A “gate” is a conversational entry point about climate impacts and solutions, but it doesn’t have to be climate-specific.
ESI Research Program Director Marcela Angel has built an international program in natural climate solutions, with a focus on climate adaptation, urban planning and biodiversity in her home country of Colombia.
A variety of recent events, several hosted or co-hosted by ESI, highlighted efforts by MIT faculty, staff, and students to make a difference today.
In collaboration with ESI, PhD student Alexis Hocken is working with manufacturers to keep their products from literally falling through the cracks in the recycling process.
The MIT Conference on Mining, Environment, and Society convened academics, industry, government officials and NGOs to discuss the environmental and social challenges of supplying the materials for solar, batteries, the electric grid and more.
MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative’s inaugural Journalism Fellows reflect on their experiences telling local climate stories.
ESI hosted a discussion at MIT exploring ways the music industry can help in the battle to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.
A delegation from MIT, including several members of ESI, traveled to Glasgow for COP26, where international negotiators sought to keep global climate goals on track.
MIT offers over 120 undergraduate classes related to sustainability, a sign of growing student and faculty interest in the environmental impacts of their fields.
Prof. Tom Peacock, who received an ESI seed grant to model the effects of deep-sea mining on ocean ecosystems, has now assembled an international team for the first real-world experiment.
Victoria Preston, a 2021 Martin Fellow for Sustainability, programs robots to collect environmental data in waterways.
With the ESI Rapid Response Group, rising senior Kiara Wahnschafft has used MIT climate research to write briefs for Massachusetts and federal policymakers.
A new online tool lets students track key metrics on employers’ carbon footprints and encourages more engagement on sustainability issues.
The winners of an ESI-sponsored competition to design a future, climate-ready Boston have landed an award to realize their vision.
ESI collaborated with multinational mining company Vale to bring sustainability education to young engineering professionals in Brazil.
With the campus shut down by Covid-19, the spring D-Lab class Water, Climate Change, and Health had to adapt. Now students are working with ESI and other groups to improve MIT’s climate action plan, teach climate topics online, and much more.
ESI Seed Grant recipient Charles Harvey is part of a team that used novel satellite data to reveal the true extent of peatland loss in Malaysia and Indonesia, with robust estimates of just how much CO2 is entering the atmosphere as a result.
ESI partnered with Prof. Kerry Emanuel and the MIT Office of the Vice President for Research to create an online climate primer with a clear story and loads of interactive bonus material.
ESI seed grant recipient Jessika Trancik digs into the difficult-to-quantify role of methane as a greenhouse gas.
Mining materials from the sea floor could help secure a low-carbon future, but before this becomes a big business, ESI seed grant recipient Tom Peacock is racing to understand the environmental effects.
New polymer chemistry from the lab of Jeremiah Johnson, partly funded through ESI’s Plastics and the Environment Program, could be an alternative to some industrial plastics.
Panelists at the first MIT climate symposium, on “progress in climate science,” described the state of knowledge in climate science and stressed the urgent need for action.
PhD student Norhan Bayomi uses drones to investigate how building construction impacts communities’ resilience to rising temperatures.
At ESI’s “SimPlanet” event, students test-drive a new computer simulation to reveal outcomes of different policy decisions on climate change.
ESI’s TILclimate (Today I Learned: Climate) podcast demystifies the science, technology, and policy surrounding climate change in 10-minute episodes.
ESI hosted MIT’s first Climate Night, bringing VP for Research Maria Zuber to the stage to discuss how the Institute is reaching outside its walls on climate issues.
As machine learning expands into climate modeling, EAPS Associate Professor Paul O’Gorman answers what that looks like and why it’s important now.
New insights gained by MIT scientists into the role of water vapor may help researchers predict how the planet will respond to warming.
Climate Changed Symposium combines art and science to envision the global food system under climate change.
MIT researchers develop a system that harvests drinkable water out of desert air. The device was recently successfully field tested in Tempe, Arizona.
MIT Sloan School of Management is launching a pilot program to purchase carbon offsets for study tours during spring break 2018.
MIT Energy Initiative and Commonwealth Fusion Systems launch a research plan to create a fusion power plant within the next 15 years.
Researchers affiliated with the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change are rethinking how we measure carbon emissions.
The blueprint of a city’s arrangement determines how heat builds up in the area. In a project supported by the MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub, Researchers found that “crystalline” structured cities build up less heat than traditional grid-like cities.
Julie Newman and Tim Gutowski have teamed up to offer a new class tackling the carbon issue on campus head-on.
A team at MIT has come up with a novel way to convert temperature fluctuations into electrical power.
MIT researchers have built a new chip, hardwired for public-key encryption, that consumes 1/400 as much power as software execution of the same protocols.
MIT and Dartmouth researchers report an increase in corn and soybean production in the Midwest that may have led to cooler, wetter summers there.
MIT engineers working with scientists in Kuwait have found that volcanic rocks can be used as a sustainable additive in concrete structures.
MIT researchers are hoping to turn heat from the sun into electricity that could potentially cool your house.
A new study raises the estimate of how many lives have been saved by EPA regulation of particulate air pollution.
A type of battery first invented nearly 50 years ago could catapult to the forefront of energy storage technologies, thanks to a new finding by MIT researchers.
MIT researchers attend UN Climate Change Conference, including two E&S Minor faculty members and ESI Director John Fernandez.
The MIT Energy Initiative and ESI joined forces for a conference dedicated to reconstruction of the Caribbean.
MIT convened 200 researchers, policymakers and civic leaders for a conference titled Together in Climate Action: Northeastern North America Policy Summit.
Two years after committing to a less carbon-intensive campus, MIT has plans in place to meet campus greenhouse gas reduction goals by 2030.
ESI Seed Grant recipient Elsa Olivetti is using AI to deduce new, more sustainable “recipes” for materials.
ESI curriculum grant winner David Hsu studies the most efficient paths for cities to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.
Johan Rockström joined ESI for a People & the Planet lecture on “a framework for preserving Earth’s resilience.”
ESI seed grant recipients Lily Baum Pollans and Eran Ben-Joseph published a study on food scrap recycling programs in the U.S.
MIT researchers team up with leaders from the metals and minerals industry to envision a more sustainable future.
MIT News covers ESI’s Spring 2017 People and the Planet lecture series talk by Bob Inglis and his tax plan to stop climate change.
ESI seed grant recipient Charles Harvey has been studying one of the world’s last undisturbed tropical peat forests on the island of Borneo.