NEW DATE: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) WEBINAR from March 17, 2022
NOW March 24, 2022!!
1:00 pm EST
“Scaling Climate Solutions—Together“
Registration is required: https://mit.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_bWqvvjn6RvGJfEAAQB4B8Q
Presented by Dr. Jeremy Gregory, a Research Scientist-MIT and Executive Director-MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium
Addressing climate and sustainability challenges will demand extensive collaboration and coalition-building across sectors. As an academia-industry partnership itself, CSHub understands this firsthand. So too does MIT.
The Institute continues to be a leader in developing pioneering research partnerships and coalitions in the spheres of climate and sustainability. And it now is investing heavily in two significant initiatives:
• The Climate Grand Challenges
• The MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium
These build off MIT’s existing research ecosystem, including the MIT Energy Initiative, Environmental Solutions Initiative, and the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change.
This talk will provide an overview of the MIT ecosystem and discuss how these two new initiatives will amplify and extend MIT’s climate and sustainability research. Particular focus will be given to the MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium, which is an opportunity for leading companies to work with each other and MIT to rapidly scale climate and sustainability solutions.
For the webinar webpage, please go to: https://calendar.mit.edu/event/a_new_kind_of_academia-industry_partnership_the_mit_climate_and_sustainability_consortium#.YjoMAC2cY_W
To register, please go to: https://mit.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_bWqvvjn6RvGJfEAAQB4B8Q
For past recent webinars, please go to: https://cshub.mit.edu/news/public-webinars
Andrew Logan, Communications Coordinator-MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub
E-mail: cshub@mit.edu
The MIT CSHub is looking for its next Communications Administrator
. . . Talented communicators are invited to apply!
MIT CSHub Communications Administrator • Civil & Environmental Engineering • Full Time
The MIT CSHub is a team of researchers from several departments across MIT working on concrete and infrastructure science, engineering, and economics. The CSHub Communications Administrator will work with the CSHub Faculty Director and CSHub Executive Director on developing and implementing a targeted, strategic outreach and communication plan to promote visibility and awareness of CSHub. The Administrator will create multimedia content and act as the main point of contact for content, design, layout, structure, editing, and overall look and feel of the CSHub website. MIT welcomes those to apply who have extensive communications experience—and a passion for sustainable infrastructure.
The role involves the development of media strategy, fielding media requests, and engaging with media professionals to update them on our work and pitch story ideas. This includes the coordination and release of a monthly newsletter and the running of a public webinar series. Additionally, the administrator will coordinate with internal and external stakeholders to foster productive relationships and successful research outcomes.
Working at MIT offers opportunities, an environment, a culture, and benefits, that just aren’t found together anywhere else. MIT values diversity and strongly encourages applications from individuals from all identities and backgrounds. This position is for a person who is motivated; who desires to be part of a unique, multicultural, collaborative, and inclusive community; and who desires to help shape the future!
To apply for the position via the MIT Human Resources careers portal, please go to: https://careers.peopleclick.com/careerscp/client_mit/external/jobDetails/jobDetail.html?jobPostId=23457&localeCode=en-us
To learn more about life at CSHub, please visit the MIT Website: https://cshub.mit.edu/careers-mit-cshub
For QUESTIONS regarding the position, please send e-mail to: cshub@mit.edu
MIT Annual Report . . .
MIT CSHub had an eventful 2021, spearheading successful research & communications initiatives in the spheres of infrastructure, decarbonization, & sustainability.
3 Goals. 1 Solution.
Concrete is foundational to civilization. And it will remain foundational to its future—especially as climate change transforms our built environment. The people of the CSHub are analyzing these transformations—and concrete’s role in them—through the lens of 3 objectives:
1 – Realizing carbon neutrality
2 – Building world-class infrastructure with finite resources
3 – Creating cities resilient to the stresses of climate change
In 2021, MIT relentlessly pursued these objectives and in high-impact journals, outlined how concrete production and use could decarbonize key sectors; modeled how concrete could produce cities resilient to extreme heat; and presented new strategies to improve paving performance and environmental outcomes across the U.S.
