“We're here to discuss really substantive change, and we wish you to be an element of it,” said Desirée Plata, School of Engineering Distinguished Professor of Climate and Energy in MIT's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, at Energizing@MIT: the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) annual research conference, held September 9-10.
Plata's words resonated with over 150 participants from academia, industry and government who gathered in Cambridge for the conference, whose theme was “Addressing New Energy Challenges.” Addressing such challenges and ultimately changing global climate impacts requires partnerships, speakers agreed.
“We have to be humble and open,” said Giacomo Silvestri, chairman of Eniverse Ventures at Eni, in a joint keynote speech. “We can’t innovate just by specializing in ourselves and our skills…that’s why we want to collaborate with startups, enterprise funds, universities like MIT, and other private and non-private institutions.”
His Eni colleague Annalisa Muccioli, head of research and technology, added: “The energy transition is a race that we will only win by combining mature, ready-to-use solutions with recent technologies that also require acceleration and risk management.”
Research objectives
At a conference that presented a set of research priorities that MITEI has identified as central to making sure a low-carbon energy future, participants shared each promising discoveries and techniques for advancing proven technologies within the face of adjusting political winds and policy uncertainties.
One panel focused on grid stability – a subject that has moved from the periphery to the middle of energy discourse as climate-related disruptions, cyber threats and renewable energy integration challenge legacy systems. A dramatic example of that is the April 2025 blackout in Spain and Portugal, which left tens of millions of individuals without power for eight to fifteen hours.
“I need to emphasise that this outage was about greater than just the energy system,” said MITEI researcher Pablo Duenas-Martinez. While he identified technical problems with reactive power and voltage regulation because the reason for the system collapse, Duenas-Martinez also pointed to an absence of transmission capability with Central Europe and outdated operational procedures, and beneficial higher preparation and communication between transmission networks and utility operators.
“You can't plan for each single eventuality, so we want to expand the portfolio of utmost events we prepare for,” said Jennifer Pearce, vice chairman of energy company Avangrid. “We are making the system smarter, stronger and more resilient to raised protect it from quite a lot of threats akin to storms, floods and extreme heat events.” Pearce noted that Avangrid's commitment to providing secure and reliable power to its customers requires “careful emergency planning procedures.”
The resiliency of the ability grid amid sharp increases in demand is a key motivation for MITEI's launch of the Data Center Power Forum in September 2025, which was also announced in the course of the annual research conference. The forum includes research projects, webinars and other content focused on energy supply and storage, network design and management, infrastructure, and public and economic policy related to data centers. Forum members include MITEI firms that also take part in MIT's Center for Environmental and Energy Policy Research (CEEPR).
Storage and transportation: amazing challenges
To achieve climate goals to decarbonize the world by 2050, about 300 terawatt hours of storage will have to be built, based on Asegun Henry, a professor in MIT's Department of Mechanical Engineering. “It’s an incredibly big problem for people to take care of,” he said. Henry has developed a high-temperature thermal energy storage system that he calls “sun in a box.” His system uses liquid metal and graphite to store electricity as heat after which convert it back into electricity, allowing storage between five and 500 hours.
“At the tip of the day, storage provides a service, and the sort of technology you wish is determined by the service you value most,” said Nestor Sepulveda, business director of advanced energy investments and partnerships at Google. “I don’t think there’s a winner-takes-all market here.”
Another panel checked out sustainable fuels that would help decarbonize hard-to-electrify sectors akin to aviation, shipping and long-distance transportation. MITEI research director Randall Field noted that sustainably produced drop-in fuels — fuels which might be broadly compatible with existing engines — “could potentially save trillions of dollars in fleet alternative and infrastructure expansion costs, while helping us speed up the speed of decarbonization of the transportation sector.”
Erik G. Birkerts is the chief growth officer of LanzaJet, which produces a high-energy-density drop-in aviation fuel derived from agricultural residues and other waste carbon sources. “The key to driving widespread adoption of sustainable aviation fuel is solving each the supply-side challenge by increasing production and the demand-side hurdle by reducing costs,” he said.
“We imagine that an excellent policy framework (for sustainable fuels) is technology neutral, doesn’t exclude production routes, relies on life cycle accounting practices and market mechanisms,” said Veronica L. Robertson, technology portfolio manager for energy products at ExxonMobil.
