accelerating global emissions reductions, we need significantly more transparency on pledges and policies and a flexible review process that can respond to concerns from academia.

Measurable and model-able pledges allow research communities to arrive separately at their own assessments of countries’ relative levels of effort and progress toward national commitments.

For example, using a countrywide energy-economic model of China, our collaborative team of researchers from Tsinghua University and MIT estimated annual reductions of over four Gigatons CO2 per year in 2030 in a scenario consistent with that country’s Paris pledge compared to a no-policy case. This reduction would equal approximately three times Japan’s CO2 emissions in 2014. More importantly, this work helped policymakers in and outside of China understand how policies then under consideration could help the country reach peak CO2 emissions in 2030, with the help of a CO2 price.

Many other groups arrived independently at estimates of available CO2 emissions reductions from the Chinese economy. It is exercises like these that offer transparency, credibility and – perhaps most importantly – an opportunity to probe and enhance a shared understanding of the implications of national commitments that remain at arm’s length from the political arena.

Beyond pledges

Assessments of pledge progress reports would naturally be more convincing if accompanied by a suite of policy actions and planned changes in existing institutions and processes to facilitate implementation.

To reinforce pledges, countries are called on in the agreement to submit “information necessary to track progress.” More concretely, they should be asked to compile a list of implementing directives, challenges faced and proposed pathways, given that most governments are establishing domestic policies prior to announcing them on the global stage in future climate talks.

For instance, the US’ Clean Power Plan, a crucial policy in the absence of nationwide climate legislation, will face significant court challenges.

Reporting requirements should explicitly recognize these domestic policy constraints, allowing the scientific and modeling community to consider their implications and investigate, as needed, alternative policy pathways.

Data challenges

A transparent, arm’s-length review process will also help to generate internationally credible assessments of GHG abatement efforts in developing countries, where accounting challenges are significant.

As a case in point, China, which targets a 60%-65% reduction in its CO2 intensity in 2030, relative to 2005 levels, is well known for its challenges in reporting accurate data. The country recently revised upward how much coal it has been burning every year by as much as 17%.

Indeed, data revisions will occur, particularly in developing countries that are in the process of establishing data collection systems.

The biennial reporting requirement agreed to in Paris can provide a regular avenue to incorporate revisions. The research community can also help by incorporating revisions into models and assessing implications for meeting emissions goals.

Negotiators further agreed that national commitments should be communicated to “facilitate clarity, transparency and understanding.” This should extend to the range of assumptions and calculation methodologies.

For example, conventions for calculating the nonfossil share of primary energy differs among countries and agencies. China uses the coal-equivalent method, which equates electricity use to the coal use it displaces, while the International Energy Agency employs the direct-equivalent method, which yields smaller percentages for a given level of deployment.

Another benefit of engaging research communities is scaled-up technical analysis and support, while added redundancy allows for multiple independent assessments of progress. These assessments can help identify and laud when countries exceed their goals, encourage upward revisions by expanding successful programs, identify reasons for slow progress and inform technological and policy solutions.

Peer-reviewed pledges

Transparency is critical, and redundancy will further limit – although not entirely avoid – any efforts to undermine the integrity of the process.

Building on previous pledging systems, an important change in Paris was to create a common technical expert review, composed of a limited number of accredited experts with special training. These experts could play an important role in knowledge assessment and synthesis of the country analysis outside experts deliver. In addition, the review should be constructed to allow for official clarification of methodologies such as those raised above.

Stocktaking processes will also be decided over the coming years, and galvanizing a wide range of civil society researchers will likewise be critical to success. The range of emissions gap reports in advance of Paris, a case in point, illuminated important assumptions for future trends such as expected levels of future efforts, or ratcheting.

The requirement to take stock every five years has the potential to become a focal point for wide-ranging studies on long-term goals.

Engaging the broader community

The Paris agreement institutionalizes a periodic review of pledges such that countries are expected to come back both with increased commitments and progress reports. This process will be absolutely critical if we are to come close to achieving the most ambitious climate change mitigation goals embodied in the Paris agreement.

Engaging the broader research community in the review process is our best hope for generating credible estimates of how we are doing as a planet. A critical part of this will be equipping researchers in developing countries to participate as equal partners in this assessment effort.

Up to now, pledges have been the key measure of a climate regime’s success. But only if it devotes just as much ambition to review as it does to pledges can the new global climate regime truly deliver.

Authors

Valerie J Karplus, Assistant Professor of Global Economics and Management, MIT Sloan School of Management

Michael Davidson, PhD Candidate in engineering systems , Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The Conversation is a collaboration between editors and academics to provide informed news analysis and commentary that’s free to read and republish.

Photo: Valerie Karplus takes questions at a panel discussion held by the MIT Club of Paris during the COP21 talks. (Source: Emily Dahl/MIT Energy Initiative)

Posted by Michael Davidson and Valerie Karplus on Dec 11, 2015

From the Paris Climate Negotiations

National goal-setting—an expected key outcome from the Paris climate talks currently underway—is a common fixture of policy-making in China and many other countries. Collectively, the current pledges still show significant gaps toward meeting long-term climate goals. Nevertheless, they represent an important increase in scope and ambition over those pledged in advance of the 2009 Copenhagen summit, and those established earlier under the Kyoto Protocol. There is great importance in—and a growing consensus around—enhancing these previous rounds of commitments through a pledge-and-review institution, which if designed properly can also mobilize domestic constituencies even across a wide range of political systems. As China and other countries begin to consider their next steps, we explain here the interaction of international and domestic policy-making in setting climate action targets in China.

China’s Increasingly Stringent International Commitments

China in particular stands out for its evolution over this period as it has taken on increasingly stringent international commitments in tandem with massive climate and energy programs at home. Looking at its domestic constituencies—including extremely powerful fossil fuel and local government interests that are net losers under a carbon control program without compensation—this transition over the span of less than a decade is striking.

Economic advantages as a major clean energy equipment exporter, international pressure as China transitioned to the world’s largest emitter, and pervasive concerns over air pollution have helped persuade central policymakers. In turn, we find that central figures have created and used international pledges (outer – Wai) as a lever to push for and prioritize domestic action (inner – Nei). To understand how this works, we describe how underneath China’s unitary central government lies a complex policy-making hierarchy, which reinforces actions and realigns interest groups to further a transition toward low-carbon energy sources.

Climate Targets in Three Flavors

China’s energy-related climate targets come in three flavors: 1) intensity-based targets with respect to economic growth; 2) shares of energy supply, i.e., minimum non-fossil proportion of primary energy; and, most recently, 3) a CO2 peaking year (though not peaking amount). A sudden increase in energy-intensive production over 2002-2005 created concerns of energy insecurity and led to the establishment of the first flavor, energy intensity “binding targets” (约束性目标) in the 11th Five-Year-Plan (2006-2010). A medium-term target of the second flavor, to achieve a non-fossil energy share in primary energy¹ of 15% by 2020, was established in a 2007 energy strategy document together with a range of other expansion goals meant more as guidelines than targets. At that point in time, there was no discussion of peaking emissions on the horizon.

