Future Energy Systems Center

About the Center

The Future Energy Systems Center examines the accelerating energy transition as emerging technology and policy, demographic trends, and economics reshape the landscape of energy supply and demand. The Center conducts integrated analysis of the energy system, providing insights into the complex multisectoral transformations that will alter the power and transportation systems, industry, and built environment. Our work draws upon MIT research in traditional energy-related disciplines, as well as from cross-disciplinary fields such as energy and environmental policy, climate science, carbon management, energy economics, behavioral science, cybersecurity, information technology, and artificial intelligence.

Looking for the Low-Carbon Energy Centers? The Low-Carbon Energy Centers have been integrated into MITEI’s new Future Energy Systems Center, announced in spring 2021 as part of MIT’s Climate Action Plan for the Decade. All existing consortium-based LCEC projects and memberships continue within the Future Energy Systems Center.

How it works

The Future Energy Systems Center serves as a single point of entry into MITEI and the MIT energy research community at large. As a member-supported consortium, the Center continues MITEI’s long history of working with companies throughout the energy sector. Member companies will include both energy suppliers and consumers demonstrating the impact decarbonization will have on a wide range of industries. The Center brings together ongoing technoeconomic and systems-oriented research from MITEI’s Low-Carbon Energy Centers into one unified center, creating a holistic energy system analysis capability with integrated research focus areas. These will initially include electric power, energy storage and low-carbon fuels, transportation, industrial processes, carbon management, and the built environment. Members are invited to participate in all focus area working groups without limit.

Our work rests on two pillars: MITEI’s world-class range of capabilities in energy system modeling and analysis; and the cutting-edge campus-wide energy technology research program overseen by MITEI, spanning all of MIT’s departments, as well as our affiliated policy research centers including the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research (CEEPR) and the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change. Combining our deep knowledge of technology and modeling enables us to investigate the potential for emerging supply and demand-side technologies, along with policy to impact the energy system of the future—exposing new opportunities and threats within a host of industries, as well as unmet research needs.

Benefits

Help shape the Center’s research agenda

Engage with MIT research teams and other industry leaders

Receive timely analysis, including cutting-edge research findings and insights

Participate in monthly seminars addressing emerging technologies, energy policy, and sustainability issues

Attend MITEI’s Annual Research Conference, framing the latest technology, economic and policy drivers shaping the energy landscape

Attend MITEI’s Spring Symposium, offering a deeper understanding of a timely energy transition topic

Projects

Project Title	Principal Investigator(s)
Adaptive optimization and learning for daily operation of clean power systems	Andy Sun
Assessing role for natural gas in future low-carbon U.S. electricity systems	Dharik Mallapragada
Atoms-to-enterprise analysis for decarbonization of chemical manufacturing: Case study of ethylene	Dharik Mallapragada, Bilge Yildiz, Elsa Olivetti
Can Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) really disrupt private car ownership?	David Keith, Joanna Moody
Development of a building retrofit adoption model	Christoph Reinhart
Development of Distributed Energy Consumption in Actively Responsive Buildings (DECARB) model	Pablo Duenas-Martinez, Karen Tapia-Ahumada
Future of work and urban mobility: Integrated public transit and shared mobility	Jinhua Zhao
High fidelity monitoring for carbon sequestration: Integrated geophysical and geochemical investigation of field and laboratory data	Matej Pec
Impact of multi-dimensional uncertainty in long-term investment planning	Dharik Mallapragada
Implications of broad electrification on the power networks and large penetration of distributed energy resources	Pablo Duenas-Martinez, Karen Tapia-Ahumada
Long-haul freight on highways: Techno-economic assessment of options for powertrains and fuels	William Green
Lower cost, CO₂-free, H₂ production from CH₄ using liquid tin	Asegun Henry, Paul Barton
Medium-term impact of COVID-19 on urban mobility: Behavior, preference, and energy consumption	Jinhua Zhao
Multi-vector energy systems analysis for low-carbon power and transportation	Dharik Mallapragada
Negative emissions technologies: A question of scale	T. Alan Hatton, Betar Gallant
Optimal energy distribution infrastructure for EV fast-charging and hydrogen stations	Audun Botterud
Pathways towards gigaton scale low-carbon H₂ production	Yogesh Surendranath, Dharik Mallapragada
Power plant CO₂ capture integrated with lime-based direct air capture	Dharik Mallapragada, Howard Herzog, Emre Gençer
Pricing and location strategies of electric vehicle charging networks	Jing Li
Reinforcement learning for guiding drivers to reduce congestion in the developing world	Cathy Wu
Scalability of biomass availability for producing transportation fuels	Sergey Paltsev, Kristala Prather
Sector coupling in the context of energy transition: New approaches for investment planning	Dharik Mallapragada
System impacts of decarbonization pathways for space heating in cold climates	Dharik Mallapragada
Towards zero-emissions neighborhoods: A novel building-grid optimization framework	Audun Botterud, Christoph Reinhart