http://mitworld.mit.edu/ MIT World media in category 'Environment/Energy'. en-us Tue, 24 Nov 2009 20:41:17 GMT Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/716 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/716 In welcoming President Obama, MIT President
Susan Hockfield summarizes the vast array of energy innovation at MIT, including the MIT Energy Initiative and the student-led 1700 member Energy Club, and declares, "We share President Obama's view that clean energy is the defining challenge of this era."

In his introduction of President Obama, Professor Ernest Moniz, Director of the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) and member of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), discusses global issues on clean energy, science and innovation, and credits Obama for expanding the nation's energy vision.

Barack Obama came to MIT not just to praise the Institute's leading edge energy research but to encourage all of America’s “heirs to a legacy of innovation” in their pursuit of discovery. The nation owes much of its prosperity to risk-takers and entrepreneurs, Obama said, and now, given the linked challenges of energy and climate change, we need such pioneers more than ever.

After visiting MIT labs working on more efficient solar cells and lighting, batteries “that aren’t built, but grown,” and offshore wind plants that function even when the air is still, Obama told a large crowd that as the nation inevitably transitions from fossil fuels to renewable energy, we’re counting on the kind of “innovative potential on display at MIT.”

Obama acknowledges the great challenges facing energy researchers and entrepreneurs. As traditional energy supplies become more precious, and energy demands grow, nations are competing to develop new ways to produce and use energy, said Obama, and the winner will lead the global economy. “I want America to be that nation. It’s that simple.”

His administration’s response has been to make massive investments in both clean energy and basic science. Obama aims these efforts at both the current recession, and the nation’s future economic health. Clean energy jobs today and research “to produce the technologies of tomorrow” will “lay a new foundation for lasting prosperity.” He hopes this comprehensive approach will culminate in legislation that will transform America’s entire energy system.

But Obama is under no delusion that all will embrace his plan. “The closer we get,” says Obama, the “more we’ll hear from those whose interest or ideology run counter to that much-needed action we’re engaged in.” What worries the president more, though, is a dangerous pessimism shared by many, “that our politics are too broken and our people too unwilling to make hard choices for us to actually deal with this energy issue.” Implicit in this argument, he says, is that America has lost its fighting spirit.

Obama rejects this argument “because of what I’ve seen here at MIT … and because of what we know we are capable of achieving when called upon ….” The nation that harnessed electricity and the atom is one that has always sought out new frontiers, “and this generation is no different.” Obama invokes the achievements of the past as a call to arms “in what is sure to be a difficult fight in the months and years ahead” -- to ensure that “we are the energy leader that we need to be.” ]]> Tue, 14 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/689 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/689 Researchers are well along in designing a highly efficient, inexpensive solar cell, but the big barrier to the dissemination of solar power in society remains the problem of installation, says Marc Baldo.

As an engineer, Baldo expresses confidence that “we’re going to mow down” the problem of producing a great solar cell and making it cheap. His own lab has developed a unique approach that’s found enthusiastic support from the federal government and others. Unlike conventional solar cells that use a single material such as silicon to perform both functions of absorbing light and converting it into electricity, Baldo’s cell “separates the functions and optimizes both.” His solar concentrator utilizes inexpensive material like glass or plastic onto which a thin film of dye has been painted. Sunlight strikes this surface, and the dye, which can be “tuned” or colored to trap specific wavelengths of light, emits light back to solar cells along the edge of the plate. There are enormous advantages derived from this design: The glass or plastic (considerably cheaper than silicon) catches diffuse light, so there’s no need to track the sun, and it concentrates the sunlight much more efficiently than conventional solar cells.

But solar concentrators alone don’t signal the start of a new solar age. Baldo addresses the considerable uncertainty around the broad deployment of solar power. Installation costs for single homes appear formidably high, perhaps 2/3rd the cost of the entire system. Colossal solar fields that might replace fossil fuel burning plants must ship their energy across vast distances, losing electricity along the way. And right now the national power grid isn’t set up to handle the fluctuations in energy that large-scale intermittent energy sources such as solar or wind present. Clouds are a “big pain” for grid operators, says Baldo.

He believes the best start for solar will be in commercial and industrial installations such as the rooftops of factories, supermarkets or warehouses, sites where there’s no loss moving power around, and where managers are already seeking ways to save on lighting and refrigeration, including smart electronics. His cost-effective concentrators could find their way to such installations in several years.

In addition to solar concentrators, Baldo is researching biological models for making solar cells more efficient: He just received a $19 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to study exciton circuitry in plants -- how plants capture light in packets of energy and direct the energy to where it’s needed. Says Baldo, “This exciton is the last, great unexplored territory in solar cells.” ]]> Wed, 08 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/686 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/686 How much energy does it take to turn on a lightbulb? Way too much in the U.S., where 22% of all electricity gets channeled into illuminating homes, businesses and thoroughfares. Vladimir Bulovic wants to end the exorbitant use of power for lighting, and simultaneously brighten our lives more pleasantly, with the application of nanostructure materials called quantum dots.

Incandescent bulbs, he tells the MIT Museum audience, are hugely wasteful, with just 5% efficiency converting electricity to light. Fluorescents do the job somewhat better, and light emitting diodes better still, but these more efficient bulbs often emit colors that feel harsh to the eye. Bulovic and other researchers have been designing a fix for both the color and power conversion problems, a new kind of photo cell based on special inorganic crystals called quantum dots. The size of a human hair sliced lengthwise 5,000 times (10 nanometers), these crystals fluoresce in precise, predictable colors at different sizes: bigger chunks look red, smaller ones look blue.

Bulovic has been experimenting with nanocrystal suspensions -- applying a thin film of quantum dot solution onto a surface that can be excited by shining light or by electricity. “By tuning mixtures of quantum dots, we can make…any color of the rainbow.” New sorts of lights, and displays with “fantastic responsiveness” and true blacks are emerging from this research, along with power consumption half that of today’s LCDs and plasma screens, and the potential of reducing energy use 20 fold down the road. Some versions of photo cells could be used in laptops, and the technology has the capacity to scale up fairly quickly.

The world, well on its way to 9 billion people (many of whom still clamor for electric power), and a climate crisis, desperately needs this kind of new technology, believes Bulovic. He wonders if nanostructure materials might help with some of the hurdles engineers have encountered in scaling up solar energy solutions. For instance, the silicon used in most photovoltaics could be made more efficient by using films consisting of nanostructures that capture spectra of light that silicon can’t. While solar won’t solve the world’s energy problems alone, it figures to be one very prominent solution, and Bulovic hopes nanotechnology will help generate energy independence, “in a controlled, clean way,” helping to “uplift the world.” ]]> Tue, 30 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/683 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/683 The situation facing our planet could hardly be more dire: There’s increasingly dangerous competition among nations for ever scarce energy resources, and climate change is racing ahead of predictions. Although Steven Chu believes “We are getting close to where it’s very nervous time,” he also sees “reason for hope.”

Just as science in the 1970s produced a “green revolution” in agricultural productivity, preventing mass starvation in a swelling global population, Chu is counting on transformative scientific and engineering ideas to achieve sustainable energy and cap climate change.

As chief architect of new policy, and with tens of billions of dollars to pump into his vision, Chu is targeting key areas. Number one on his list: energy efficiency and conservation. Since buildings use 40% of the nation’s total energy, designing more efficient homes and offices will make a big difference. There are “tune ups” possible for existing buildings, and software that can direct lighting, heating and cooling where it’s needed that can achieve 50% plus energy savings, and won’t break the bank. Says Chu, “This is truly low-hanging fruit, but we have to build the tools that allow architects and structural engineers to get on with it.”

On the supply side, Chu has his heart set on transformative technologies such as nanotech breakthroughs in solar power. He’s looking for ways to scale up biomass fuel production, now that synthetic biology can make microbes manufacture gas-like fuels. Noting in particular the work of MIT’s Dan Nocera, Chu says he “wants to use nature as an inspiration, but go beyond nature,” performing artificial photosynthesis to create new hydrocarbons. And as the U.S. and China continue dependence on coal, figuring out how to capture and sequester carbon from these plants figures “high on the list of things we must do.” He’s again hoping researchers will find some analog to nature’s ability to grab and neutralize CO₂.