Underlying this work is an awareness that concrete must never be viewed in isolation. Its key properties imbue it with life cycle impacts that transcend the scope of any single project. For us to attain carbon neutrality, these well-established impacts must inform today’s decision-making.
Click to download and read the 24-page 2021 Annual Report (PDF)
To build this bridge between knowledge and implementation, MIT/CSHub elevate their work through active outreach. Their leadership routinely promotes their research in:
• World-class media outlets
• Internationally reputed conferences
• Internationally reputed events
• Their own widely attended webinar series
That research is as interdisciplinary as it is collaborative. Through collaboration with industry, the CSHub stays abreast of challenges and trends to hone a diverse portfolio of work that supports ambitious carbon neutrality objectives. Coalition building is key. They also enlist the guidance of crucial audiences:
• Policymakers
• Journalists
• Academics
• Businesses
When solutions to climate change demand a systems perspective, it’s only through consensus that we can succeed.
But even as new solutions generate tectonic shifts, one thing will remain constant: the utility of concrete. This is not to say concrete will remain unchanged. Innovations in its design and application will reshape the material just as it reshapes the nature of sustainability. As an active contributor to this exciting and essential process, we invite you to join us in shaping and reshaping this indispensable material.
Dr. Randolph Kirchain, Director-The MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub
2022: The Next is Now! When entering a new year, it’s natural to ask, “What’s next”? The people of CSHub‘s work deals chiefly with the future—how to predict it, and most importantly, manage it. The next is now! Each decision made has lasting impacts that demand deep consideration today.
Their research portfolio is no exception. Over 2021, they’ve thought carefully about what’s next in the broader sphere of sustainability and identified one pressing challenge: attaining carbon-neutral concrete will depend on accounting practices that are still in their infancy.
In the coming year, they’ll be enhancing their life cycle analysis tools— already some of the world’s most comprehensive—to create a holistic cradle-to-grave system for accounting and reporting concrete’s emissions. Such a model will help realize carbon-neutral concrete by tracking the entirety of the material’s impacts—including those it has and will continue to mitigate.
The aim of such a tool is, of course, is to illuminate the target of carbon neutrality. And while defining and fulfilling ambitious targets is daunting, it’s something we’ve grown to appreciate as we continuously model the future.
It’s both a scientific and an introspective process: a way of defining who they are, who they’ll be, and, most importantly, what they value. We believe our work in 2021 was a demonstration of these values—collaboration, curiosity, rigor, and foresight. Thank you to everyone who helped us along the way with your guidance and expertise. We welcome a new year and your ongoing support.
CSHub
To read more about future endeavors and the entire 2021 Report in the 24-page 2021 Annual Report (PDF), please click on image above, or go to: https://cshub.mit.edu/news/2021-annual-report
Cool Pavements—Climate Change Solutions Not Just for Summer!
Q&A: Randolph Kirchain, a Principal Research Scientist-CSHub, on how cool pavements can mitigate climate change
MIT research scientist explores how cool pavements can offer climate change solutions in more than just the summer.
Andrew Logan | MIT CSHub | Publication Date: March 10, 2022
Click to enlarge
As cities search for climate change solutions, many have turned to one flourishing technology: COOL PAVEMENTS. By reflecting a greater proportion of solar radiation, cool pavements can offer an array of climate change mitigation benefits, from direct radiative forcing to reduced building energy demand. Direct radiative forcing is what happens when the amount of energy that enters the Earth’s atmosphere is different from the amount of energy that leaves it.
Energy travels in the form of radiation: solar radiation entering the atmosphere from the sun, and infrared radiation exiting as heat. If more radiation is entering Earth than leaving—as is happening today—then the atmosphere will warm up. This is called radiative forcing because the difference in energy can force changes in the Earth’s climate… for the webpage on direct radiative forcing, please go to: https://climate.mit.edu/explainers/radiative-forcing
Yet, scientists from the MIT CSHub have found that cool pavements are not just a summertime solution. Here, Randolph Kirchain discusses how implementing cool pavements can offer myriad greenhouse gas reductions in cities—some of which occur even in the winter.