In studies of China’s governance system—especially the target-setting process—it is well-known that more targets are given than are expected to be followed. Thus, prioritizing central directives is a crucial exercise for provincial governments, the typical implementing institutions (state-owned enterprises are the other). These decisions are made based on different assessments of importance, but binding targets established in five-year-plans as well as internationalized commitments are given high weight.

In 2010, on the heels of the Copenhagen climate talks, it was announced that several provinces were behind schedule in reducing energy intensity. Premier Wen Jiabao, who had delivered China’s international climate commitment, became the central domestic figure rounding up the laggards. China’s pledge in preparation for those talks also raised the non-fossil energy target out of obscurity and enshrined a CO2 intensity objective, which joined energy as a binding target in the 12th Five-Year-Plan released two years later.

Over the next five years, China’s central agencies set forth a number of climate and energy policies, ranging from traditional mandatory approaches such as scaled-up industrial energy efficiency mandates to newer economic incentives such as standardized electricity tariffs for all renewable energies and carbon cap-and-trade pilots. These had the support of the important National Leading Group on Climate Change, Energy Conservation and Emissions Reduction, which in turn has cited responsibility to meet internationalized commitments.

Inside China’s Policymaking

A simplified sketch of the importance of highly publicized goals, using the recent round of electricity reform as an example, is instructive. In 2013, central party leaders set guiding principles on a new round of market reforms through small leading groups—which have a long history of directing central policy—chaired by President Xi Jinping, and last year set timetables for specific reforms. Language—e.g., related to the role of the market—was translated into a high-level State Council energy strategy document in 2014 and ultimately a blueprint for electricity sector reorganization released this year. Finally, agencies such as the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and the National Energy Administration (NEA) have visited localities to emphasize the importance of the specific reform measures, and have established policy and implementing measures (e.g., to improve renewable energy utilization). At each step, the crucial link with central goals was preserved, ensuring that the drafting—typically not done by State Council staff—helped unambiguously establish priorities.

International and Domestic Policy Reinforcing Each Other

China’s Paris commitment expands this process by incorporating the three flavors of targets and helping shape future domestic actions. To increase non-fossil energy share, China promised to implement “green power dispatch” in a joint US-China announcement made prior to this year’s UN talks. And a CO2 peaking year of no later than 2030 will provide much-needed urgency to establishing rules and accountability for the upcoming national cap-and-trade system.

This policy process has clear implications for the importance of a robust pledge-and-review institution. China’s commitments—including a US$3.1 bn climate fund for developing countries—helped build momentum for Paris. The UN process can also help ratchet up and improve implementation of commitments by ensuring there are frequent reviews of existing pledges and continued opportunities for new ones. This will not only prompt central leaders to make bolder commitments but also provide ammunition for those seeking further domestic reforms to achieve them.

^1.Importantly, China’s calculation of primary energy deviates from international conventions. See Lewis et al 2015.

Michael Davidson is a PhD candidate in engineering systems at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and a research assistant in the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change. Dr. Valerie Karplus, a ChinaFAQs expert, is an Assistant Professor in the Global Economics and Management Group at the MIT Sloan School of Management, and a Faculty Affiliate of the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change.

ChinaFAQs is a project facilitated by the World Resources Institute that provides insight into critical questions about Chinese policy and action on energy and climate change. The ChinaFAQs network is comprised of U.S.-based experts, including researchers at U.S. universities and government laboratories, independent scholars, and other professionals. 

Photo: China and U.S. pavilions at COP21. The U.S. and China announced their international commitments together in advance of the Paris talks. (Photo by Michael Davidson)

MIT events throughout climate talks underscore Institute's global perspectives and partnerships

Cassie Martin | Oceans at MIT 

Navigating the current U.S. political climate can be tricky business, especially when it comes to science policy. With Congress divided more than ever on numerous important issues, including climate change, it’s important for legislators to have access to experts and the best available scientific research. Earlier this year, graduate students and faculty from the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences’ Program in Atmospheres, Oceans, and Climate traveled to our nation’s capital on a mission to bring them the latest atmospheric and geoscience research — and build relationships with policymakers on both sides of the aisle.

Dan Cziczo, an associate professor of atmospheric chemistry, met with senators from Massachusetts and Maryland during Weather Day on the Hill hosted by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR). “It was fun and a great learning experience for me,” he said. “We were there to make people aware of what we're doing with the funding we receive and how it’s not just abstract science but impacts everyday life.”

Cziczo not only cleared up common misconceptions such as where weather information comes from, he also discussed the science behind increases in temperature and severe storms. But it’s not enough to just give legislators a quick primer on the latest science. Researchers also have to make it relatable. For Cziczo, that meant tying the changes in temperature and storms to agriculture. “Policymakers put a great emphasis on their particular constituents and their state’s economic growth. Bringing [the science] back to a global picture is I think really helpful,” he said.

It’s not just faculty that are offering their scientific services, MIT students are also getting in on the action through various organizations, including the American Meteorological Society (AMS). “Working with students is great,” said Ya’el Seid-Green, an AMS policy program associate. “We think one of the best things we can be doing is getting to people early in their career and helping them think about how their work fits into society and fits into policymaking.”

Much like Cziczo, MIT graduate students Daniel Gilford and Dan Rothenberg met with various congressional aides through AMS earlier this year during Weather, Water, and Climate Day to offer themselves as a resource. “As scientists, it's tempting to sit at our desks all day and do research and never get out and talk with people face to face about what we're doing, what we think is important, and how what we're doing relates to other people,” said Gilford, who is also a student coordinator for MIT’s Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change. “We’re used to writing scientific papers, but it's more challenging to communicate science well to people who don't have a strong background in science or your specific research area.”

Another item on their agenda was to emphasize the importance of funding geoscience research — an all-encompassing term that refers to the scientific fields dealing with planet Earth. Sequestration of the federal budget in 2013 tightened the belt around scientific funding sources across all fields, and researchers are still feeling the effects. Now it’s more important than ever for policymakers to know where the money they allocate for scientific research goes and how that research benefits their constituents. For Gilford and Rothenberg, meeting with congressional aides was an opportunity to put faces on the dollar signs without advocating for specific legislation or federal agencies — an AMS policy.

“When you pour money into geosciences to support students like myself, we can go on to do a lot of different research that's important for stakeholders and improves the research community,” Gilford said. When he isn’t building relationships with congressional offices, Gilford studies the impact of atmospheric radiation on hurricanes. His research, which has important implications for people living along the East Coast and the Gulf of Mexico, opened up some great conversations about climate and extreme weather. “I was pleasantly surprised and impressed at the level of engagement. I didn’t get the feeling we were unwanted at any point. Everybody understood we were there to help, we weren’t there as some sort of lobbying team.”