The ideal environment for jumpstarting such urgent scientific efforts, believes Chu, is something like Bell Labs, where Chu himself worked. The Labs performed “mission-driven research” around communications and for U.S. war efforts, but along the way also developed the transistor, information theory, radio astronomy, and lasers, among many examples. These scientist-led labs emphasized exchange of ideas and rapid infusion of research funds to the most promising work. This led to inventions that in turn transformed the U.S. economy. Chu envisions energy lab equivalents that “deliver the goods” along with fundamental science, “so you can have the Nobel Prize and save the world at the same time.” ]]> Tue, 30 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/684 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/684 There are ample opportunities for new energy entrepreneurs, these panelists agree, but motivation and certain kinds of know-how play key roles in bringing new ventures to fruition.

Idealism led Christina Lampe-Onnerud to “go into the energy space” at 23, but “inertia” surrounding the energy business may intimidate today’s entrepreneurs. Her Boston-Power company, which makes “green” lithium-ion batteries, has forged good relations with policymakers, and now hopes that these politicians will be “brave enough” to “put frameworks out 20 years.” In addition to long-term policy changes, Lampe-Onnerud is counting on a continuous influx of good scientists and engineers to drive her company forward. She encourages everyone with new ideas or the capacity to provide leadership to respond “to the biggest opportunity and threat we have.”

Jacques Beaudry-Losique warns would-be energy entrepreneurs they’re up against a highly regulated environment. An offshore wind turbine might require 39 different permits, and it can take as long as 14 years to get approval for a transmission line. Beaudry-Losique promises that government is now working “to better align interests so we can move faster bringing these solutions to the table.” Energy entrepreneurs should arm themselves with experienced staff who can navigate regulatory channels. They should also build consortia and partnerships with foundations, government and university labs, other manufacturers and buyers. The administration “is making a huge commitment to energy efficiency and smart buildings” and views wind, solar, geothermal, biofuels, as “all hot.”

Compared to entrepreneurial ventures in IT and life sciences, clean energy startups demand “more money, more time and more late stage risk,” says Matthew Nordan. Biomass or coal gasification technologies might require a billion dollars for a pilot plant, which “is a level of risk so high that …investors won’t sign that check.” Many technologies intended to solve one problem end up creating another, or encounter bottlenecks as they scale up, such as the limited supply of precious metals required for the magnets of wind turbines. Some entrepreneurs find success in unique niches, though, such as those seeking to recover waste metal byproducts of tar sand operations. But Nordan warns of a big shake up, as the recent discovery of a massive pocket of natural gas in the U.S. will make competition even steeper for new energy contenders like solar and wind.

Robert Metcalfe finds a lack of “human capital” in current energy ventures. The talented CEOs “who have started five companies” are in short supply in energy, which also haven’t widely adopted partnering as a useful model. To Metcalfe, the energy problem “looks more and more like a networking problem,” which demands a smart grid with lots of storage. This should present entrepreneurs with novel areas to explore. Large utilities may prove obstructive: “We must find ways to get around them, …either recruit them or destroy them.” He’s optimistic there will be breakthroughs in such technologies as fuel cells, and that “when we solve energy, it will be cheap and abundant, and we will use much more of it.” ]]> Tue, 02 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/675 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/675 According to Tonio Buonassisi, we’re “on the cusp” of achieving a competitive technology for capturing the limitless energy of the sun. Buonassisi, in conversation with an MIT Museum audience, describes how, with the work of MIT and other researchers, photovoltaics may finally be coming into its own.

Buonassisi describes solar cells as his “life’s passion” since age 16, but scientists have been laboring somewhat longer to figure out how to convert sunlight to useful power on Earth. In 1954, Bell Labs pioneered the first solar cell. It took 12 thousand dollars’ worth of these “to run an ordinary household toaster,” says Buonassisi. In spite of a great leap forward in the 1990s, with breakthroughs around the purification of silicon crystals and large subsidies for national industries in Japan and Germany, solar energy today constitutes just 1% of total electric generation worldwide.

The process behind solar cells appears straightforward, involving the sun’s light energy (photons) exciting electrons inside some substrate; the separation of positive and negative charges; and then the collection of those charges into an external circuit. Yet scaling up this industry to compete with coal and other fossil fuels has proven daunting. Buonassisi sees several hurdles to overcome: lower materials and processing costs, improved conversion efficiencies of cells, and better manufacturing yields. He says that it takes half a square meter-sized solar panel to power a 100-watt bulb, for instance, and it would require a land area equivalent to 1/3rd the size of Nevada to convert enough sunlight to electricity for the whole U.S. In some parts of the world with intense, year-round sun, solar makes sense already, but in the cloudy, wintry northeastern U.S., huge subsidies are still required to make a go of it.

Buonassisi is still optimistic: His own group removes impurities from materials that serve as wafers for solar cells, so cells can convert photons to electrons more effectively. While technological advances in photovoltaics research have not followed Moore’s Law, Buonassisi believes that research can “kick off the constraint” on efficiency and performance. By the end of the next decade, photovoltaics may be “hitting some big potential markets, hundreds of millions of people.” ]]> Wed, 06 May 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/666 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/666 Climate change poses perhaps the premiere threat to coming generations, says Martin Madaus, but to avoid its worst impacts, we must confront the issue now. To that end, Madaus exhorts business leaders to focus immediately on building environmental sustainability into their operations, as he has begun to do at Millipore.

The challenge is figuring out how to stabilize greenhouse gas emissions at safe levels while expanding economies worldwide. In practice, reconciling these objectives involves squeezing more productivity out of each ton of carbon by a factor of 10. “The good news,” says Madaus, is that “this is actually doable.” Reaching this level of “carbon productivity” entails major public/private spending, but, says Madaus, “This is certainly a good investment, particularly when you consider the mitigation cost of climate catastrophe, which would be unbelievably expensive for all of us.”

While government must play a role in establishing regulations and incentives -- especially by imposing an unpopular but essential higher carbon tax -- industries of all kinds must integrate sustainability as a business practice. Madaus offers Millipore as an example of how “being at the cutting edge of environmentalism is a good business idea.” His company has focused on changes in products and packaging, and reducing waste in energy, water and waste.

In its biotech tool research and production facilities, Millipore figured out how to upgrade boilers, generators, lighting systems, compressed air piping, and use wind energy to reduce its emissions of greenhouse gases by 15% since 2006. “The amazing part of this, it was so doable, because there was so much inefficiency and waste of energy.” Millipore’s return on new infrastructure investment came in less than two years.

Millipore also developed compostable bio-plastic lab devices, recycling programs for customers, and paradoxically, a disposable product (replacing a large, stainless steel vessel), which ends up saving energy and water throughout its lifecycle. Beyond innovations in product lines and operational efficiency, Madaus says he wants “to make an impact on people’s lives so their habits change.” Millipore offers incentives for employee to use hybrid vehicles and to make their homes energy efficient, and encourages staff to come forward with ideas for sustainable living. “I wish we could make energy saving and eco-efficiency really cool and interesting; today it’s still viewed as a tool, a behavior change.”

These small steps are just the start, and Madaus sees a 20% reduction in greenhouse gases as entirely feasible -- and not just at Millipore. “If anyone tells you it can’t be done because they’re growing their company, they’re full of it.” ]]> Wed, 06 May 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/667 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/667 “Just a sleep-deprived activist and organizer.” That’s how environmentalist Bill McKibben describes his current incarnation, with writing career in abeyance while he proselytizes about the danger of climate change. The plight he first wrote about as hypothesis in 1989 has evolved into “deeply rooted consensus.” By 1995, world climatologists agreed: “Human beings are heating up the planet.”

