News + Media

By Mike Orcutt | MIT Technology Review

China may put a stop to growing carbon dioxide emissions earlier than expected, but how quickly they start coming down is also important.

In an agreement announced last week, China and the United States, which together account for some 45 percent of the globe’s total carbon dioxide emissions, pledged to make significant efforts in the next 10 to 15 years to limit their CO₂ emissions.

It’s the first time China has publicly committed to halting the decades-long rise of its CO₂ emissions. However, due to economic factors and policy shifts, China may be poised to achieve this goal even earlier than promised.

The U.S. pledged that by 2025 the amount of CO₂ it emits annually would drop to 26 to 28 percent below its emission levels from 2005. China meanwhile promised that its annual CO₂ emissions, which have increased by 257 percent since 1990, would stop rising by 2030 or earlier. China also pledged that 20 percent of its energy would come from sources other than fossil-fuels by 2030. That’s up from around 8 percent in 2010.

As recently as 2010, when China’s economy was still growing at more than 10 percent a year, it was unclear when its emissions might peak, says Valerie Karplus, a professor of global economics at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, and director of the Tsinghua-MIT China Energy and Climate Project.

But economic growth has slowed (it was 7.7 percent in 2012), and in turn so has growth in demand for energy.

Also, this year China’s government has already announced a plan to reduce air pollution by taxing and limiting coal use. Beyond that, carbon trading systems are now being tested in five cities and two provinces, and a national system is expected to come online in 2016.

In a recent modeling study that accounted for these new policies and assumed that China would accomplish ambitious near-term goals for expanding nuclear power and renewables, Karplus and collaborators at Tsinghua University in Beijing found that demand for coal could peak sometime between 2020 and 2025, and carbon emissions could level off sometime between 2025 and 2030.

But, says Karplus, there is still uncertainty over when China will begin actually reduce its emissions, and by how much. “It makes a big difference whether it peaks at 10 billion, 11 billion, or 15 billion metric tons of CO₂,” and whether or not the trajectory decreases rapidly after that peak, says Karplus.

Read the full article at MIT Technology Review

By Peter Dizikes, MIT News Office

With cap-and-trade legislation on greenhouse-gas emissions having stalled in Congress in 2010, the Obama administration has taken a different approach to climate policy: It has used the mandate of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to propose a policy limiting power-plant emissions, since electricity consumption produces about 40 percent of U.S. greenhouse gases. (The administration also announced a bilateral agreement with China this week, which sets overall emissions-reductions targets.)

The EPA’s initial proposal is now under public review, before the agency issues a final rule in 2015. Christopher Knittel, the William Barton Rogers Professor of Energy Economics at the MIT Sloan School of Management, is one of 13 economists who co-authored an article about the policy in the journal Science this week. While the plan offers potential benefits, the economists assert, some of its details might limit the policy’s effectiveness. MIT News talked with Knittel about the issue.

Q. How is the EPA’s policy for power plants intended to work?

A. The Clean Power Plan calls for different emissions reductions depending on the state. This state-specific formula has four “buckets:” efficiency increases at the power plant; shifting from coal to natural gas; increases in generation from low-carbon renewables such as wind; and increases in energy efficiency within the state. So they applied these four things and asked what changes were “adequately demonstrated” to generate state-specific required reductions.

Q. The Science piece emphasizes that the EPA’s plan uses a ratio-based means of limiting emissions: the amount of greenhouse gases divided by the amount of electricity consumed. So a state could add renewable energy, lower its ratio, but not reduce total emissions. What are the advantages and disadvantages of doing this?

A. The targets are an emissions rate: tons of CO₂ [emitted] per megawatt-hour of electricity generation. Then it’s really up to the states to determine how they’re going to achieve the reductions in this rate. So one strategy is to increase total electricity generated. This compliance strategy, unfortunately, is what makes rate-based regulation economically inefficient.

The states also have the option to convert that rate-based ratio target into what the EPA is calling a mass-based target, total tons of greenhouse-gas emissions. This would effectively imply the state is going to adopt a cap-and-trade program to reach its requirements.

In current work, we — scholars Jim Bushnell, Stephen Holland, Jonathan Hughes, and I — are investigating the incentives states have to adopt to convert their rate-based mandate into a mass-based mandate. Unfortunately, we are finding that states rarely want to [use a mass-based target], which is a pity, because the mass-based regulation is the most efficient regulation, from an economist’s perspective. Holland, Hughes, and I have done work in the transportation sector that shows that when you do things on a rate base, as opposed to a mass base, it is at least three times more expensive, and more costly to society — often more than five times more costly.