Fostering conversations of climate change, a politically fraught subject on Capitol Hill, requires a delicate touch. Some policymakers are more open to discussions than others, and in some instances even uttering the phrase can shut down dialogues. Through his work with AMS and the MIT Science Policy Initiative, Rothenberg has developed indirect approaches to opening up the climate change conversation, such as using buzzwords and reframing his research. “I can spin it a lot of ways, like how air pollution affects clouds, or building models of clouds to predict thunderstorms,” said Rothenberg, a physicist who studies clouds in the context of climate. “Any time you can link it back to economics and public safety, you can usually hook in and get a good conversation going.”

Rothenberg currently resides in Massachusetts, but he originally hails from Kentucky and has developed a good relationship with Republican Senator Mitch McConnell’s office over the years. Although currently embattled with the Obama Administration over the Environmental Protection Agency's Clean Power Plan, McConnell still focuses on science and environmental issues at home in Kentucky. In the past, he has helped sponsor bipartisan legislation to boost federal science funding such as the original America COMPETES act, which aims to improve the competitiveness of the United States through investing in innovative science, technology, and education.

But legislators need access to sound science to affect sound science policy like the COMPETES act — something that isn’t always available. Throughout the years, Rothenberg has happily answered questions from McConnell’s office, but not all of them are related to atmospheric science. The problem, Rothenberg says, is the lack of scientists willing to meet with policymakers. “The biggest barrier [to building science policy relationships] is the mismatch of interests,” he said.

Scientists’ reluctance to build relationships with politicians stems from a fear of harming their reputation for being objective and unbiased. Although that is a legitimate concern, there are ways to make connections and maintain moral and scientific integrity. “If your goal is to develop a relationship with offices as a person they can come to for the scientifically validated information they need — if you’re just willing to do that, it’s not murky politically,” said Rothenberg. “I’ve never met an office that didn’t love science. It’s very bipartisan. In terms of wanting the facts so they can do the best job they can, no politician is going to turn down scientists.”

Congressional visit days through AMS and the MIT Science Policy Initiative are an invaluable scientific resource for policymakers. But they also provide researchers with new perspectives on the inner workings of the policy process. “It's really easy to get cynical about science and politics, but if you go up there and meet the people who work on the hill, you'll learn they are incredibly smart, dedicated, and hardworking,” said Ya’el Seid-Green. “It gives you a better appreciation for the hard work that goes into making policy. It breeds mutual respect between the science and policy communities.”

Photo: MIT atmospheric chemist Dan Cziczo meets with Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) during a Congressional Visit Day (Courtesy of Dan Cziczo)

Kelsey Damrad | Civil and Environmental Engineering

Amid a changing climate, population growth, rapid development, and pervasive urbanization, an unprecedented threat to the world’s food and water supply is more apparent than ever before. In fact, it is predicted that 70 percent more food will be needed by 2050 and the demand for water will triple.

"To date, we’ve met the food and water challenge to a significant extent through technology, as exemplified in the 'green revolution,' but there are still significant problems to solve. We’re optimistic that MIT will have a major role in meeting the world’s challenges around food and water supply," John Lienhard, director of the Abdul Latif Jameel World Water and Food Security Lab (J-WAFS) at MIT, said in the opening remarks at the third annual MIT Water Summit held Nov. 13-14 on campus.

"Workshops such as this are critical to raise awareness and build momentum towards solving the grand water challenges of our world," said Elfatih Eltahir, associate department head and a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE). "The Water Summit was a wonderful opportunity for open and transparent discussions that helped in reaching better definitions of water problems and paved the way for new and innovative solutions."

An MIT Water Club team — comprised of MIT graduate students Reetik Kumar Sahu, Anjuli Jain Figueroa, Alexis Fischer, Matthew Willner, Brendan Smith, and Isadora Cruxen — organized this year’s Water Summit into three conversation panels: Interpret, Innovate, andImplement. The team brought together more than 200 members of the MIT and non-MIT communities to discuss the role of climate change in global water challenges.

Over the course of two days, several representatives from academia, government, and industry were invited to present.

Adaptation to climate change means embracing uncertainty

"The biggest risk to our water systems is our social norms," Col. John Henderson of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said. "We, as a society, may not be adapting fast enough." Of course, the path leading to full adaptation to climate change is far from clear, he added.

The Interpret panel included Henderson, Camille Touton of the U. S. Department of the Interior, Scott Doney of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI), Manoj Fenelon of the Aspen Institute, and MIT graduate student Jordon Hemingway as moderator.

One major hindrance that Fenelon said prevents climate adaptation is the way the problem is framed. "How do you explain the challenge in a way that causes people to realize it is bigger than their individual interests?" he asked.

To emphasize, Touton said that 50 percent of the world is in severe drought — a negative impact of climate change that many do not directly experience. Using open water data to visualize the impact of drought and climate change on water resources, she said, is one aspect of the problem that her department investigates and reports to the public.

"The world is teeming with answers, but are we asking the right questions?" Fenelon added. Perspectives unrelated to science — such as considering water as a right rather than a luxury — may result in interesting and efficient approaches to the challenge.

Leveraging branding, for instance, was one such approach explored by the panel. "I would be interested to see brands engage in civil work," Fenelon said. "Consumers would be buying not just a brand, but a movement."

In agreement, Doney added it’s not the destination that matters, but rather how quickly society manages to get there. When it comes to climate change and the global water supply, the rate of change heavily impacts the natural ecosystems.

However, the panelists agreed, the key to truly engaging open interest is to pitch the science behind climate change in a way that attracts stakeholders and, more importantly, the general public.

The future is about radical transparency

In their remarks on how technological innovations and research have led to more resilient water systems, the Innovate panelists — Noel Bakhtian, lead strategic coordinator on Energy-Water Nexus activities for the U.S. Department of Energy; Marcus Quigley, founder of OptiRTC; Anarug Bajpayee, co-founder and CEO of Gradiant Corporation; Mark Ellison, U.S. affiliate of IDE Technologies; and MIT graduate student and panel moderator Divya Panchanathan — offered a hopeful, yet guarded, perspective.

For Quigley, the world needs a future of “radical transparency” of data. With an open explanation of the reality of water, he postulated that this approach will transform the manner in which we act and develop regulations around water management.

"We need to be creative with data science and make water information more meaningful for the public to digest," he said.

Noting society’s hesitancy to trust new innovations in the water sector, Bajpayee suggested some of the challenge may also lie with people’s misconception of the value of water.

"People think water is free when it’s not," he said. "Something is paying for it. Explaining this openly and clearly may help people appreciate how important it is to conserve energy and water."

When it comes down to it, Quigley continued, our perception on what we think the world should look like is irrelevant. The gateway to water management is about delivering the outcomes people expect, and furthermore educating them on why they should expect those outcomes from a political perspective.

The panelists contended that the world would benefit from focusing more on a transparent understanding of the projected outcome and less on what society portrays as an ideal world.

One way to achieve this may be for water businesses to expand their reach beyond one idea and emphasize an entire market or specialized sector.