Q: What exactly are cool pavements?
A: There are two ways to make a cool pavement:
— Changing the pavement formulation to make the pavement porous like a sponge (a so-called “pervious pavement”)
Click to enlarge
— Paving with reflective materials—has been applied extensively because it can be easily adopted on the current road network with different traffic volumes while sustaining—and sometimes improving—road longevity. To the average observer, surface reflectivity usually corresponds to the color of a pavement—the lighter, the more reflective, quantified through a measurement called albedo—the percentage of light a surface reflects. A reflective pavement has a typical albedo of 0.3 or higher=it reflects 30% of the light it receives. To attain this reflectivity, there are a number of techniques:
• Simply paint a brighter coating atop existing pavements (most common)
• Pave with materials that possess naturally greater reflectivity—concrete; lighter-colored binders; aggregates…
Q: How can cool pavements mitigate climate change?
A: Reduction in surface and local air temperatures (Most widely known)
— Because cool pavements absorb less radiation, consequently they emit less of that radiation as heat = Lower urban air temperatures in the summer by several degrees Fahrenheit.
— By changing air temperatures or reflecting light into adjacent structures, cool pavements can also:
• Alter the need for heating and cooling in those structures
• Change their energy demand
• Mitigate the climate change impacts associated with building energy demand
— However, a proportion of the radiation cool pavements reflect doesn’t strike buildings, but travels back into the atmosphere and out into space—a radiative forcing that are shifts the Earth’s energy balance and effectively offset some of the radiation trapped by greenhouse gases (GHGs)
— Vehicle fuel consumption (the least-known impact of cool pavements)
• Certain cool pavements, namely concrete, possess a combination of structural properties and longevity that can minimize the excess fuel consumption of vehicles caused by road quality
• Fuel savings can add up over the lifetime of a pavement, offsetting the higher initial footprint of paving with more durable materials
Q: With these impacts in mind, how do the effects of cool pavements vary seasonally and by location?
A: Many view cool pavements as a solution to summer heat, but research has shown that cool pavements can offer climate change benefits throughout the year.
— High-volume traffic roads, the most prominent climate change benefit of cool pavements is their impact on vehicle fuel consumption
— Cool pavement alternatives that minimize fuel consumption can continue to cut GHG emissions in winter, assuming traffic is constant
— Winter: Pavement reflectivity still contributes greatly to the climate change mitigation benefits of cool pavements. Roughly 1/3 of the annual CO2-equivalent emissions reductions from the radiative forcing effects of cool pavements occurred in the fall and winter
— The direction (Important to note)—not just the magnitude—of cool pavement impacts also vary seasonally
— Changes to building energy demand (The most prominent seasonal variation)—as they lower air temperatures, cool pavements can:
• Lessen the demand for cooling in buildings in the summer
• Cause buildings to consume more energy and generate more emissions due to heating in the winter
— Can also strike adjacent buildings, heating them up
— SUMMER can increase building energy demand significantly
— WINTER can also warm structures and reduce their need for heating. In that sense, cool pavements can warm—as well as cool—their surroundings, depending on the building insolation [solar exposure] systems and neighborhood density.
Q: How can cities manage these many impacts?
A: As you can imagine, such different and often competing impacts can complicate the implementation of cool pavements. In some contexts,
— Cool pavement might even generate more emissions over its life than a conventional pavement — despite lowering air temperatures
— To ensure that the lowest-emitting pavement is selected, cities should:
• Use a life-cycle perspective that considers all potential impacts—Research has shown that they can reap sizable benefits. For example, the city of Phoenix could see its projected emissions fall by as much as 6%, while Boston experienced a reduction of up to 3%
— These benefits don’t just demonstrate the potential of cool pavements:
• They reflect the outsized impact of pavements on our built environment
• They reflect the outsized impact of pavements on our climate
— Cities should know that one of their most extensive assets also presents an opportunity for greater sustainability
For the complete “Q & A List”, and for more information, please go to: https://news.mit.edu/2022/qa-randolph-kirchain-how-cool-pavements-can-mitigate-climate-change-0310