MITEI plans to significantly expand its research into sustainable fuels, announcing a two-year study entitled “The Future of Fuels: Pathways to Sustainable Transportation,” scheduled to start in early 2026. According to Field, the study will analyze and evaluate biofuels and e-fuels.
Solutions from large and small laboratories
Global energy leaders shared insights into their research projects. A panel discussion on carbon capture in power generation presented three perspectives on the subject: Devin Shaw, business director of decarbonization technologies at Shell, described post-combustion carbon capture in power plants that use steam to get better heat; Jan Marsh, global program manager at Siemens Energy, discussed using novel materials to capture carbon dioxide directly from the air; and Jeffrey Goldmeer, senior director of technology strategy at GE Vernova, discussed integrating carbon capture into gas-powered turbine systems.
During a panel discussion on vehicle electrification, Brian Storey, vice chairman of energy and materials on the Toyota Research Institute, provided an summary of Toyota's portfolio of decarbonization projects, including solid-state batteries, flexible manufacturing lines and grid-forming inverters to support electric vehicle charging infrastructure.
A session on MITEI seed fund projects revealed promising early-stage research in MIT's own laboratories. A brand new process for decarbonizing ethylene production has been presented by Yogesh Surendranath, Donner Professor of Science within the MIT Department of Chemistry. Assistant Professor of Materials Science and Engineering Aristide Gumyusenge also discussed the event of polymers essential for a brand new sort of sodium-ion battery.
Bringing daring, recent technologies like this from academic labs into the true world cannot succeed without comprehensive support and skillful management. A panel discussion on paths to commercialization featured the work of Iwnetim Abate, Chipman Career Development Professor and assistant professor in MIT's Department of Materials Science and Engineering, who founded an organization, Addis Energy, based on a novel geothermal process for extracting clean hydrogen and ammonia from iron-rich rocks beneath the surface. Its backers include ARPA-E and MIT's The Engine Ventures.
The panel also highlighted the MIT Proto Ventures Program, an initiative aimed toward taking early-stage MIT ideas and releasing them as world-changing startups. “Only 4.2 percent of all patents actually filed worldwide are ever commercialized, which looks like a shocking number,” said Andrew Inglis, an entrepreneur who works with Proto Ventures to show geothermal discoveries into businesses. “Can't we do higher? Let's do higher!”
Geopolitical dangers
Throughout the conference, participants often expressed concern concerning the impact of competition between the United States and China. Kelly Sims Gallagher, dean of the Fletcher School at Tufts University and an authority on China's energy landscape, delivered the sobering news in her keynote address: “U.S. competitiveness in low-carbon technologies has declined in almost every category,” she said. “The Chinese are winning the clean tech race.”
China accounts for 51 percent of world wind turbine manufacturing and 75 percent of solar modules. It also controls low-carbon supply chains on which much of the world depends. “China is becoming so dominant that nobody can gain a comparative advantage in anything,” Gallagher said. “China is just so big and the dimensions is so huge that the Chinese can actually capture markets and make it very difficult for potential competitors to seek out a way there.”
And for the United States, the issue is “the seesaw of energy policy,” she says. “Given the dearth of predictability and policy, it’s incredibly difficult for the private sector to plan and operate.”
Still, Gallagher believes the United States still has a probability to at the least turn out to be competitive again by adopting stable, bipartisan energy policies and rebuilding domestic production and provide chains. providing consistent tax incentives; attract and retain global talent; and promoting international cooperation.
The conference highlighted one such collaboration: a Sino-American three way partnership to supply lithium iron phosphate batteries for business vehicles within the United States. The company brings together Eve Energy, a Chinese battery technology and manufacturing company; Daimler, a worldwide business vehicle manufacturer; PACCAR Inc., a U.S.-based truck manufacturer; and Accelera, the zero-emissions business of Cummins Inc. “Manufacturing batteries within the U.S. makes the availability chain more resilient and reduces geopolitical risks,” said Mike Gerty of PACCAR.
While Plata acknowledged the obstacles faced by her colleagues within the room, she concluded her remarks as panel moderator with some optimism: “I hope you all leave this conference looking back on it in the longer term. I used to be within the room once they actually solved among the challenges that lie between now and the longer term that all of us need to manifest.”