Q. Why did the EPA approach it this way?

A. I can only speculate as to why the EPA chose to define the regulation as a rate instead of total greenhouse gas emissions. Regulating a rate is often cheaper from the firm’s perspective, even though it is economically inefficient. Why the EPA chose to define things at the state level is more clear: The Clean Air Act … is written in such a way to leave it up to the states.

But if everyone’s doing their own rate- or mass-based standard, then you don’t take advantage of potentially a large efficiency benefit from trading compliance across states. That is, it might be cheaper for one state to increase its reductions, allowing another state to abate less.

The most ideal regulatory model is that everyone’s under one giant mass-based standard, one big cap-and-trade market. Even if every state’s doing its own cap-and-trade market, that’s unlikely to lead to the efficient outcome. It might be cheaper for California or Montana or Oregon to reduce their greenhouse-gas emissions, but as soon as they meet their standard, they’re going to stop.

Q. The Science article says that certifying efficiency-based gains is a crucial factor. Could you explain this?

A. Given how the regulation treats efficiency, it really puts in the forefront the importance of understanding the real-world reduction in energy consumption coming from efficiency investments. Let’s say I reduce electricity consumption by 100 megawatt-hours through increasing efficiency in buildings. Within the [EPA’s] policy, that reduction is treated as if I’m generating 100 megawatt-hours from a zero-carbon technology. So that increases the denominator in the ratio [of greenhouse gases produced to electricity consumed]. One concern, though, is that often the actual returns from energy-efficiency investments aren’t as large as the predicted returns. And that can be because of rebound [the phenomenon by which better energy efficiency allows people to consume more of it], which is a hot topic now, or other behavioral changes.

Behavioral changes can make those efficiency gains larger or smaller, so getting the right number is very important. I’ve heard stories of people who get all-new windows, and the old windows used to let in air, but now they think the house is stuffy, so they keep their windows cracked. We should be doing more field experiments, more randomized controlled trials, to measure the actual returns to energy efficiency.

Another related concern is that it might be left up to the states to tell the EPA what the reduction was from these energy-efficiency investments. And the state might not have any incentive at all to measure them correctly. So there has to be an increase in oversight, and it likely has to be federal oversight.

Q. While you clearly have concerns about the efficacy of the policy, isn’t this one measure among others, intended to lessen the magnitude of the climate crisis?

A. For many of us, the potential real benefit from the clean power rule is that it will change the dynamic in Paris in the [forthcoming international climate] negotiations. For a long time the U.S. could say it was doing some improvements in transportation, but they really weren’t doing anything in electricity, for climate change. My view is there are a lot of countries out there that aren’t going to do anything unless the U.S. does. This might bring some of those countries on board.

In this column for the Washington Post Wonk Blog, Michael Levi, senior fellow for energy and the environment at the Council on Foriegn Relations, describes the significance of U.S.-China climate agreement, and research that may have influenced the agreement. 

Read the article here. 

by Zach Wener-Fligner, MIT News correspondent

All around the planet, high-frequency climate observatories are collecting atmospheric data around the clock as part of the Advanced Global Atmospheric Gases Experiment (AGAGE), a 35-year-old project to study emissions and climate change.

But there’s one problem: Despite a network of observatories that covers much of the globe, AGAGE lacks data on Africa — the world’s second-largest continent.

That’s something that Jimmy Gasore, along with other scientists, is trying to change. Gasore, a fourth-year graduate student in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences under Ronald G. Prinn, the TEPCO Professor of Atmospheric Science, is working with research scientist Katherine Potter to build the first high-frequency climate observatory in all of Africa.

Once finished, the observatory will sit atop Mount Karisimbi, on the border between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, at an elevation of nearly 15,000 feet. (Climate observatories are often built at high elevations so that researchers can cast a wider net, collecting data from a much larger surrounding region.) For now, it’s located at about half that elevation, on Mount Mugogo in Rwanda — making for more efficient work, since the hike up Karisimbi takes two days.

It’s a project that will fill a large hole in our current understanding of emissions of greenhouse gases — especially those coming from agricultural activities, wildfires, and deforestation. This will lead not only to better climate predictions, but also support regional and global climate-change mitigation strategies.

It’s also a highly personal project for Gasore, a citizen of Rwanda.

“We don’t know about African emissions, and we don’t have enough studies in Africa,” Gasore says. “It’s worth doing this study that has the potential to actually change people’s lives. It’s very gratifying to do research that actually affects people.”

Doing what felt right

Growing up in a village in southwestern Rwanda, Gasore used to watch the shadow cast by his house to predict when his mother would come home each day from her job as a schoolteacher — the first time he ever felt like he was really using science.