After the inflection point of the Industrial Revolution, McKibben reckons, “no surprise --stuff starts to happen!” That stuff is escalating atmospheric carbon. Fast forward to summer 2007, when “Arctic sea ice melted at an alarming pace.” Other deleterious effects he cites include permafrost reduction; growing release of greenhouse gas methane; paradoxical increase in both drought and deluge; rising sea level; wildfires and deforestation; agricultural jeopardy. These phenomena conspire in feedback loops to pose accelerating risks to civilization.

McKibben credits NASA climatologist Jim Hansen with deriving “the most important number in the world” – the tolerable carbon level allowing survival of life on earth, now recognized as 350 parts-per-million maximum. Trouble is, we’re already past that sustainability point, owing to rampant fossil fuel combustion. We face “not a problem for your grandchildren to solve…it’s a problem for your parents to have solved.”

Upon return to Vermont from a revelatory 2006 journey to Bangladesh, McKibben’s mission became activism in service to global warming awareness. He gathered 1,000 people on a five-day pilgrimage to spread the word. At the sight of this mass of humanity in a rural state, he says “cows were running in terror.” So began a populist movement demanding an 80% decrease in carbon emissions by 2050.

McKibben saw the way ahead as harnessing the Internet’s multiplicative power. In 2007, with the help of six students and email’s exponential impact, 1,400 simultaneous demonstrations took place countrywide. “The thing just went viral,” McKibben exclaims, “…the biggest day of grass-roots environmental activism since the first Earth Day in 1970.” Social networking and cell phones proved most effective tools for mobilization.

Organizers next turned their aims to the upcoming Copenhagen conference to form a treaty succeeding the Kyoto Protocol. The campaign is aptly titled 350.org. McKibben endorses the virtue of a simple number as a rallying point because “Arabic numerals are one of the very few things that translate easily around the world,” avoiding cross-cultural semantic mishaps.

From Martin Luther King, Jr., McKibben absorbed principles of righteous activism. The good fight must be “creative…determined…joyful.” In closing, McKibben cautions “nature does not grade on a curve.” Global warming “is the morally urgent question of our moment.” ]]> Fri, 03 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video http://mitworld.mit.edu/video ]]> Fri, 03 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video http://mitworld.mit.edu/video ]]> Fri, 03 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/658 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/658 Rafael Bras, a professor of civil and environmental engineering who pioneered the field of hydrologic science, is MIT's James R. Killian Jr. Faculty Achievement Award winner for 2008-2009. If he doesn’t have the whole world in his hands, Rafael Bras certainly grasps more pieces of the gigantic puzzle than most of us. Often credited with launching the science of hydrology -- the study of water’s crucial role in Earth systems -- Bras has developed passions for pretty much the rest of the Earth sciences as well. In this fond, valedictory lecture to MIT (he’s recently taken the post of Dean of Engineering at UC Irvine), Bras describes some of the research problems that have long fascinated him.

Bras enjoys wrapping his mind around big things, such as the size of the world’s oceans, whose numbers are in the billions of cubic kilometers. What interests Bras even more are the ways huge amounts of water cycle from the atmosphere as rain, into the soil, as runoff to the sea, and back again. He says “a lot of what we depend on is the result of differences between large numbers. It is those differences between very large numbers that makes it so uncertain, variable and so sensitive to our intervention or changes.”

The physics behind the various water cycles involves vast and continuous transfers of energy: rain changes soil moisture, which changes the amount of radiation the earth reflects, which affects evaporation, which changes the convection potential energy, which impacts cloudiness, which leads again to rain. It’s a “very nonlinear, very interacting cycle,” says Bras, which is “elegant and quite pretty.” Bras helped lay out the models for these cycles. His studies describe how nature seems to prefer extremes like flood and drought, and how in river basins all over the world, nature favors fractal organization and minimal energy expenditure.

Other observation and modeling projects may have consequences for the future of the planet: A nine-year study of an Amazon region that sampled cloud cover from a satellite every three hours demonstrated that deforested regions produce shallow clouds less likely to produce rain, while deeply forested regions generate deep clouds. He has been captivated for the last 10 years by “the intertwined dance between vegetation, landscape hydrology and radiation,” how soil moisture accommodates certain kinds of plants, which then change the properties of soil, which changes the drainage capability of water, which over time alters entire landscapes. Concludes Bras, “This beautiful trip through hydrology has been made exciting by all these things I did not know, which came through the exercise of research, trying things and finding things. It is all a result of chance and necessity; things adjust themselves.” ]]> Mon, 02 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0500 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/642 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/642 Imagine a response to oil dependence and climate change that offers people around the world a new and improved version of the car, premised on redesigning infrastructure top to bottom with green technology in a way that recharges ailing national economies. Applying both an entrepreneurial spirit and a systems engineering approach, Shai Agassi has devised just such a visionary plan for cracking these vexing global challenges.

A recent World Economic Forum asked participants how to make the world a better place by 2020. Agassi felt an engineer’s compulsion to respond. He describes a process “like a fractal problem…opening up a cascade of questions.” First came the notion of running a country without oil. He seized on, then dismissed, the idea of bio- and hydrogen-based fuels. He then experienced the seminal insight that “you need to go down from molecules to electrons if you want to change the world.”

This realization meant addressing both economic and engineering problems. He’d need to offer consumers not a vehicle limited to two seats, three wheels and 28 mph speeds -- but one that could go faster than gas cars, with all the requisite bells and whistles. To move his plan along, he also determined to use available electric car battery engineering. This raised significant issues of convenience: where to recharge and how frequently. Agassi envisioned charging docks in parking lots and home garages. He devised a simple battery replacement method.

Then came the issue of affordability, which Agassi solved by applying a familiar business model, though not one associated with cars: cell phone minutes. Sell consumers an electric car with a subscription for miles: the longer the subscription, the greater the discount (or rebate check). In Europe, Agassi notes, where gas costs $7 to $8 a gallon, a five-year subscription pretty much gets you “a free electric car.”

The model’s complexity and infrastructure requirements imply government backing, which Agassi has already secured. In Denmark there’s a 180% tax on gasoline, and gas-powered sedans costs 60 thousand euros while electrics go for 20 thousand. North Sea windmills will provide clean electricity for charge stations. Israel’s building a desert solar field to “drive every car,” and a smart grid to monitor battery charging. The U.S. is hosting pilot programs in Hawaii and the Bay Area.

His is not a plan to phase in gradually: The time is now, he says. “We must do the right, moral thing,” to contend with climate change and brutal oil regimes, and “to create the biggest expansion in U.S. history.” ]]> Mon, 05 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0500 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/629 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/629 “We’ve been spoiled as a nation,” says Bob Malone. For decades, energy was inexpensive and abundant, and most Americans took it for granted. Recently “we’ve seen the world change around us.” Successive presidential administrations have failed to free the nation of dependence on foreign oil, and to advance alternatives to fossil fuels. We must now, once and for all, shape a comprehensive national energy policy, Malone maintains.

With the dive in financial markets and general economic gloom, Malone worries that the public can’t focus clearly on energy. He reminds us that the fate of the U.S. economy is intricately bound up with energy costs, and that this year alone, “we’ll pay more than $400 billion for imported oil,” and that the U.S. has paid out $8 trillion for foreign oil since 1973. High energy costs today are choking the airline, trucking, and manufacturing industries, not to mention straining the public sector, as families spend much more to drive, and to heat, cool and light their homes.

While Malone’s BP is eagerly exploring new energy ventures, he notes that a grab-bag of well-meaning programs introduced by industry and state governments cannot produce the change required to transform our energy infrastructure. Malone advocates a deliberate, federally directed enterprise aimed at providing long-term energy security. Some steps he recommends: energy conservation, in the form of mass transportation, higher mileage cars and green buildings; exploration and recovery of offshore oil in areas currently off-limits; continued exploitation of coal (the U.S. has a 100-year supply, says Malone), on the assumption we’ll find some way to make it clean; and large-scale investment in wind, solar, and nuclear and next-generation biofuels.

