MIT/Harvard Roosevelt Project Releases Synthesis Report on U.S. Energy Transition Challenges
The MIT/Harvard Roosevelt Project, a multi-year initiative examining how the United States can achieve deep decarbonization while sustaining economic opportunity and community resilience, has released the final synthesis report for Phase 3 of the project which presents policy recommendations to guide federal and state action on three sectors central to the U.S. energy transition: the electric grid, iron and steel, and critical minerals.
Revitalizing America’s Critical Mineral Industry
The final Roosevelt Project Phase 3 case study has been released. The report outlines key policy recommendations to build a stronger, more resilient critical minerals industry in the United States—one that balances security, economic growth, and social responsibility. By addressing these issues in a timely manner, policymakers can save time, reduce costs, and build a more effective and equitable supply chain strategy.
Flexible Data Centers and the Grid: Lower Costs, Higher Emissions?
Data centers are rapidly growing electricity users, raising concerns about their impact on the grid and decarbonization. Their ability to shift workloads over time offers demand-side flexibility. We model power systems in the Mid-Atlantic, Texas, and WECC under varying data center flexibility levels to assess impacts on operations, investments, costs, and emissions. Aligning data center flexibility with renewable deployment and regional conditions is key to maximizing climate benefits.
An Informational Nudge to Shave Peak Demand
A new Working Paper studies a program run by a small municipally owned electric utility to reduce demand on certain peak demand days. An email alert is sent out to residential customers to encourage load shifting and energy saving during specific hours on the following day. Using hourly load data, Gib Metcalf estimates that the program reduces load by roughly 0.7 MWs per hour during the hours covered by the alert, or roughly 2 percent. The private benefits of the peak alert program swamp any social benefits.
The Global Effects of Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanisms
In this paper, the researchers study carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) policies, as currently being implemented by the EU and UK. CBAMs can improve domestic competitiveness in regulated markets, reduce emissions leakage to unregulated markets, and encourage other countries to tax carbon. But CBAMs may particularly disadvantage lower-income trading partners. The paper evaluates these forces with a quantitative equilibrium model and plant-level data on aluminum and steel production worldwide.
Flexible data centers can reduce costs — if not emissions
An article on MIT Sloan's Ideas Made to Matter site features a recent CEEPR Working Paper. Data center flexibility — the ability to shift workloads to different times of day when renewable energy generation is high or prices are low — is one way to address rising energy consumption. The paper finds that flexibility always reduces costs. But the environmental effects depend on the local grid, with flexibility sometimes even increasing emissions. Read more at the link below:
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The Inside Scoop on Climate Policy Research, with Catherine Wolfram
In an article by the MIT Sloan Press office, the MIT Climate Policy Center asked MIT Sloan Professor Catherine Wolfram, an energy economist and CEEPR faculty affiliate, to share her insights on cutting-edge climate policy research right now. Check out the short interview here:
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Charger data transparency: Curing range anxiety, powering EV adoption
Electric vehicle (EV) adoption faces a persistent problem: the lack of real-time data makes it hard to figure out which public chargers are working and available. A new paper by CEEPR's Christopher Knittel, Luke Heeney and co-authors proposes that states enact laws that require fast chargers to report real-time status that any EV mapping app can access.
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Clean Investment
Monitor
The Clean Investment Monitor (CIM) is a joint project of the MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research (CEEPR) and the Rhodium Group. The CIM tracks public and private investments in climate technologies in the United States. Through this data and analysis, the CIM provides insights into investment trends, the effects of federal and state policies, and on-the-ground progress in the U.S. towards net-zero greenhouse gas emissions.
The CIM covers dozens of different technologies and their input components across all sectors of the economy, including for clean electricity and transportation, building electrification, low-emission industrial production, and carbon management.
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Climate Action
Through Education
The MIT Climate Action Through Education (CATE) program, directed by Professor Christopher R. Knittel, has developed an MIT-informed interdisciplinary, place-based climate change curriculum for U.S. high school teachers in the following core disciplines: History/Social Science, English/Language Arts, Math, and Science.
Curricular materials – labs, units, lessons, projects – will be aligned with Next Generation Science Standards, and MA education standards. The solutions-focused curriculum aims to inform students about the causes and consequences of anthropogenic climate change, while equipping them with the knowledge and sense of agency to contribute to climate mitigation, adaptation and resilience.
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Driving Towards
Seamless Public
EV Charging
Widespread electric vehicle (EV) adoption is critical to confronting climate change – but a lack of sufficient public charging infrastructure is holding many potential EV drivers back. A team of researchers from Harvard and the MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research will work to accelerate progress on public EV charging as a gating requirement to achieving widespread EV adoption. The team will contribute by working directly with stakeholders and stakeholder groups to identify barriers to seamless public EV charging, build consensus for solutions, and advance those solutions.
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The Roosevelt
Project
Transitioning the United States economy toward deep decarbonization will have unequally distributed effects, positive and negative, across socio-economic groups, geographies and economic sectors. The concerns of workers and communities adversely affected by the transition must inform the discussion around decarbonization, associated policy changes and institutional development. The goal of the Roosevelt Project is to provide an analytical basis for charting a path to a low carbon economy in a way that promotes high quality job growth, minimizes worker and community dislocation, and harnesses the benefits of energy technologies for regional economic development.
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