News and Blog Landing | MIT Sustainability

“I really do believe nuclear energy is going to be a leading carbon-free energy. It’s very important for our collective futures,” says Youyeon Choi, a doctoral student in MIT's Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering.

MIT News Office

January 24, 2025

How to make small modular reactors more cost-effective

Youyeon Choi is leaning on her work experience in South Korea — a leading nation in nuclear energy — and her love of multi-physics modeling as she pursues her doctoral research.

In a recent study, researchers assessed sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) feedstock availability, the costs of corresponding SAF pathways, and how SAF deployment would likely impact fuel use, prices, emissions, and aviation demand in six countries.

MIT News Office

January 21, 2025

Toward sustainable decarbonization of aviation in Latin America

Special report describes targets for advancing technologically feasible and economically viable strategies.

There are now over 5,000 data centers in the United States, like this one in northern Virginia, and new ones are being built every day.

MIT News Office

January 21, 2025

The multifaceted challenge of powering AI

Providing electricity to power-hungry data centers is stressing grids, raising prices for consumers, and slowing the transition to clean energy.

MIT engineers developed a way to make clean ammonia, without fossil-fuel-powered chemical plants, using the Earth as a geochemical reactor, producing ammonia underground.

MIT News Office

January 21, 2025

For clean ammonia, MIT engineers propose going underground

Using the Earth itself as a chemical reactor could reduce the need for fossil-fuel-powered chemical plants.

MIT News explores the environmental and sustainability implications of generative AI technologies and applications.

MIT News Office

January 17, 2025

Explained: Generative AI’s environmental impact

Rapid development and deployment of powerful generative AI models comes with environmental consequences, including increased electricity demand and water consumption.

Giving people better data about their energy use, plus some coaching, can help them substantially reduce their consumption and costs, according to a study by MIT researchers in Amsterdam.

MIT News Office

January 13, 2025

Study shows how households can cut energy costs

An experiment in Amsterdam suggests providing better information to people can help move them out of “energy poverty.”

Vijay Gadepally, a senior staff member in the Lincoln Laboratory Supercomputing Center, discusses steps the research community can take to help mitigate the environmental impact of generative AI.

MIT News Office

January 13, 2025

Q&A: The climate impact of generative AI

As the use of generative AI continues to grow, Lincoln Laboratory's Vijay Gadepally describes what researchers and consumers can do to help mitigate its environmental impact.

“I would love to see a world where we could eliminate thermal separations, and where heat is no longer a problem in creating the things that we need and producing the energy that we need,” Zachary Smith says.

MIT News Office

January 12, 2025

Designing tiny filters to solve big problems

By developing new materials for separating a mixture’s components, Zachary Smith hopes to reduce costs and environmental impact across many U.S. industries.

An MIT team recently published a study on public sentiment regarding climate policy. The co-authors are (left to right) Professor Evan Lieberman, Associate Professor Volha Charnysh, PhD student Jared Kalow, and Erin Walk PhD ’24. “Our research suggests that emphasizing a bit of blaming and shaming is more powerful than more diffuse messages of shared responsibility,” Lieberman explains.

MIT News Office

January 10, 2025

Q&A: Examining American attitudes on global climate policies

Professor Evan Lieberman describes new research in which he and colleagues find a sharp partisan divide over providing aid to poor nations.