To kickstart alternative energy, though, the U.S. needs a financial regulatory and physical infrastructure. For instance, BP owns and operates the largest North American solar panel facility, but can send what it produces only to Maryland and California, which provide subsidies. There’s no way industry can overcome technological hurdles and price constraints without government incentives in place. Pricing carbon appropriately will make energy conservation more attractive, and generate investment in renewables, he says. While the higher cost of carbon “will eventually find its way to the pump, monthly utility bills and to the grocery store, the revenue we’ll get from carbon taxes or sale of carbon credits … will be used to soften the impact on society from those higher prices, and we can use some of that money to reinvest in alternative forms of energy.” ]]> Fri, 05 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0500 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/620 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/620 This two-part lecture provides a brief illustrated journey through our whaling past, and the heart-breaking current story of the North Atlantic right whale.

Using many slides, author Eric Jay Dolin recaps highlights from his recent book, Leviathan. Among the tidbits, we learn that Captain John Smith (of Jamestown fame) came to Maine and Massachusetts in 1614 to hunt for whales (with a sideline in gold and silver). It was a bust, like some of his other ventures. The next settlers had more luck, harvesting dead whales that drifted ashore. Through the next century, colonists mastered offshore whaling, and ultimately more than half the income New England earned from selling products to England was derived from whales.

With breaks during the American Revolution and the War of 1812, New Englanders built up the whaling industry steadily: By 1846, there were 735 American whaling ships (out of 900 worldwide) earning 70,000 people their living. $70 million was invested in whaling infrastructure, and 60 coastal cities and towns rose from whale harvesting. It was the fifth largest industry in the U.S., providing the clean-burning candles favored by Ben Franklin and baleen for ladies’ hoops and stays.

It was also a dangerous, bloody and stinking vocation, involving years at sea, death by fin or rope, and hours over a boiling rendering vat. Populations of whales sank drastically, and whalers searched farther for their prey. West Coast whalers chased bowheads into the Arctic and were trapped by ice. Ultimately, the American whaling industry “sailed into oblivion” with the discovery of oil in Titusville, PA, the Civil War, and the evaporation of the baleen-based corset market – done in by new Paris fashions.

The tiny, remaining population of North Atlantic right whales – perhaps 350 -- is known to researchers “better than any other mammal in the world,” says Michael Moore. Their continued existence depends on our “walking a tightrope between commerce and conservation.” Perhaps this individual knowledge adds to the poignancy of his account: Whales tracked and photographed since they were babies are spotted now with fishing rig wrapped around their fins, or hack marks cut into their bodies by ship propellers.

The “trajectory” for these animals does not look good: from 1986 to 2005, biologists counted 50 dead right whales. This does not include those animals that simply sank out of sight after they died. Moore is quietly indignant: death by fishing rope constriction is awful, lasting for months in some cases. “There’s the conservation piece,” he says, “and the extreme animal welfare issue.” There’s also the matter of deteriorating habitat and dwindling food supply, toxic contaminants, and noise.

The only hope for these creatures lies in measures that reduce the chances that whales get fouled in fishing gear, and that slow down boats in the lanes favored by whales up and down the East Coast. More mitigation must be done to achieve animal welfare and sustainable global ecology while satisfying human needs, maintains Moore. ]]> Fri, 05 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0500 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/621 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/621 These legal, environmental and policy experts don’t converge on a dominant strategy for saving whales, but make the case in their own ways that we are fast approaching a moment of no return for the great cetaceans, and quite possibly the oceans we all rely on.

“Every time you take a piece out of the ocean without knowing what you’re doing, you’re creating future problems,” says Robin Craig. With whaling and current fishing practices, we simply don’t know what we’re losing in terms of biodiversity and larger ecosystem functioning. Craig is also concerned about the Navy’s use of lower frequency sonar, and the decade of litigation that in one case ended up in the Supreme Court.

Jeremy Firestone has investigated the physics of shipstrikes on whales, looking at whether speed or mass are most important in determining damage. This is particularly important where the endangered right whale is concerned. Firestone is trying to determine quantitatively how particular strategies, such as slowing down ships, or shifting vessel routes, might reduce these destructive encounters, and which might be more acceptable to the different stakeholders.

“Climate change is rapidly emerging…as the primary source of imperilment” for ocean species, says Wil Burns. Sea ice has receded, permitting ship travel in previously safe Arctic regions; algae and krill populations, whale ecosystem mainstays, are shrinking. Whales face extinction by a variety of synergistic factors now, and for better or worse, says Burns, the legal and regulatory response must center on the International Whaling Commission (IWC).

Alison Rieser discusses the current gnarled politics of the IWC. Japan exploits a loophole in a global whaling moratorium to take hundreds of Antarctic and Pacific whales, arguing that populations permit sustainable catch quotas. Other countries vehemently oppose this whaling, and are trying to modernize the IWC, to make it address near and long-range threats to cetaceans. Rieser wonders if, under U.S. leadership, the IWC “can be salvaged” in order to take collective action “around climate change and the other proximate causes of whale demise.”

Don Anton assumes at the outset that “dysfunctionality won’t go away” in world whaling politics. He looks in particular at Australia’s efforts to end Japanese whaling by establishing a whale sanctuary off Antarctica. Anton doesn’t believe this unilateral approach will work. “I come at this (conclusion) awkwardly and uncomfortably” as a “tree-hugger,” he admits. Instead, he thinks Australia and New Zealand should plead the whales’ case before an international tribunal.

“I think whaling should stop absolutely,” says Max Strahan. We have an ecosystemic relationship to them, he says, and the fact we’re killing whales symbolizes our destruction of the oceans as well. The reason why the treaties don’t work, he says, is that “under the real law that matters, whales are still fish,” managed like hunted animals, and under this paradigm, there’s no possibility of saving them. Strahan wants the end of commercial whaling and of the IWC, and demands environmental reviews of fisheries. ]]> Mon, 01 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0500 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/617 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/617 There’s “just exactly enough time, with no time to lose” to address the massive challenge of climate change and renewable energy, says moderator John Sterman. With this sense of urgency, MIT faculty, administration and students have taken to heart the mission of rendering their campus and the larger world more sustainable.

Sterman describes a triumph of green construction rising on campus, Building E62, the product of a decade of design and negotiation, which many hope will set the standard for future MIT development. The building features lighting that will use half as much power as existing campus buildings, and heating and cooling that will reduce energy use by one-third. But this is a success story with lessons: green construction requires higher up front costs, and MIT executives were not immediately sold on the benefits of lower operating costs.

Theresa Stone lays out the fundamentals of MIT’s environmental stewardship: be comprehensive and involve the entire community; consider behavioral as well as engineered solutions; and think about return on investment. These principles have guided a thorough ongoing review of energy use, leading to improving radiators in half the Institute’s academic buildings; and getting researchers to close the sash on the 1000 chemical fume hoods on campus, which Stone characterizes as a major MIT “energy hog.” In some cases, MIT examined whether its safety standards were excessive, and consuming excessive energy.

The Sloan School’s Jason Jay outlines the complex network of MIT student-based sustainability initiatives, some of which have coalesced under the rubric MIT Generator. As an analyst of organizational change, Jay noted that in MIT’s unique culture, petitions and rallies were less likely to galvanize people than collaboration across disciplines, and the “engineering-hacking aesthetic of hands-on projects.” There are dozens of unique projects underway after just two years, including an experiment in using waste heat from MIT’s cogeneration facility for electric power.

One student club, Sustainability@MIT, has built a membership of 780, and hosts conferences, high profile speakers, and symposia. Representative Adam Siegel sees his group working with community organizations, and revving up voter interest in clean energy during political campaigns. His group recruits faculty mentors, and solicits corporate support to bring practitioners on campus, and to discuss jobs in sustainability. One sign of this movement’s success: There’s a wait list for Sloan’s Sustainability Lab.