"The most successful companies are those who have evolved along the way," Bajpayee said. "Water entrepreneurs should build businesses around an entire platform, not just one innovation."

Climate change is no longer about belief, but fact

To close the Water Summit on the second day, keynote speaker Curt Spalding of the U.S. Environment Protection Agency (EPA) for New England introduced the Implement panel with a discussion on the hard evidence and implications of climate change.

Spalding said 70 percent of the population accepts that climate change is happening, and, because of this, progression is being made to both mitigate and adapt to the reality. "Adaptation is a priority and is integrated into every decision made by the EPA," he said. However, it’s not always as high a priority as it should be for others, he added.

Spalding emphasized the need to communicate complex data to the implementers for real movement to be made in the fight against climate change. This notion was further explored in the panel, moderated by MIT graduate student Alice Alpert, and comprised of Edgar Westerhof of ARCADIS U.S. Inc., Stephen Estes-Smargiassi of the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority, Dennis Carlberg of Boston University, and Larry Susskind, the Ford Professor of Urban and Environmental Planning at MIT.

According to Susskind, the hindrance to true innovation in policy implementation is mainly the lack of collaboration between leaders and the public. "No decision is ever going to be completely correct, so we will have to collaboratively adapt as things evolve," he said.

Estes-Smargiassi agreed, and added that it is equally important to embrace any potential opportunity to build resiliency — even if the timing or innovation is not perfect.

"Each opportunity that we fail to grasp, puts us further behind," he said. "Let’s figure out which steps we should take now to continue to move ahead later." Particularly, participatory planning is a crucial part of resiliency planning; otherwise, he explained, there may not be buy-in.

Corporation mitigation efforts and sponsoring of events, such as the international Sustainable Innovation Forum 2015 in Paris, has a powerful effect in changing the public image of what’s being done today. While concrete conclusions may not necessarily be drawn from efforts such as these, confidence is built for the long-term. And this, the panelists agreed, is effective in the process of managing water in a time of a changing climate.

"The MIT community is deeply motivated to contribute," Lienhard said. "Our students and faculty are bringing their insight, innovation, and technical excellence to bear on the challenge of water management."

Sponsors for this year's Water Summit included Arcadis, Association of Student Activities, MIT's Department of Urban Studies and Planning, CEE, the Coop at MIT, Desalitech, Environmental Policy and Planning Group, Gradiant Corporation, J-WAFS, MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives, MIT Brazil, the WHOI, Pepsico, and WRI Brazil.u

Photo: The 2015 MIT Water Summit team organizers (Courtesy of MIT Water Club)

Includes commentary by John Reilly and climate change calculator based on methodology co-developed by Adam Schlosser

David L. Chandler | MIT News Office

Melanie Kenderdine, as the first executive director of the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI), helped to launch an international program to increase women’s participation and leadership in the energy field called Clean Energy Education and Empowerment, or C3E, in 2012.

Last Thursday, Kenderdine, now the director of the Office of Energy Policy and Systems Analysis at the U.S. Department of Energy, returned to MIT to give the keynote address at the fourth annual U.S. C3E Women in Clean Energy symposium and awards program. Creating this event to recognize women in a variety of energy disciplines at all stages of their careers, she said, “was one of the most rewarding experiences I’ve ever had.”

In her talk at the two-day MITEI event, Kenderdine focused on the DOE’s recently released Quadrennial Energy Review, a project initiated by Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz, MITEI’s former director, to outline priorities for the nation’s energy research and policies over the coming years. The report, she said, gives a sense of the “key drivers and challenges” in the field of energy.

Kenderdine began by recapping the scientific understanding of the threat of climate change, using a depiction of the probabilities of various outcomes developed by Ronald Prinn, co-director of MIT’s Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change.

Prinn used a pair of roulette wheels to starkly communicate the dangers of inaction: The wheel reflecting the probabilities under a “business as usual” scenario shows a significant probability of an average temperature increase of 7 degrees Celsius by the century’s end — an outcome that Kenderdine deadpanned would be “shall we say, transformational for the planet.” (Most scientists agree that any increase of more than 2 C could produce catastrophic results.)

But that outcome is far from predetermined, she emphasized. In the corresponding roulette wheel, assuming that the world’s nations agree to substantial curbs in greenhouse gas emissions, the probability of exceeding that limit drops substantially. And there are indeed many options available to make such reductions practical, Kenderdine said.

Showing a chart of the sources and uses of the world’s various kinds of energy, Kenderdine pointed out that almost half of the world’s energy is wasted. Curbing even a fraction of that waste could make substantial dents in emissions.

That’s only one piece of the puzzle, since with growing population and rising standards of living, the world will consume a projected four times as much energy by 2100 as is used today, Kenderdine said. But there are some encouraging signs already.

Greenhouse gas emissions have actually been declining slightly, for example, even as world GDP has increased — providing a stark refutation of claims that the two measures change in lockstep. This is partly due to a dramatic shift from coal to natural gas, she said — a change largely enabled by DOE-funded innovations: “The DOE invested heavily in shale gas technology,” Kenderdine said.

But because energy industries are capital-intensive, with expensive plants built to operate for many decades, it is essential to have clear priorities for future development, so as to avoid huge investments in plants whose energy may grow incompatible with future economic and regulatory conditions.

One key need, Kenderdine said, to enable the new energy developments that are most needed, is a drastic modernization of the electric grid, which has grown up piecemeal over the last century. Another priority is to enhance the resiliency and reliability of the nation’s existing energy systems, she said.

For example, Kenderdine pointed out, 10 percent of the nation’s oil supply — the Strategic Petroleum Reserve — is held in tanks at a single location in Cushing, Oklahoma — right in the middle of “Tornado Alley.” And over 50 percent of the nation’s refining capacity is along the Gulf Coast, an area susceptible to intense hurricanes.

Some needed changes are in the regulatory domain, Kenderdine said. For example, current federal laws on replacing energy infrastructure after a natural disaster require replacing a facility as it was before the disaster, rather than allowing for modernization or improvement.

Another area where modernization is desperately needed, she said, is in natural gas delivery: Many gas lines in cities are decades old. Recent explosions in major cities have shown the dangers of leaking gas pipes, and the need for replacing those old pipes: An explosion that leveled an apartment complex in New York last year, for example, involved a pipe system that was 104 years old. Boston, Kenderdine pointed out, has had thousands of gas leaks reported in the last few years, compared with just a handful in similarly sized Indianapolis, which modernized its pipes a few years ago.

The DOE’s Quadrennial Energy Review, Kenderdine said, includes 63 specific recommendations, which would likely have a total cost of $10 billion to $12 billion over the next decade. But there are great opportunities for improvements, particularly in the developing world, she said, where in many cases it may be possible to move directly into more efficient, modern generating and distribution systems.

Such developments, Kenderdine said, can “make a huge difference in people’s lives.”

The C3E symposium and awards program is a partnership of DOE and MITEI, under the auspices of the multi-governmental Clean Energy Ministerial.