Gasore was also innately fascinated with how things worked: He was transfixed when he saw mechanics poking around car engines, and would stare as they struggled with the machinery.

“Even today I can watch road work, and tractors, for hours,” he says.

His father was trained as a nurse, but ran an electronics repair shop, fixing radios and televisions. Just from hanging around his father’s shop, a young Gasore learned about electronics by tinkering.

School wasn’t mandatory in Rwanda when Gasore was growing up, but his parents put a heavy emphasis on education for him and his five siblings. He learned to read French when he was 5, but didn’t attend school until he was 7. His father soon started to bring him books on computers and physics.

It just so happened that he had a knack for school — and for math, in particular. At the end of his primary schooling, Gasore was the best student in his district, and then placed third in a nationwide examination. He was awarded a scholarship to the National University of Rwanda, where he studied theoretical physics, graduating first in his class in 2007.

After finishing college, Gasore reached a crossroads. He stayed at the university and worked as a teaching assistant, but could feel himself growing disenchanted with the ethereal world of theoretical physics.

“When I finished I found that I wasn’t well connected with the real world,” he says. “I knew things, but couldn’t actually talk to people and tell them what I knew.”

Gasore was interested in climate science because it offered a mix of the theoretical and the practical. “I love using my theoretical knowledge on real-life problems,” he says.

Before long, an opportunity came knocking. Gasore was familiar with MIT, and the National University of Rwanda had partnerships with the Institute through OpenCourseWare and iLab. When Potter — now his colleague — came to visit Rwanda as part of her research, Gasore asked to meet her.

Potter was impressed with Gasore’s interests and intelligence, and advised him to apply to MIT. He did, and was accepted. The following fall, he moved to Boston.

Carving a path at MIT

Initially, Gasore was surprised by the freedom he found at MIT: “My previous school was sitting in a class and having someone teach you what to do. So I liked getting to choose what I got to study — to have 20 options for classes and to get to choose four.”

He quickly immersed himself in student opportunities surrounding his studies, joining the Weather Forecasting Team, the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, and the Center for Global Change Science. Recently, he was also awarded a Martin Family Fellowship for Sustainability, which supports MIT graduate students in environmental studies.

Gasore realizes the importance of being able to talk to policymakers.

“Policy meetings are about climate-change mitigation and emissions abatement. So you have to talk in those terms,” he says. “I think the Center for Global Change Science is very strong in emphasizing strong mathematical skills, but also keeping in mind that we are doing this for policy.”

Above all, Gasore is passionate about his work: “I enjoy doing it. That’s the motivation. That’s why I can spend the night here in the lab troubleshooting,” he says. “There’s a reward when you spend five hours on something and then at the end you see it working and you say, ‘Wow.’ That’s what keeps me going.”

On Friday, October 17, 2014, CECP team participated in the MIT Energy Night at the MIT Museum between 6:00-9:00pm.

The MIT Energy Night provides an ideal opportunity to see what energy at MIT is all about and the CECP team presented two posters and interacted with hundreds of MIT students, faculty, energy companies, researchers and foreign business leaders.

See our posters and pictures below.

Audrey Resutek and Erwan Monier
MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change
World Meteorological Organization Bulletin, October 17, 2014

The US National Climate Assessment, released this spring by the White House, describes a troubling array of climate woes, from intense droughts and heat waves to more extreme precipitation and floods, all caused by climate change. The report also describes how climate change is expected to impact regions across the United States in the future, yet it notes that exact regional forecasts are difficult to pin down. At the larger scale, it is clear that climate is changing, but local predictions can disagree on the extent to which temperatures will increase, and what regions will be hit the hardest by precipitation changes.

Researchers at the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change examined four major factors that contribute to wide-ranging estimates of future regional climate change in the United States, with an eye toward understanding which factors introduced the most uncertainty into simulations of future climate. They find that the biggest source of uncertainty in climate modelling is also the only one that humans have control over – policies that limit greenhouse gas emissions.

In this context, the term “uncertainty” does not mean that there is a lack of scientific consensus that climate is changing. Instead, uncertainty refers to the fact that using different assumptions for the variables that go into a climate model – for example, the amount of greenhouse gases emitted over the next century, or how sensitive the climate is to changes in carbon dioxide levels – will produce a range of estimates. Overall, these estimates indicate that the Earth will be a warmer and wetter place over the coming century, but there is no single niversally agreed on amount of climate change that will take place.

In fact, estimates that point to a single number for changes in temperatures and precipitation may be misleading, precisely because they do not capture this uncertainty. It is more useful to think of estimates of future climate change as a range of possible effects. The range of potential warming, for example, follows a bell curve, with the most likely change in temperature falling at the highest point of the curve. The farther you travel from the curve’s peak, toward the tails, the more unlikely the temperature change. While the extreme temperature increases at the curve’s tails are unlikely, they still fall within the realm of possibility, and are worth considering because they represent-worst case scenarios.