Since her return from the World Solar Challenge, Anna Jaffe has been very busy creating the Vehicle Design Summit Project, an attempt to produce a car that’s 20 times more sustainable in its life cycle than the Prius. She’s developed an international consortium of students, worked with master auto makers in Turin, Italy, and has finished prototyping the first car. Beyond this vision lies a grander goal: acting as a catalyst for others with big ideas, and serving as a flashpoint for fellow MIT students. “We’re surrounded by so much genius, so we sometimes look to peers for answers,” she says. ]]> Wed, 19 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0500 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/615 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/615 There are few people who have spent as much time wielding high-level influence in Washington as George Shultz, and in such a variety of roles (Secretary of Labor, Treasury and State, plus the Office of Management and Budget, among others). So the MIT Energy Initiative has much to gain from a friend with this kind of distinguished government record.

Shultz discusses our nation’s “roller coaster” energy ride. He harks back fondly to Dwight Eisenhower, who thought if the U.S. imported more than 20% of its oil, “we would be headed for trouble in national security.” Eisenhower instituted an oil import quota program, many viewed as the “OPEC of its day,” says Shultz. Prices stood at a whopping $3 per barrel. Then came the oil shocks of the ‘70s – the Arab oil embargo, the Iranian revolution and the Iran-Iraq war. The U.S. faced rationing and prices that landed at $40/barrel by decade’s end. During each of these price spikes, there was a “kerfuffle” that subsided rapidly, says Shultz. We never learned our lesson.

Shultz sees the U.S. at a momentous crossroads that he views, this time, with optimism. “Powerful constituencies are involved in this, all oddly pointing in the same direction.” National and economic security and climate change are converging to force our hand. Shultz envisions the next administration taking on a host of actions: a “stable tax regime” for wind and solar power; carbon capture and transformation (rather than the iffy sequestration); implementation of nuclear power, if we can “come to grips with the nuclear fuel cycle issue;” ending the “dumb policy” of corn-based ethanol subsidies; and finding a better car battery.

These things seem doable, says Shultz. He adds to his wishlist “a wedge” -- something that would keep the price of crude oil at $70 or above, to help people working on alternative fuels. And there’s also need for a carbon tax (preferred by economists to cap and trade). But “the big enchilada” for Shultz is “investing heavily in basic research.” If you’re going to subsidize something, he says, support activities that “will get results that will pay off for us.” Shultz acknowledges the kind of partisanship and game-playing that take place in Washington around wise energy policy and science. He offers advice for people in the scientific community who wish to gain the ear of politicians: “Get people in there who are fun to talk to, and when the president thinks they’re coming to the Oval Office, he’ll look forward to it, and enjoy it and get some education.” ]]> Fri, 31 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/610 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/610 Half the world’s population currently lives in cities, and that number is spiraling upward, as urban settlements gobble up most of the world’s natural resources and emit the most pollutants. No wonder that these panelists perceive the challenge (and opportunity) of sustainability as much bigger than getting people to switch from incandescent light bulbs to fluorescents.

The “latest craze in city governance,” says Judith Layzer is making your city as sustainable as possible. New York for instance, has vowed to plant one million trees, and convert its entire taxi fleet to hybrids. Chicago is covering its rooftops in green; Toronto composts. Layzer believes there are “good reasons to worry we’ll see symbolic commitments with not much done.”

Cities struggle to undertake systemic change, partly because they don’t control the supply and demand mechanism for energy resources such as oil, which helps drive commuting and mass transit behaviors. Cities have also historically supported unfettered growth to keep their tax base high, and when confronted with a sensible, pollution saving plan such as switching traffic lights to LED lightbulbs, cringe at the high upfront costs. Layzer thinks successful urban sustainability initiatives will depend on national governments pricing natural resources appropriately (e.g., eliminating subsidies on fossil fuels); effective local leadership that makes the case for often unpopular schemes like parking fees and congestion pricing; and major coalition building.

No amount of green construction will help with reducing greenhouse gases to desirable levels if today’s buildings aren’t altered to reduce their CO₂ emissions, says
Milton Bevington. His brief with the Clinton Climate Initiative (CCI) in 40 cities worldwide is to provide market-based solutions, not handouts or tax rebates, to get efficient heat and power into millions of residential and commercial buildings. A large part of Bevington’s job is educating landlords and others about new financing approaches for retrofitting old buildings. One example: a Chicago bank designed a loan enabling the owners of the city’s 550 thousand multifamily housing units to use an “energy performance guarantee” as collateral. Borrowed funds go into reducing water and energy use, and “every single dollar required to pay back the bank” comes from a reduction in energy use. Bevington would like to see more investor-driven financing for energy efficient projects, which he believes could spread swiftly in both rich and poor countries “to change a large sector of the built environment.”

There’s a dilemma brewing for most of the world’s big businesses, says Bill Sisson, who is United Technologies’ point man in a business consortium effort on energy efficient buildings. While firms recognize the importance of energy efficiency, only 13% are rising to the challenge. Sisson’s group seeks to create a roadmap for zero net energy use in buildings, involving technology, improved financial mechanisms, and behavior change. Says Sisson, this is “really about managing risk and directing the future of business in the right way; we see this aspect of buildings as critical for our growth and presence in the market.” ]]> Mon, 27 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/608 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/608 When a global corporation implements sustainability standards, it pays to work closely with supply chains, as these panelists attest.

From his research, Richard M. Locke knows that the traditional methods of achieving decent labor conditions don’t work well. When Locke examined years of records gathered by Nike and other companies concerned with employee treatment in overseas factories, he found the conventional compliance route -- auditing, policing and enforcement -- just hadn’t brought about consistent improvements in child labor, or excess hours.

What does work, Locke discovered, are collaborative approaches -- when the corporate buyer offers to show the way, sharing know-how and resources with its suppliers. For instance, when one of Nike’s Vietnamese apparel factories -- an under-performer in productivity and labor standards -- inquired about adopting Lean manufacturing, Nike helped retrain its workforce. After a few months, says Locke, the plant’s quality and output improved, and it boosted workers’ wages, lowering the turnover rate. Says Locke, “Good things can go together.”

When Wal-mart acquired a majority share in his family’s Central American business, Fernando Paiz admits he worried about Wal-Mart’s reputation in the U.S. Instead, he was delighted when Wal-mart actually raised the bar on environmental and labor standards. Says Paiz, “Wal-mart has pushed us beyond expectations of what compliance really means.”

Paiz describes how the corporation is pressing vendors and customers to reduce waste (the CEO wants none produced by 2011) and to become energy efficient. Among the innovations: Big box stores capture the frozen slush from thousands of refrigerator units to cool store interiors during the day; solar panels on Wal-mart rooftops produce electricity not just for stores but for neighbors. Wal-mart has challenged suppliers to come up with the least bulky products and sleekest packaging possible for everything from detergent to electronics. Consumers go for these big-time, says Paiz. The question is, “How can we do the same with other industries?”

Hewlett-Packard recently doubled in size with a major acquisition, adding 175 thousand more employees, which makes Bonnie Nixon-Gardiner’s job even more challenging. She’s now charged with establishing “global citizenship” standards within a sprawling network of staff and suppliers spanning nearly every continent. This means communicating H-P’s way of handling ethics, environmental sustainability, human rights and labor, privacy and social investment to managers and partners in nations not known for a keen concern in these areas.

In Mexico, a CEO of a factory told her that he doesn’t hire homosexuals, people with tattoos, pregnant women, people with lawyers in their families or people associated with unions. Says Nixon-Gardiner, “I said we need a conversation on hiring practices…We’re your partner; this is a risk for us.” Enforcing codes of conduct makes perfect business sense, she says. “Having been a manufacturer so long, it’s obvious to us, we treat people as our greatest asset. …It’s just a matter of helping partners in developing nations to understand…” ]]> Mon, 27 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/609 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/609 All that’s required to achieve sustainability, says Rebecca Henderson, is to clean up your current operations and/or rethink the business. “That’s easy,” she says -- with a smile. Henderson has spent much of her career trying to help firms embrace and survive such transformations. She and her colleagues have analyzed why businesses get stuck in their ways, and how they can break free to act boldly around the challenge and opportunity of sustainability.