Photo: Melanie Kenderdine (Photo by Justin Knight)

Peter Dizikes | MIT News Office 

Perhaps you have heard the adage “think globally, act locally.” An MIT-led project taking that idea to heart has demonstrated a new method for getting local citizens and leaders to agree on the best ways of managing the immediate and long-term effects of climate change.  

The New England Climate Adaptation Project (NECAP) got local citizens and officials in four coastal towns to engage in role-playing games about climate change tailored to their communities, while conducting local polling about attitudes and knowledge about climate risks. In so doing, the project helped the towns reach new conclusions about local initiatives to address the threats posed by climate change— which in coastal communities may include rising sea levels and increased storm surges that can lead to flooding.

“One hour of conversation can completely alter people’s sense [and show] that this is a problem they can work on locally,” says Lawrence Susskind, the Ford Professor in Urban Studies in MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP), who led the project and has now co-authored a new book detailing its results. “There are a bunch of things local governments can do, and people can do for themselves — that communities can do.”

The findings stem from years of research and organizing in four places: Wells, Maine; Dover, New Hampshire; Barnstable, Massachusetts; and Cranston, Rhode Island. The new book on the effort, “Managing Climate Risks in Coastal Communities,” has just been released by the academic publisher Anthem Press.

Among the many findings of the project is that residents of these coastal communities were typically far more concerned about the consequences of climate change than local politicians realized.

“People in official positions really underestimated the extent to which [citizens] were worried about what climate change might mean to the town, what their vulnerabilities were,” Susskind explains. “If you asked, ‘What percentage of people do you think believe climate change is a problem right now?’ most officials would have said less than 10 percent. Our polling results were about 60 percent.”

The scenarios that the MIT-led team presented to people in each place involved ranges of probability regarding potential events. And yet, Susskind emphasizes, certain types of climate responses, like building better storm drains, may be necessary in almost any scenario.

“Lots of uncertainty doesn’t mean you can’t decide or know what to do,” Susskind says. “There are no-regrets actions you can take, where you won’t regret spending the money, time, or effort later.”

Four towns, many issues

The scholars chose the four towns because each hosts a center for the National Estuarine Research Reserve System, a branch of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. That made it simpler for the project leaders to make connections with local political leaders and convince them to participate in the climate adaptation project.  

The book is co-authored by four project leaders, including Susskind, who heads the Environmental Policy and Planning Group at DUSP as well as the mediation group he founded, the Consensus Building Institute (CBI); Danya Rumore, visiting assistant professor at the University of Utah; Carrie Hulet, a senior associate at the CBI; and Patrick Field, co-managing director of the CBI and an associate director of the MIT-Harvard Public Disputes Program.

After developing climate-change scenarios for each town and conducting research on local political priorities and infrastructure, starting in 2012, the MIT group developed a role-playing game tailored to each town, and conducted debriefings on the issues as well. Citizens who participate study the local climate scenarios and potential responses, and try to reach consensus on plans of action. An investment of a few hours can suddenly make hundreds of community members more informed and willing to consider the need for climate response.

“The science doesn’t dictate things, but it informs things, and it leads to interesting conversations about what the policy for their own community should be,” Susskind says.

In Dover, for instance, the effort helped clarify the need to act on local concerns about flooding from the town’s river, and about the capabilities of the town’s storm drains; dredging the river and updating the drains are now higher priorities, along with having more generators on hand for emergency response activities. In Barnstable, where sea level rise, flooding, drought, and storm damage are all problematic issues, the project clarified the need to add water supplies and make the electrical grid more sustainable.

In Wells, where sea levels are projected to rise by 2 to 5 feet by 2099, the project highlighted the need for seawalls and a buyback program for privately owned coastal land that could absorb flooding. In Cranston, flooding is a major issue — following floods the town experienced in 2010 — and the project revealed that 86 percent of residents are concerned about climate change. Possible measures include engineered barriers and expanded wetlands, but the project also reveals a need for continued public education programs about the affordability of possible responses.

Still, acting sooner rather than later, Susskind suggests, will usually turn out to be a wise investment.

“Don’t be convinced that was a one-time flood,” he says. “It’s going to happen sooner and more often than you think, and the cost could be enormous without some effort to manage risks. And maybe as a community you say, ‘Bad things are going to happen unless we find some way to reduce our vulnerabilities.’”

Adaptation, as well as mitigation

The MIT-led project dealt with climate adaptation, the response to climate change risks. As Susskind acknowledges, that is only one part of the climate-action picture; the issue of climate mitigation — that is, preventing climate change from happening to the fullest extent possible — is also vital.

And while the role-playing games were limited to smaller communities, Susskind acknowledges, he thinks this approach can work in much larger municipalities as well, based on similar work he has done in Maryland and other places.

“I don’t think there are any problems of scaling up,” he says.

Other scholars have found the project and its results to be valuable. Judith Innes, a professor emerita of city and regional planning at the University of California at Berkeley, calls it an “eye-opening book” that offers “hope and guidance to policy makers and citizens who want to act before it is too late.”

The researchers have put many materials online, available for public study. However, Susskind says, there is no substitute for participating in the project’s games in person, to work through issues of evaluating a town’s needs and negotiating over them.

“The whole point politically is to organize a constituency for change in each locality, and that requires face-to-face interaction,” Susskind says. “There’s no substitute. I design different games for different places. You have to tailor it so that people get a sense they’re learning something about the place where they are. It’s about empowering a community to feel we can and should be working to anticipate and manage climate risks.”

Photo: Wells, Maine 

Jennifer Chu | MIT News Office 

Volkswagen’s use of software to evade emissions standards in more than 482,000 diesel vehicles sold in the U.S. will directly contribute to 60 premature deaths across the country, a new MIT-led study finds.

In September, the Environmental Protection Agency discovered that the German automaker had developed and installed “defeat devices” (actually software) in light-duty diesel vehicles sold between 2008 and 2015. This software was designed to sense when a car was undergoing an emissions test, and only then engage the vehicle’s full emissions-control system, which would otherwise be disabled under normal driving conditions — a cheat that allows the vehicles to emit 40 times more emissions than permitted by the Clean Air Act.

That amount of excess pollution, multiplied by the number of affected vehicles sold in the U.S. and extrapolated over population distributions and health risk factors across the country, will have significant effects on public health, the study finds.

Assessing health outcomes

According to the study, conducted by researchers at MIT and Harvard University and published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, excess emissions from Volkswagen’s defeat devices will cause around 60 people in the U.S. to die 10 to 20 years prematurely. If the automaker recalls every affected vehicle by the end of 2016, more than 130 additional early deaths may be avoided. If, however, Volkswagen does not order a recall in the U.S., the excess emissions, compounding in the future, will cause 140 people to die early.

In addition to the increase in premature deaths, the researchers estimate that Volkswagen’s excess emissions will contribute directly to 31 cases of chronic bronchitis and 34 hospital admissions involving respiratory and cardiac conditions. They calculate that individuals will experience about 120,000 minor restricted activity days, including work absences, and about 210,000 lower-respiratory symptom days.