Read the full article in the World Meterological Organization Bulletin

MIT News Office

On Sept. 19, Maria T. Zuber, MIT’s vice president for research, announced the membership of a community committee to plan and implement the MIT Climate Change Conversation. As Zuber noted, “The Committee should seek broad input from the Institute community on how the US and the world can most effectively address global climate change. The Conversation should explore pathways to effective climate change mitigation, including how the MIT community — through education, research and campus engagement — can constructively move the global and national agendas forward.”

Roman Stocker, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering and chair of the Committee on the MIT Climate Change Conversation, spoke with MIT News about the committee’s charge, its progress to date, and its next steps.

Q. What does the Committee on the MIT Climate Change Conversation aim to achieve?

A. We aim to explore and assess the broad range of actions that MIT could take to make a significant positive contribution to address climate change. The global nature of this problem and the amount of debate and polarization that surround it are daunting, but the premise of the committee is that the complexity of the problem is uniquely suited for MIT, given our strong problem-solving ethos, and that a leading technical institution can have unique roles to play in responding to the climate crisis. Identifying and evaluating these potential roles is the purpose of the Conversation.

Importantly, the committee will only be the catalyst of the Conversation: Its main actor will be the MIT community! In other words, what we really aim to achieve is the engagement of the widest possible fraction of the MIT community in developing and debating bold ideas — MIT-style! — to help identify the pros and cons of different options. We believe that this approach will allow us, as a community, to identify a broad spectrum of action items; estimate the effectiveness of each action in addressing the problem; and thereby determine how our Institute can most effectively drive forward the national and global agendas on climate change.

We will consider actions at all levels: from new educational initiatives at MIT and via its edX megaphone, to new opportunities for research that capitalize and expand on MIT’s presence in the field, to improvements to campus infrastructure and operations aimed at reducing MIT’s own carbon footprint, to leveraging MIT’s visibility to drive more effective policy. These are but examples, as we do not want to constrain the creativity of the MIT community. We will welcome any and all ideas through the multiple opportunities for input and feedback that we will construct. We look forward to this Conversation as a catalyst for original ideas, debate, and sound analysis.

Q. What has the committee done to date, since its membership was announced on Sept. 19?

A. Devising the right ingredients to make this MIT Conversation successful is what has kept us busy during this first month, and still is. Part of this effort consists of educating ourselves, within the committee, about the landscape of activities that already exist at MIT in the area of climate change, as some of these activities could represent important nucleation sites for bold ideas for action. At the same time, this knowledge will allow us to engage the MIT community in a more informed and meaningful way, through the Conversation activities we have begun to plan for the fall and spring.

Personally, this first month has also allowed me to appreciate the expertise we have on the committee, which I feel will be an invaluable asset in catalyzing this Conversation. The committee is composed of one faculty member per school, as well as representatives from the undergraduate and graduate student bodies, from the postdocs, and from the staff. Collectively, this group encompasses a wide range of expertise, covering both the science and the economics of climate change, as well as the on-campus infrastructural and operational aspects of a university planning for climate change.

The committee is unanimous in its feeling not only of the urgency of the problem — expressed with particular emphasis by the younger generations — but also of the unique opportunity that this Conversation represents for MIT to take on a visible leadership role in the solution of the problem.

Q. How can a member of MIT get engaged in this Conversation?

A. We will create multiple opportunities for engagement throughout the current academic year. In the next few weeks, we will launch both an Idea Bank and a survey. The Idea Bank intends to capture the expertise and creativity of the MIT community and to engage it in a campus-wide brainstorm about what actions MIT could take to address climate change. We will welcome input on the full spectrum of possible actions that MIT could take. We will particularly welcome bold, creative ideas, because we feel that the spectrum of options for action available to a leading technical institution has not been fully explored to date.

The survey is being designed to provide input for the committee in structuring the Conversation. With the survey, we aim to reach a wider fraction of the MIT community — hopefully, all of you! — and to understand how we can best support the community in this important Conversation.

We will carefully review the input we receive through both the Idea Bank and the survey, distill it into broad categories for potential action, and use it to inform the centerpiece of the Conversation, a series of high-profile forums to be held in the spring term. These forums will focus on the different action categories that MIT can consider investing in to further its role in addressing climate change, including education, research, financial actions, policy, campus operations — with specifics that will be refined based on community input. The months ahead will represent a vibrant time to discuss climate-change actions at MIT. We invite everyone in the community to be part of this Conversation!