News + Media

A more flexible, responsive grid is needed to boost renewable electricity in China, says Joint Program faculty affiliate Valerie Karplus (Technology Review)
But are the country’s next-generation power lines a clean-power play or a global power move?
by James Temple
November 8, 2018

Seventeen researchers and affiliates of the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change plan to deliver or contribute to 10 oral and poster presentations at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) 2018 Fall Meeting on December 10-14 in Washington, D.C.


In Wired, CEEPR Director/Joint Program affiliate Christopher Knittel comments on the benefits of carbon taxes and the challenges of implementing them
On paper, carbon capture is a simple proposition: Take carbon that we’ve pulled out of the Earth in the form of coal and oil and put into the atmosphere, and pull it out of the atmosphere and put it back in the Earth. It’s like hitting undo on the Industrial Revolution. And scientists can indeed...

Toxin will accumulate in the environment, particularly in remote regions, as countries delay implementing emissions controls
Jennifer Chu | MIT News Office November 1, 2018
Mercury is an incredibly stubborn toxin. Once it is emitted from the smokestacks of coal-fired power plants, among other sources, the gas can drift through the atmosphere for up to a year before settling into oceans and lakes. It can then...

MIT Joint Program Co-Director John Reilly explains why U.S. power sector emissions declined in 2017 despite regulation rollbacks (WITF)
Written by Reid Frazier/StateImpact Pennsylvania | Oct 25, 2018 12:18 PM
At an oil and gas conference in Pittsburgh Wednesday, Acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler touted the Trump administration's moves to roll back over 70 environmental regulations, telling the crowd the...

An economist and policy experts respond to a natural-gas worker’s worries that the fight against climate change will hurt Americans like him.
Measuring the greenhouse and ozone-depleting gas composition of the Earth’s atmosphere continuously for the past 40 years through a global network of sophisticated monitoring stations, the Advanced Global Atmospheric Gases Experiment (AGAGE, formerly known as the Global Atmospheric Gases...

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) expert Howard Herzog, an MITEI Senior Research Engineer and Joint Program affiliate, offers his perspective in The Conversation
In a much-anticipated report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said the world will need to take dramatic and drastic steps to avoid the catastrophic effects of climate change.