In total, Volkswagen’s excess emissions will generate $450 million in health expenses and other social costs, the study projects. But a total vehicle recall by the end of 2016 may save up to $840 million in further health and social costs.

Steven Barrett, the lead author of the paper and an associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT, says the new data may help regulatory officials better estimate the effects of Volkswagen’s actions.

“It seemed to be an important issue in which we could bring to bear impartial information to help quantify the human implications of the Volkswagen emissions issue,” Barrett says. “The main motivation is to inform the public and inform the developing regulatory situation.”

Cheating (and) death

To estimate the health effects of Volkswagen’s excess emissions, Barrett and his colleagues at MIT and Harvard based their calculations on measurements by researchers at West Virginia University, who found that the vehicles produced up to 40 times the emissions allowed by law. They then calculated the average amount that each vehicle would be driven over its lifetime, and combined these results with sales data between 2008 and 2015 to estimate of the total excess emissions during this period.

The group then calculated the resulting emissions under three scenarios: the current scenario, in which 482,000 vehicles have already emitted excess emissions into the atmosphere; a scenario in which Volkswagen recalls every affected vehicle by the end of 2016; and a future in which there is no recall, and every affected vehicle remains on the road, continuing to emit excess pollution over the course of its lifetime.

The group then estimated the health effects under each emissions scenario, using a method they developed to map emissions estimates to public exposure to fine particulate matter and ozone. Diesel vehicles emit nitrogen oxides, which react in the atmosphere to form fine particulate matter and ozone. Barrett’s approach essentially maps emissions estimates to population health risk, accounting for atmospheric transport and chemistry of the pollutants.

“We all have risk factors in our lives, and [excess emissions] is another small risk factor,” Barrett explains. “If you take into account the additional risk due to the excess Volkswagen emissions, then roughly 60 people have died or will die early, and on average, a decade or more early.”

Barrett says that, per kilometer driven, this number is about 20 percent of the number of deaths caused by road transport accidents.

“So it’s about the same order of magnitude, just from these excess emissions,” Barrett says. “If nothing’s done, these excess emissions will cause around another 140 deaths. However, two-thirds of the total deaths could be avoided if the recalls could be done quickly, in the course of the next year.”

Daniel Kammen, the editor-in-chief of Environmental Research Letters and a professor of energy at the University of California at Berkeley, says the group’s study provides a “rigorous evaluation of the scale of the impacts, which are potentially exceedingly serious.

“The analysis demonstrates the value of policy-inspired fundamental research where the air quality and health impacts of transgressions such as the VW issue can be calculated, and made available for public discussion,” says Kammen, who did not contribute to the research.

Photo: Workers inspect a car on the production line in a Volkswagen factory in Poznan, Poland

See article in the New York Times

David L. Chandler | MIT News Office

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Within this century, parts of the Persian Gulf region could be hit with unprecedented events of deadly heat as a result of climate change, according to a study of high-resolution climate models.

The research reveals details of a business-as-usual scenario for greenhouse gas emissions, but also shows that curbing emissions could forestall these deadly temperature extremes.

The study, published today in the journal Nature Climate Change, was carried out by Elfatih Eltahir, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at MIT, and Jeremy Pal PhD ’01 at Loyola Marymount University. They conclude that conditions in the Persian Gulf region, including its shallow water and intense sun, make it “a specific regional hotspot where climate change, in absence of significant mitigation, is likely to severely impact human habitability in the future.”

Running high-resolution versions of standard climate models, Eltahir and Pal found that many major cities in the region could exceed a tipping point for human survival, even in shaded and well-ventilated spaces. Eltahir says this threshold “has, as far as we know … never been reported for any location on Earth.”

That tipping point involves a measurement called the “wet-bulb temperature” that combines temperature and humidity, reflecting conditions the human body could maintain without artificial cooling. That threshold for survival for more than six unprotected hours is 35 degrees Celsius, or about 95 degrees Fahrenheit, according to recently published research. (The equivalent number in the National Weather Service’s more commonly used “heat index” would be about 165 F.)

This limit was almost reached this summer, at the end of an extreme, weeklong heat wave in the region: On July 31, the wet-bulb temperature in Bandahr Mashrahr, Iran, hit 34.6 C — just a fraction below the threshold, for an hour or less.

But the severe danger to human health and life occurs when such temperatures are sustained for several hours, Eltahir says — which the models show would occur several times in a 30-year period toward the end of the century under the business-as-usual scenario used as a benchmark by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The Persian Gulf region is especially vulnerable, the researchers say, because of a combination of low elevations, clear sky, water body that increases heat absorption, and the shallowness of the Persian Gulf itself, which produces high water temperatures that lead to strong evaporation and very high humidity.

The models show that by the latter part of this century, major cities such as Doha, Qatar, Abu Dhabi, and Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, and Bandar Abbas, Iran, could exceed the 35 C threshold several times over a 30-year period. What’s more, Eltahir says, hot summer conditions that now occur once every 20 days or so “will characterize the usual summer day in the future.”

While the other side of the Arabian Peninsula, adjacent to the Red Sea, would see less extreme heat, the projections show that dangerous extremes are also likely there, reaching wet-bulb temperatures of 32 to 34 C. This could be a particular concern, the authors note, because the annual Hajj, or annual Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca — when as many as 2 million pilgrims take part in rituals that include standing outdoors for a full day of prayer — sometimes occurs during these hot months.

While many in the Persian Gulf’s wealthier states might be able to adapt to new climate extremes, poorer areas, such as Yemen, might be less able to cope with such extremes, the authors say.

Christoph Schaer, a professor of atmospheric and climate science at ETH Zurich who was not involved in this study, provided an independent commentary in the journal, writing that while deadly heat waves have occurred recently in Chicago, Russia, and Europe, in these cases infants and the elderly were most affected. The new study, Schaer writes, “concerns another category of heat waves — one that may be fatal to everybody affected, even to young and fit individuals under shaded and well-ventilated outdoor conditions.”

Schaer writes that “the new study shows that the threats to human health may be much more severe than previously thought, and may materialize already in the current century.” He told MIT News, “I think the study is of great importance, since it indicates where heat waves could get worst if climate change proceeds.”

The research was supported by the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Science.

Photo: Rub' al Khali desert in the Arabian Peninsula (courtesy of Eltahir Group/MIT)

Video: Melanie Gonick/MIT 

MIT News Office

MIT is launching a multifaceted five-year plan aimed at fighting climate change, representing a new phase in the Institute’s commitment to an issue that, the plan says, “demands society’s urgent attention.”

Citing “overwhelming” scientific evidence, “A Plan for Action on Climate Change” underscores the “risk of catastrophic outcomes” due to climate change and emphasizes that “the world needs an aggressive but pragmatic transition plan to achieve a zero-carbon global energy system.”