Overload proves the single greatest obstacle for many organizations, Henderson says. Too many projects and too little time result in “toxic effects, including making it difficult to undertake creative thinking and purposeful redirection” that responding to sustainability requires. Single-minded focus on short term financials can put unbearable pressure on individuals, who then can’t focus successfully, leading to failures in their projects. In an ugly loop, employees receive blame for poor performance, leading to greater pressure, and more degradation. Henderson sees a “fundamental tradeoff between working smarter and working harder.”

There’s no magic bullet for getting unstuck, and warns Henderson, whatever you do, don’t rely on vision models or simple blueprints for change. Rather, businesses must undergo a painful process of behavior change, “building muscle memory.” Henderson offers some tips for organizations to break out of ruts successfully. CEOs need to get a real fix on capacity (so they don’t throw one initiative after another at employees), and track performance historically. They must understand that significant change will be costly, and likely mean cutting out other projects – so perhaps “pick low-hanging fruit,” biting off “little chunks, addressing areas that make a big difference.” Managers must clearly state strategy and values, then live by them, and respond to problems as systems dynamics issues -- “don’t beat up employees.”

Henderson acknowledges these strategies are “easy to put on a slide, but hard to do.” Yet she feels that if organizations develop the ability to have real conversations, put aside an exclusive focus on the current quarter in favor of the long-term health of the company, a focus on sustainability “gives us the emotional power and moral juice to do these things.” ]]> Mon, 20 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/606 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/606 If “organizations are the way that ideas change the world,” as MIT Sloan Dean Dave Schmittlein puts it, then look to institutions like MIT, which has wrapped its arms around the issues of energy and climate change, to help make sustainability real and attainable. The Dean describes some showcase work launched at MIT, including a long-lasting battery for electric cars, and MIT’s own green campus efforts.

For MIT Sloan, explains Richard Locke, sustainability is not an “in vogue concept” that is about environment or climate change. Rather, it is “an incredible opportunity for new business, and for existing enterprise to reinvent their practices.” He invites panelists and audience at Convocation sessions to engage in dialog about moving beyond theory to meet the challenges of sustainability.

Forget the notion that the climate challenge is primarily a technical one, and can be solved with the help of 21st century know-how, says John Sterman. A more useful response would combine the distributed leadership of a civil rights movement with the technological daring of a Manhattan project. There are huge obstacles to overcome: According to Sterman, while a vast majority of people have heard of global warming, believe it poses a threat, and believe in reducing greenhouse emissions, a majority also oppose any changes that would “put the true costs of energy in front of you at the pump and in your electric bill.” There’s widespread belief that we can “wait and see” whether climate change is really that bad.

Sterman is working on providing policy makers and the public with interactive models that demonstrate just how immediate the climate threat is and how a slack response will only make things worse. He wants people to perceive that they must reduce greenhouse gases dramatically, but he also wants to destroy the myth that doing so will “kill the economy.” Sterman says “addressing this issue will pay dividends—that if we can cut the use of fossil fuels, it puts money in our pockets.”

Vladimir Bulovic wants to make the climate issue personal and immediate: the arboreal forests of the world produce 2/3rds of the planet’s oxygen, and due to warming (and the diseases that accompany it), trees are dying off. This image of our world choking on its own waste is motivating MIT scientists to find alternatives to polluting energy sources. He cites in particular efforts to harness the sun’s energy, including improving silicon technology, engineering photons to make electricity, and advancing ways of concentrating and storing solar power.

British telecom BT has managed to reduce its carbon footprint by 58% since 1996. Imagine what would happen if other global corporations followed suit, queries
Kevin Moss. He challenges his commercial peers to scour their business processes to reduce real estate and transportation usage, improve energy efficiency (e.g., by raising operating temperatures at data centers), and to purchase renewable energy. BT’s next goal: an 80% reduction of carbon emissions, and to secure 25% of its energy needs by wind energy by 2016. ]]> Mon, 20 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/607 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/607 GM knows you’ll be skeptical, says Gary Cowger, but this icon of American business has committed to transforming itself via a comprehensive regime of environmental sustainability. Cowger offers proof of the corporate giant’s efforts to date and even more ambitious plans for the future.

From its headquarters in Detroit, to 185 manufacturing sites around the world, to the cars and trucks people drive out of a dealership, GM sees “environmental sustainability more and more ingrained in our operating culture every day.” Cowger says employees in every plant, in every language around the world must embrace environmental metrics along with safety and quality.

This means, for instance, that GM is installing giant solar panels at sites in Europe and the U.S., in some cases, sending electricity back to the grid. It’s harnessing the energy of landfill gases to fire boilers and generate electricity. There are water reduction and reuse initiatives in thirsty spots like Mexico, and habitat enhancement and restoration projects in North America and Brazil. What’s more, GM has pledged to eliminate all waste at its operations worldwide; to date, 43 facilities are landfill free (your bag of trash accounts for more waste than all these plants put together, says Cowger.) He projects that renewable initiatives will amount to savings in excess of $75 million within a few years.

GM is pursuing a comparably diverse strategy with its cars and trucks, providing consumers with options to increase fuel economy, reduce emissions and “displace petrol.” In the next few years, expect more than 20 diesel engine variants, and biofuel-driven cars feeding on switchgrass, forest and farm residues and trash -- “the landfills we used to hate are becoming gems,” notes Cowger. GM is producing 20 versions of cars than can run on such flexfuels. The company is also developing a variety of hybrids, rear and front-wheel drive. The piece de resistance, what Cowger calls “the gamechanger,” will be the GM Volt. This is GM’s version “of how the auto will be reinvented,” a car that uses only electricity to power the wheels. If you don’t drive more than 40 miles per day, “you’ll never need to buy gasoline again,” says Cowger, because this car plugs in each night to recharge its lithium ion battery. Transforming the industry, he concludes, is good for business and “it’s the right thing to do.” ]]> Sun, 07 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/589 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/589 Veerabhadran Ramanathan recaps 35 years of key findings, and brings his audience up to date on the latest climate data, models, and observations which together demonstrate how CO₂ is but one piece of a complex puzzle.

Ramanathan deploys simple but extremely helpful metaphors to describe the processes behind warming. CO₂ in the atmosphere, whether manmade or natural, surrounds the earth like a blanket, holding onto the radiation from the sun. When the blanket is behaving properly, enough sun’s heat stays on earth to keep biological forces humming, and the rest escapes back into space. But if this blanket gets thicker, it “prevents the body from losing heat.” CO₂ is particularly noxious, since it “lives in the atmosphere for a century if not longer.” But it turns out we have other molecules circling the globe to worry about.

Starting in the 1970s, scientists discovered that compounds in the atmosphere, such as chlorofluorocarbons and methane, acted more powerfully than CO₂ in making our “blanket” more efficient in trapping heat. They began developing models trying to describe the complex interplay of heat-trapping gases with earth’s natural climate systems. Ramanathan’s work, which involves precise observations from the surface, satellite measurements, balloons and unmanned vehicles, has convinced him “that climate change is worse than what we get from the models.”

The most recent UN report on climate change predicts that greenhouse gases already in circulation have committed the planet to a warming of 2.5 degrees. “No matter what we do today to reduce emissions, the planet will still heat up,” says Ramanathan. But, through a quirk that Ramanathan has spent 10 years uncovering, the planet actually manifests only ¼ of the warming it should based on these climate models. Air pollution, specifically brown clouds from burning biomass, Ramanathan has learned, act as a global warming mask, reducing sunlight on the ground. “On the one hand, it has protected us, but also prevented us from seeing the full blast of the greenhouse effect,” he says. “One of the dumbest things we can do is to reduce sunlight,” because it reduces ocean evaporation, which cuts down on rainfall, and shifts weather systems everywhere, shrinking harvests and glaciers.

We are left with “Faustian bargains,” says Ramanathan. If we cut airborne pollutants such as sulfur, the mask will drop, temperatures rise rapidly, and climate tipping elements come into play. Curing one ill causes another. Any plan for “dismantling the experiment we have done with blankets, mirrors and dust must be done as carefully as dismantling a nuclear device.” ]]> Mon, 11 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/585 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/585 There’s more than a little magic in Werner Sobek’s constructions, which balance aesthetics, architectural constraints and pathbreaking science to, in his words, “go beyond” nature’s own limits.

