MIT centers, laboratories, departments and programs provide a multi-faceted approach to solving the world's energy challenge.
Basic energy science
Continued development of the tools needed to transform the global energy marketplace requires a commitment to strategic basic research and the nurturing of novel concepts that could revolutionize how we meet the world's future energy needs. Support for basic research is comparatively inexpensive relative to technology development, demonstration and deployment. Nevertheless, its payoffs--knowledge development, enabling the next generation of energy researchers and industry practitioners and capacity to fundamentally alter the global energy marketplace -- make it a core part of any sensible energy research portfolio.
A small sampling of important fundamental research areas (many of which have overlapping elements) that are central to the long-term energy future follows. These are research areas where significant progress may call for novel concepts and/or analytical frameworks, may have impact on multiple applications beyond energy or may require substantial re-thinking in application to an energy system with alternative energy at large scale:
- artificial photosynthesis
- catalysis by design
- charge and elementary excitation transport in materials, including organic materials
- multielectron transfer reactions
- the chemistry of small molecules (CO2, O2, H2, H2O,...)
- cell and microbial "systems engineering"
- gas separations (O2, CO2,...)
- plasma science and fusion
- distributed intelligent systems
- the nature of technology innovation
- organizational and policy structures for an alternative energy future
- supply chains and multimodal transportation needs
- "gigacities"
- public attitudes