To that end, MIT has developed a five-year plan to enhance its efforts in five areas of climate action, whose elements have consensus support within the MIT community:

• research to further understand climate change and advance solutions to mitigate and adapt to it;
• the acceleration of low-carbon energy technology via eight new research centers;
• the development of enhanced educational programs on climate change;
• new tools to share climate information globally; and
• measures to reduce carbon use on the MIT campus.

The plan calls for MIT to convene academia, industry, and government in pursuit of three overlapping stages of progress.

“The first step,” according to the plan, “is to imagine the future as informed by research: e.g., What is the optimal mix of energy sources in 15, 25 and 35 years, in order to meet emissions targets and eventually reach a zero-carbon global energy system? And how can societies across the globe best adapt to damaging climate impacts in the meantime?”

“Next,” the plan continues, “it will be vital to establish the policy and economic incentives to achieve that future. Finally, clear technological goals and aligned incentives will focus and accelerate the research and development required to achieve success. All three phases need to be continuously refreshed: Research and development should continuously inform timelines and targets. The success of this strategy depends on the best efforts of all three sectors.”

The plan specifically asserts the need for a price on carbon in order to align the incentives of industry with the imperatives of climate science.

The plan also announces that MIT will not divest from the fossil fuel industry. This decision and the overall plan emerged from more than a year of broad consultation with the MIT community, including extensive public discussion led by the Committee on the MIT Climate Change Conversation, and engagement with the student-led group Fossil Free MIT. This group originally petitioned MIT to divest from 200 companies and more recently has asked for “reinvestment in campus sustainability, and a reinvention of the approach that MIT takes toward climate change.”

In his announcement letter today to the MIT community, President L. Rafael Reif said the plan would not have taken the shape it did without Fossil Free MIT’s “willingness to work with us toward the shared goal of meaningful climate action.” He encouraged the group’s members to join in the work ahead.

A call to service, on campus and beyond

In his letter, Reif called upon all members of the MIT community to take action. “There is room and reason for each of us to be part of the solution,” he wrote. “I urge everyone to join us in rising to this historic challenge.”

Alumni are being called upon to imagine how they can help MIT execute the plan. A competition announced in the plan has been created in order to elicit the most effective ways for the MIT alumni community to take personal and combined action.

“MIT’s 130,000 alumni represent an exceptional untapped resource for driving substantive progress on climate change,” the plan says, “and we are certain that our graduates will know better than we do how to make the most of their strength, from their technical expertise to their professional and community networks.”

The competition will be hosted by the MIT Climate CoLab, a digital community that engages nearly 50,000 people from over 170 countries to crowdsource climate priorities and novel solutions. The plan calls for the Climate CoLab to expand its overall capacity, so that MIT can serve as a vital hub of crowdsourced solutions to climate change.

A year and more in the making

The plan is the result of an MIT-wide initiative on climate launched in May 2014, and led by Provost Martin Schmidt; Vice President for Research Maria Zuber; MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) Director Robert Armstrong; and Susan Solomon, founding director of MIT’s Environmental Solutions Initiative.

In September 2014, the initiative appointed the Committee on the MIT Climate Change Conversation, chaired by Roman Stocker, then associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, to lead public discussion of MIT’s options for addressing climate change.

The plan credits members of the committee, as well as members of Fossil Free MIT, for having “brought climate change to the top of MIT’s institutional agenda by urging that MIT assume a role of public leadership.”

“Today’s plan is truly MIT’s plan,” Zuber says. “There is a hunger across the Institute to apply MIT’s strengths to the problem. With a firm theory of the case for how to bring cohesion to our work in science, engineering, and policy, we are now poised to set forth on five years of critical work. Today is an important beginning.”

In his letter to the MIT community, Reif wrote that MIT will rely on Zuber to lead MIT’s research, outreach, and convening efforts.

“President Reif and Vice President for Research Zuber have led us to a very important day in the Institute’s history,” says Diana Chapman Walsh, a member of the Executive Committee of the MIT Corporation (MIT’s board of trustees) and former president of Wellesley College. “The world is calling for leadership at a time of urgency and uncertainty. Today, MIT is deepening its commitment to meaningful action.”

Intensifying MIT’s impact

The plan outlines five areas for “direct action”:

1. An improved understanding of climate change, and practical solutions to mitigate and adapt to it. As part of its Environmental Solutions Initiative (ESI), now led by Professor John E. Fernandez, who was named as ESI’s second director earlier this week, MIT is providing $5 million to back further research on a series of cross-disciplinary projects and will seek outside support for promising new work.

2. Accelerating progress on low-carbon technologies. Building on decades of faculty research, the MIT Energy Initiative is planning to launch eight new low-carbon energy centers, in cooperation with corporate partners, each focused on the advancement of a specific type of technology. Each center will seek about $8 million in annual funding, or more than $300 million in total over the five-year period — which the plan says represents “far and away the greatest opportunity for MIT to make a difference on climate change.” The eight centers will be in the areas of solar energy; energy storage; materials; carbon capture, use, and sequestration; nuclear energy; nuclear fusion; energy bioscience; and the electrical grid.

1. In addition, MIT plans additional research intended to help transform at least four major types of energy-related systems. These projects will concern the future of the utility industry, ground transportation, air transportation, and cities. And MIT is commissioning a multidisciplinary report to envision the pathway to accelerate the transition to a zero-carbon future.

3. Education. MIT plans to create an Environment and Sustainability degree option; develop an online Climate Change and Sustainability credential; and, in a joint effort between MIT’s School of Engineering and School of Architecture and Planning, find ways to insert principles of “benign and sustainable design” throughout MIT’s engineering and design instruction.

4. Additional knowledge-sharing tools. MIT will expand its range of short courses and seminars for executives (including through online tools); create a new web portal on climate change; expand its Climate CoLab crowdsourcing tool (as noted above); and continue to focus on climate issues through Solve.

5. Reducing emissions on the MIT campus, and using the campus as a “test bed” for climate action. MIT plans to reduce campus emission by at least 32 percent by 2030 (the amount set as a goal by the federal government); eliminate the use of fuel oil on campus by 2019; enact “carbon shadow pricing,” to explore the effects of assigning a self-imposed cost to campus carbon emissions; pursue more carbon-efficient technologies as it renews its stock of campus buildings and systems; and build an open data platform on campus energy use.

Former Secretary of State George P. Shultz, who earned a PhD from MIT in 1949 and served on the economics faculty in the 1950s, has urged the MIT community to take action on climate change and endorses today’s plan, calling it “a terrific document. It is inspirational that MIT is working on the subject with such energy and impact.” Shultz chairs the External Advisory Board of the MIT Energy Initiative.

Robert Armstrong, director of the MIT Energy Initiative, says, “The plan recognizes the central role that climate change will have in driving transformation of the global energy system. The eight low-carbon energy centers leverage MIT’s strengths in working across disciplines and in deeply engaging with industry to tackle society’s greatest challenges.”

Investment questions

The plan announces that in the interest of fighting climate change, MIT will not divest from companies in the fossil fuel sector.