Sobek walks us through his portfolio of engineering feats, enabled by a worldwide architecture and engineering business, and by his affiliated institute, where researchers are let loose on the most demanding problems of the business. For instance, in 1997, his group began to address a key issue the architecture and construction trades engaged in only through “theoretical discussion:” how to design a Triple 0 building –for zero energy consumption, zero energy emissions and complete recycle-ability.

Such innovative constructions require new, lightweight, recycle-able, load-bearing material. His interdisciplinary research team found inspiration in human bones, whose internal architecture is made up of cells arranged according to a certain geometry. They have developed a bioreactor, and are trying to work their bioengineered material into concrete, to make it both porous and strong, ultimately reducing energy and material input.

Sobek seems fascinated with structural systems that seemingly flout natural law: super light materials that support heavy weights; or vast constructions that exist for just a few hours. He designed a tent for the Pope’s mass in Germany intended for a crowd of 300 thousand, using a transparent wall made of under- and over-pressurized plastic that was sucked onto the structure by vacuum. Once the pump pressure was switched off, “things fell apart, and recycled easily.” He’s researched lightweight, branchlike structures for carrying loads, and scoffs at any analogy to a tree: “To say nature is always designing in an optimum way is nonsense.”

Sobek shows his audience a variety of facades and “adaptive skins,” including an atrium for a Swiss fertilizer firm that has an all glass roof that can rotate, as well as open and close in three minutes. His researchers have created load-bearing glass “shells” millimeters’ thick that neither crumble nor shatter when challenged by the weight of snow or a vandal’s blow. He’s clad a steamy Bangkok airport terminal in fabric that somehow blocks heat and runway noise, but permits the circulation of fresh, cool air.

These amazing inventions don’t spring up overnight. Says Sobek: “There are 1,000 problems I’m having around me, like a big herd of sheeps. From time to time, I take one, further develop it, then send it back to the herd. Only a few problems can be attacked, solved and brought into practice in short time. Many things we’ve been working on for 10 years.” ]]> Mon, 28 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/580 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/580 Even as new supercities pop up around the world, with populations in the tens of millions, urban planning remains stuck in an older time. As Dennis Frenchman says, “Amazingly very little progress has been made ... We’re using basically the models and methods of the 1920s.” Frenchman says we need to confront the immense challenges of rapid urbanization, universal mobility sustainability and basic livability.

Some emerging concepts include new century cities, where single “messy” mixed-use zones will house shopping, living, and commerce. He describes technology networks built into urban environments, producing streams of data that not only reveal how a city works, but allow better real-time management of systems. Cities will sense traffic flows and change street signage and lane markings accordingly. Smart cars will guide users to available parking. Public buildings will have changing faces. This “agile infrastructure has the potential to make day to day interactions more efficient and productive, but also more personal, because systems can interact with you and adjust to your desires,” says Frenchman.

Boston invests big-time in infrastructure, says Antonio di Mambro, but its transportation system is very “Boston-centric.” He believes it’s time to convert this system into a regional one, “tied to a new image of the city.” Di Mambro is developing a new transportation network based on the area’s “educational necklace,” developing a West Station hub that connects universities to each other, and to the rest of the world.

Di Mambro also describes how coastal cities should plan for global warming impacts. He describes Venice’s strategic plan to defend itself from rising water, which includes massive mobile flood barriers, environmental restoration, economic development of neglected areas and green infrastructure.

In the 1990s, Martha Lampkin Welborne became convinced that Curativa, Brazil’s public transit system would be perfect for LA. In this system, buses operate in dedicated lanes, with costs far less than those required for subway or even light rail. A nonprofit team “created the vision and sold it to everyone -- the MTA and the city.” After this accomplishment, LA’s mayor drafted her to create an economic center in a desolate city stretch. In re-imagining Grand Avenue, says Welborne, she has been transforming a physical vision into a reality, starting with a precise economic analysis, politicking with city and county officials and collaborating with Frank Gehry.

“Without being hyperbolic, it’s the greatest building boom in human history,” says
Tom Campanella of China’s construction frenzy. Campanella marshals many astonishing facts to back up the statement: In Shanghai, more than 900 million square feet of commercial office space were added to the city between 1990 and 2004, roughly equivalent to 335 Empire State Buildings. Between 1985-1995 Shanghai’s footprint and suburbs jumped from 90 to 790 square miles. China will end up with more than 1 billion people in its cities. We Americans must “learn humility,” he says, in imagining urban planning for this scale of building boom, or establishing what constitutes good versus bad urbanism. ]]> Thu, 17 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/577 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/577 In turn pragmatic and visionary, John Doerr describes his venture capital firm’s response to the climate change/clean energy challenge, while answering a range of questions from an entrepreneurial and academic audience.

Doerr says that “it’s a flat, crowded, hot world, and getting hotter.” Science informs us that we dare not exceed a 2^oC rise in global temperatures, lest the planet suffer irreversible, catastrophic climate change. This means we must “stop dumping 70 million tons of CO₂ into the atmosphere every day as if it were a free open sewer.” Such a task involves reducing greenhouse emissions across the globe by more than 50% by 2030, and the developed world must reduce its emissions by 90% in the same timeframe. While there’s no single silver bullet to achieve such a vast turnaround at speed and at scale, there are some “big bullets” in our arsenal, says Doerr.

Kleiner Perkins looks to “disruptive” R&D that can make a serious dent in the CO₂/clean energy problem. Doerr describes ventures involving the first volume, plug-in hybrid automobile; diesel fuel synthesized from sugar; alternatives to coal-fired electricity, including new, promising solar cell technology; and a large-scale conservation enterprise that relies on RFID to encourage residents to recycle.

But all of these R&D efforts represent a drop in the bucket, notes Doerr – nowhere near the scale required to attack the problem. “We must find answers that are economic for all people, everywhere. We must use policy to harness innovation, to make sure the right thing to do is the profitable thing to do, so it becomes the probable thing to happen.” The U.S. government has invested a measly $1 billion per year in renewable energy R&D, while Exxon, he says, earned more than $1.1 billion per day in revenue. Energy is “the mother of all markets,” at $6 trillion a year worldwide. “Going green, solving that problem is going to be the largest transformation we’ve seen on the planet since we went aerobic, from methane to oxygen.”

Doerr also backs efforts to change laws to stem emissions, such as California’s Global Warming Solutions Act. He hopes the next few years will bring a national cap and trade system on greenhouse gases, and even better, a carbon tax that’s revenue neutral to taxpayers. He’d also like to see state utilities’ profits decoupled “from the number of electrons they serve.”

Doerr imagines a “planetary call to action,” bigger than the Apollo and Manhattan projects, because “this is nothing less than re-industrializing every city, every town, every country on the planet.” ]]> Thu, 17 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/578 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/578 After 20-plus years in the utility industry, James Rogers is emphatic that we must “build a bridge to a low carbon world.” He confesses to a missionary zeal around clean energy, and to the fact that he must reinvent his business, Duke Energy.

Rogers invokes 3, 12 and 41 as the key numbers defining his challenge: Duke, with four million customers in five states, is the third largest emitter of CO₂ among U.S. companies, the 12th largest corporate emitter in the world, and, 41st among nations if the firm were a country.

Rogers conceives of the challenge in terms he calls “cathedral thinking.” Just as it took three generations to design and build Notre Dame, so will it take decades to resolve the carbon issue. “It took us 100 years to get here, and will take a while to get out of this…. We need a sense of urgency, but not a sense of panic…a sense of hope, not a sense of fear. “

He names “two aspirations for the company.” The first involves modernizing and de-carbonizing the power supply, which he thinks can be accomplished if carbon capture and the next generation of nuclear technology prove themselves. The second aspiration is to maximize energy efficiency, even as demand for electricity rises.

