Global climate change presents us with unprecedented challenges. There is overwhelming scientific evidence that the majority of the rapid warming of our planet over the past century, has been forced by increasing greenhouse gas concentrations. The great majority of these scientists agree that, if this warming continues, it presents significant risks to humankind and all life on Earth. Currently, there is no magic bullet for fossil fuels. No one energy technology can provide a cheap and reliable alternative, capable of supporting the world’s growing energy needs.

LMIT Professors Sergey Paltsev and Dennis Whyte will share their views on the array of technology options, the economic and climate impacts of energy decisions and the future of fusion, its technology, economic viability and its path to commercialization.

On top of this, MIT Researchers, Howard Herzog and Peter Godard will address the potential of Carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) in helping the world reach its goal of net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases and turning energy-dense scrap aluminum into a water-reactive fuel for clean hydrogen generation.

Prof. Dennis G. Whyte. The State of Fusion
MVast improvements in magnetic confinement of Plasma uses in MITs NET SPARC project, expect to achieve net energy gain from fusion by 2025 and potentials commercial applications for the technology “could follow in the 2030s”.
Professor Dennis White will give an overview of the technology, economic viability and outline its path to commercialization.

Dr. Peter Godart. Waste-to-Energy for Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation
Communities around the world face continual disruption to critical electricity and potable water infrastructure due to severe storms, wildfires, and other natural disasters that are becoming more frequent and potent due to climate change. At the same time, many such communities see their local ecosystems being polluted due to poor waste management, especially as debris from severe weather events causes waste streams to surge in volume. Instead of compounding the issue, what if debris and other refuse could be converted into clean fuels locally to power the generation of critical resources when they would otherwise be inaccessible? Aluminum, for example, is the most abundant metal on earth and is widely used in nearly every industry. Currently global recycling rates are limited by complications with sorting waste by alloy content, lack of economic incentive, and the recent restriction of waste exports to other countries. As a result, several million tons of aluminum are landfilled each year in the US alone, leaving a significant amount of potential energy sitting idle and unused. A new alternative strategy to managing this waste is to turn it into an energy-dense fuel that reacts exothermically with water to produce hydrogen and boehmite, a valuable byproduct used in various industrial and pharmaceutical processes. When exposed to air, bulk aluminum develops an oxide layer that prevents it from reacting with water at practical temperatures; however, recent research at MIT has shown that a minimal surface treatment of gallium and indium can disrupt the oxide layer at the grain boundaries, allowing this reaction to proceed to >95% completion. In this talk, I discuss my research on the science and engineering of turning energy-dense scrap aluminum into a water-reactive fuel for clean hydrogen generation, as well as provide a thermodynamic perspective on plastic and biomass waste streams, and how they might be leveraged in a similar way to make climate adaptation and mitigation more effective and equitable.