“We believe that divestment — a dramatic public disengagement — is incompatible with the strategy of engagement with industry to solve problems that is at the heart of today’s plan. Combatting climate change will require intense collaboration across the research community, industry and government,” the plan states.

Divestment has been a principal aim of Fossil Free MIT, which had gathered 3,400 signatures from members of the MIT community, asking for divestment from 200 companies in the fossil-fuel industry. MIT hosted a public debate on the issue in April, in which MIT faculty, professors from other institutions, and investment executives addressed the potential merits and drawbacks of divestment.

The plan states that MIT is “not naïve about the pernicious role of some segments of the fossil fuel industry in creating the current policy deadlock. We deplore the practice of ‘disinformation,’ through which some industry players and related groups have actively obstructed clear public understanding of the problem of climate change.”

MIT’s position, the plan states, is that “well-crafted policies can harness the creative forces of industry to serve the common good.” Further, it argues “that growing awareness of climate change may be generating a tipping point in that policy dynamic now. Witness the fact that in Paris last Friday, October 16, the CEOs of ten of the world’s largest oil and gas companies declared that their ‘shared ambition is for a 2°C future,’ and called for ‘an effective climate change agreement’ at next month’s 21st session of the United Nations Conference of Parties to the UN Framework on Climate Change (COP21).”

“Six of those companies — BP, Eni, Saudi Aramco, Shell, Statoil, and Total — are members of MITEI,” the plan continues. “We believe we have greater power to build on such momentum not by distancing ourselves from fossil fuel companies, but by bringing them closer to us.”

Ultimately, the plan states, massive changes are needed in the production, distribution, and consumption of energy to avert a potential climate catastrophe: “To solve this global problem, humanity must reorder the global energy status quo.”

Robert Millard, chairman of the MIT Corporation, calls the plan “bold, respectful, complete, honest, and well-reasoned. It therefore reflects,” he says, “the highest aspirations of MIT."

Photo: Christopher Harting/AboveSummit

by David L. Chandler | MIT News

John E. Fernandez, a professor of building technology in the Department of Architecture, has been named as the new director of MIT’s Environmental Solutions Initiative (ESI), a campuswide initiative launched in 2014. Fernandez succeeds Susan Solomon, the Ellen Swallow Richards Professor in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, who has served as the Initiative’s founding director.

“I’m honored to be taking over from such an eminent scientist,” says Fernandez, who has served on the MIT faculty for 16 years. “It’s really humbling to hear her talk about her work and be given the opportunity to extend the reach of the ESI.”

Fernandez’s appointment was announced today in a letter to the MIT community from Provost Martin Schmidt and Vice President for Research Maria Zuber.

“Professor Fernandez approaches this role as a world expert on high-performance, sustainable building materials, as a leading scholar on the resources and infrastructure of cities — home to more than half the human population — and as a practicing architect who has led the design for more than 2.5 million square feet of new construction in cities from Washington, D.C., New York, and Los Angeles to Jakarta, Tokyo, and Shanghai,” Schmidt and Zuber wrote. “A member of our faculty since 1999, he founded and directs the Urban Metabolism Group, a highly multidisciplinary research group that studies how intelligent design and technology can reduce the resource intensity of cities.”

Since its founding in May of last year, ESI has awarded nine seed grants for research projects, on efforts that include promoting sustainable consumption in cities, improving methods for safe mining on land and at sea, and improving air quality and plans to mitigate global climate change. Such highly multidisciplinary projects can be difficult to fund through traditional channels.

“I’m delighted to be passing the reins to such a well-qualified and distinguished scholar,” Solomon says. “John Fernandez has a deep understanding of MIT’s strengths across a very diverse suite of environmental challenges, and he brings a clear commitment to excellence and breadth. I’ll be looking forward to seeing him take ESI to the next level.”

Fernandez says ESI’s broad scope is illustrated by the very different backgrounds of its first two directors. “I’m very optimistic about the vision for ESI,” he says: If this initiative can embrace leaders from fields as different as atmospheric science, architecture, and building technology, “It speaks to the breadth of MIT, and the commitment to the ESI.”

Fernandez’s research looks at the environmental consequences of societal activities — which tend to be concentrated in the world’s cities. “Decisions that architects and planners make can have huge ramifications, because the built environment accounts for the consumption of enormous quantities of energy and materials,” he says. Such environmental consequences, he says, “should be integral to a designer’s thinking process.”

“The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has shown the built environment to be one of the major contributors to global emissions,” Fernandez says. “What is less well known is that a majority of raw materials extracted and processed are used in the construction and operation of buildings, roads and other large-scale infrastructure. For that reason, much of my work has been focused on understanding the environmental benefits of resource-efficient buildings and cities.”

Since more than half of the world’s population now lives in urban areas, Fernandez says, he has focused on systems involved in the functioning of modern cities, from buildings and transportation to the delivery of food, water, sanitation services, and goods — and the resource intensities associated with these services. The research outcomes from his group contribute to a field known as “urban metabolism,” because it treats the city as an interconnected whole, rather than focusing on individual components or economic sectors. This is best done through a multidisciplinary approach.

In the work of the ESI, Fernandez says, “many solutions will require multiple perspectives” — which underscores the importance of communication and collaboration among disciplines, and an understanding of different modes for tackling problems through science, engineering, design, and policy.

Fernandez sums up his vision for the Initiative by considering the three components of its name: environmental, solutions, and initiative.

On the environment, he says, “the priority is to progress beyond the discussion of the uncertainties about climate change, to delve deeper into research that tells us more about the consequences of climate change, and to do research in targeted ways that will tell us about the kinds of risks we are facing.” Researchers tackling those issues should be provided with resources to do their work, but also to help them in communicating “a very simple but unequivocal message that the science of the climate is well-established and the most conclusive it can be, and is telling us very dire things that we should really pay attention to.”

The second priority, Fernandez says, lies in solutions. It’s essential, he says, “to propose pathways toward mitigation and adaptation in every aspect of society, with regard to every important human activity, enlisting engineers, scientists, architects, economists, political scientists, and others, and with regard to all regions of the world.” For example, hundreds of millions of people live in coastal cities, which face significant threats from sea-level rise. Designers need to converge on integrated solutions with other disciplines to enlist multiple systems for adapting these cities, he says “so that we’re not approaching this in a siloed way.”

The initiative part of the ESI’s name, Fernandez says, “is the part that I hope will bear important short-term and local results for MIT. I believe this initiative has the critical responsibility to initiate action across diverse communities at MIT.”

The ESI, Fernandez adds, should involve all sectors of our community — undergraduate and graduate students, postdocs, faculty, researchers, and staff. “We will be working to initiate a great many actions for the environment, both local and global,” Fernandez says. “Some will be very targeted and modest, and others extraordinarily ambitious, broad and sweeping.”

One example of a way in which Fernandez hopes to implement this agenda, he says, is in funding student projects, including some that might relate directly to residential life: “Support for even very modest but very immediate grassroots projects, where it’s right there in front of you, is something I’m very keen to launch as soon as possible,” he says.