Reducing greenhouse emissions will mean getting politicians to back an economy wide cap and trade on CO₂, with “allowances to help make the transition for those dependent on coal.” Twenty-five states get more than 50% of their electricity from coal, Rogers reminds us. A consumer revolt might prevent meaningful laws from passing. While pursuing mitigation, we must also struggle with adaptation. Rogers detects great difficulty getting our politicians to aid places like Bangladesh that will most suffer from warming. Above all, the U.S. must start funding technology R&D. Rogers despairs of politicians responsibly dispersing R&D dollars, so he recommends a national trust fund to focus such spending.

As a firm believer in incentives, Rogers would like to reward utilities for saving watts. He says “energy efficiency is one of the five ways you generate electricity -- it should be treated as a production option.” Duke Energy is attempting to achieve efficiencies by modernizing coal plants, and hopes to find software to optimize and streamline its operations as well. While customers and investors routinely evaluate Rogers’ performance, he most cares about his family’s judgment in the future. “At the end of the day, I want my grandchildren to say my granddaddy made the right decision when faced with 3, 12, 41.” ]]> Thu, 10 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/574 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/574 These five speakers grapple with shifting notions of sustainability.

Judith Layzer advocates “strong sustainability” in lieu of the conventional approach, which imagines human-made capital and technology can always substitute for the wealth of resources drawn from the natural world. Development and affluence have instead degraded ecosystems. Strong sustainability “entails living within the productive capacity of nature…meeting the needs of the current generation as opposed to their demands.” Wealthy societies must adopt laws to contain population growth and curb consumption, and develop regional cooperation and fair trade policies.

Jason Corburn describes an environmental justice framework that connects ecological, economic and social justice issues, especially in urban settings. Corburn asks about the distribution of environmental goods and evils (such as parks and pollution); who participates in rule-making and enforcement; and how environmental justice evolves institutionally, and is enforced. The key lesson of the past is that voluntary enforcement of environmental justice guidelines don’t work, and we must “find a legal or regulatory stick to implement” its goals.

“Where I’m from, I see this green thing as a rich people’s movement,” says
Phillip Thompson, who was a housing manager in New York. Environmentalists pushed clean air laws that ended the incineration of garbage -- but left housing projects with an unfunded mandate to bag their own waste. Thompson acknowledges the energy crisis is an emergency for many lower-income city dwellers hit with high heating costs: “We can’t do affordable housing if it isn’t green.” But transforming cities into affordable and green places means systemic change. Who, for example, will pay for outfitting buildings in poorer neighborhoods with energy conserving technology, and who will train and educate the workforce required for this transformation?

“What are we trying to sustain?” asks Chris Zegras. He believes the answer is access to opportunities that enable development. How do societies expand accessibility without depriving future generations of the ability to do so? Zegras says it’s hard to argue the importance of climate change to someone “who travels 3 ½ hours a day on a bus to get to a job, and half the salary is eaten up by the bus ride.” First, we must alleviate fundamental issues of accessibility for the poor: their lack of affordable transportation and proximity to schools and jobs. Zegras recommends addressing the worldwide crisis in transportation, in part through such innovations as bike and car sharing.

Looking down on Earth as if it were one country, says Adil Najam, you’d have to conclude it is poor, extremely divided, degraded, poorly governed and unsafe – a Third-world country. Addressing the environment turns on development, since “the poor are hit first and hit most.” The climate question has moved from discussion of molecules to adaptation, but we remain largely ignorant about how to mitigate and adapt, Najam says. Worse, nations are off on the wrong foot, measuring the problem in terms of only “emissions and dollars.” When a Bangladeshi fisherman loses his work to rising waters, what is the cost? “We need to add the currency of livelihood,” concludes Najam. ]]> Wed, 25 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/570 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/570 Within the next five years, David Berry projects, American drivers may be filling their tanks with gas that’s not been pumped out of the ground, but synthesized in a laboratory. And Berry means gas – not ethanol or some other version of the fuel. One of Berry’s key venture capital enterprises, LS9, has designed a petroleum molecule “that looks like, tastes like, and is chemically identifiable in every stretch of the imagination to petroleum.”

Thanks to the genomics and proteomics revolution, sequences of DNA can be read at lightning fast speeds, and DNA proteins can now be made “to order.” Berry sees vast new potential for bioengineering. He jumped ship from academia to the business world, he says, to harness bioengineering tools in the most expeditious way possible, to drive innovation where it’s most needed, like in the energy marketplace. “Why spend time making ethanol when we can make something we actually want?” Berry poses.

Biopetroleum, a synthetic molecule based on sugar, is fundamentally more efficient to generate than ethanol, and behaves precisely as the dirty black stuff we derive from the ground. Berry cites loads of advantages in making our own gas, from utilizing the same storage and distribution facilities, to kicking the foreign fossil fuel habit. “Petroleum is renewable over a 100 million-year lifecycle; biopetroleum is renewable over a couple hours –put in some sugar, get it out,” says Berry.

While Berry’s enterprise may indeed yield “a molecule that matters more than ethanol,” it does not help reduce atmospheric CO₂ in the short term. “We’re only trying to solve one problem at a time,” he says. There are plenty of risks and challenges to large-scale production, Berry acknowledges in response to audience questions. He describes measures scientists are discussing to avoid the misappropriation of this synthetic molecule (or other bioengineered products) for malevolent purposes. He admits to some concerns about a steady supply of reasonably priced sugar (“We check the price of corn every day”); and acknowledges obstacles in building giant plants in the U.S. for processing the petroleum. Nevertheless, Berry sees enormous opportunities in the energy market for his project in the not-distant future. When asked if Exxon is worried about his work, Berry responds, “I hope so.”

]]> Tue, 10 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/564 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/564 William Mitchell and Ryan Chin propose an attractive alternative to the carbon-belching, gas-guzzling autos clogging our thoroughfares, a vision that is as much about transforming cities as about remaking cars. The City Car, a tiny, electric-powered, foldable, stackable vehicle, is their solution to freeing urban centers of paralyzing, polluting traffic, and the nightmare of parking.

Along with a tiny footprint and lack of tailpipe emissions, the City Car comes equipped with an onboard operating system that allows the car to communicate with the rest of the fleet, and omni-directional robot wheels that turn (all the way around) on a dime. Chin enthuses about the car as a “highly personalizable, customizable thing,” whose intelligence will allow it to be ergonomically configured for each driver, and whose exterior may reflect the color or even political preferences of the driver through organic LEDs.

The principle behind the car is shared use – a ride you can grab where and when you need it, especially useful for that last leg of a commute. Mitchell describes stacks of these cars stationed at the most useful points around a city, wherever you need mobility. Swipe a credit card, pick up your ride, and drop it off at your destination. Says Mitchell, “It’s like having valet parking everywhere, except you don’t have a 17-year-old who’s going to drive your car at high speed...”

City Cars “make much more efficient use of urban infrastructure,” says Mitchell. Regular cars sit around 80% of the time, “burning up expensive urban real estate.” More than 500 City Cars could be parked around a city block. On the road, these cars are much friendlier to pedestrians and bicyclists than SUVs. Mitchell envisions far fewer road deaths in a City Car future.

Mitchell believes the City Car could “change the auto business from what it is now, a low margin, commodity product business, to an innovative service business.” Think Google rather than Ford. Shared use vehicles could also drive a “dynamic new energy market, compatible with clean, intermittent energy sources,” charging up when the sun shines and sending unused battery capacity to the grid.

Mitchell demonstrates his grand ambition with images of Florence, Italy. Today, “all the centers of humanism in Florence are actually parking lots.” With rows of City Cars in underground lots, “we give the piazzas back to the people.” Theory has shifted into practice, as City Car-like scooters head for Milan and to Taipei, where they will be stationed at convenience stores that dot the city.

Some challenges stand in the way of shared use vehicles taking our cities by storm: Regulations and politics must align to support this complement to public transportation; and consumers in large numbers must be persuaded to give up private car ownership. “What I want is a clean, perfectly maintained vehicle at my disposal when I need it, perfectly reliable, preheated, pre-cooled when I get into it,” says Mitchell. “Why on earth would you want to own a motor car?” ]]>