Decarbonization is a crucial component of any corporation's sustainability development efforts. Setting sustainable development goals, understanding the supply chain and costs, and gaining a deep knowledge of energy and carbon trading systems are essential for effective corporate planning and strategy development.
In this energy-focused webinar, two leading researchers from MIT, Emre Gençer and Jennifer Morris, will share their insights on two critical topics: industrial decarbonization and the interplay between carbon dioxide removal and carbon trading systems. Following their presentations, two MIT-related startup companies will showcase their technologies and discuss their potential impact on industrial decarbonization.
Dr. CJ Guo joined the Office of Corporate Relations as a Senior Industrial Liaison Officer in July, 2015. CJ comes to OCR with 25 years of extensive global experience in technology innovations, portfolio management and business development in emerging and conventional energy sectors with leading multinational corporations in the US, China and Canada.
CJ is a leading expert in emerging energy technologies and energy system transitions. With Shell, he was the Emerging Technology Theme Leader in China/Beijing (2011 to 2015), worked extensively with the Chinese energy communities on the country's future energy landscape, and the Senior Technology Advisor in alternative transportation fuels in the US / Houston (2006-2010), and served during 2010 as Chairman of the Fuel Operations Group for the US DOE FreedomCar Partnership. Prior to joining Shell, CJ has held technology development, commercialization and management positions with Air Liquide (2002-2006) and The BOC Group (1995-2001) after working as a research scientist in oil-sands upgrading with CANMET in Canada (1992-1994).
CJ earned his Ph.D., Chemical Engineering, at CSU, Ohio, his M.S. and B.S., Chemical Engineering at TYUT, China. He has earned various awards from Shell, Air Liquide, BOC, Shanxi Province (China). He holds many patents and has sat on the board of Shenzhen Sanmu Battery Technology Company as an independent board member during 2009-2010.
Principal Research Scientist, MIT Energy Initiative, Co-founder and CEO, Sesame Sustainability
Emre Gençer is a principal research scientist at the MIT Energy Initiative, and a co-founder and CEO at Sesame Sustaınability.
The central theme of his research is to identify optimal utilization of resources for the evolving energy system facing the dual challenge of increasing demand while profoundly reducing its environmental footprint. His research focuses on integration of emerging and conventional energy technologies, their policy implications, multiscale modeling, and optimization. He is the principal investigator of various ongoing projects at MIT including Understanding Carbon Mitigation Technologies, Analysis of Options towards Fully Decarbonized EU by 2050, and Exploring Power and Transport Sector Decarbonization Pathways via Direct and Indirect use of Electricity. He is the lead developer and chief architect of a novel software platform called Sustainable Energy Systems Analysis Modeling Environment (SESAME), which provides comprehensive cost and sustainability assessment for the converging electric power, transportation, and industrial sectors to decision makers and technology analysts with high technological, temporal, and geospatial resolution. He was lead on the chemical storage chapter of The Future of Energy Storage report and co-lead on the thermal storage chapter.
Decarbonizing hard-to-abate sectors is critical to achieve climate change goals given the unique and often fossil fuel-based manufacturing processes. For developed and emerging economies, evaluating power and heavy industry sectors are pertinent given the immense growth expected in the upcoming decades. This presentation will focus on cost and emission models that have been developed and evaluated using the Sesame platform. Specifically, case studies for Hydrogen, Iron and Steel, and Power will be presented demonstrating the impact of technology options, supply chain choices and regional differences. In addition to the plant-level analysis, a system view will be taken to estimate emissions and energy consumption for the entire fleet. By comparing the various technology routes on a cost and emission basis, potential decarbonization strategies, marginal abatement cost, and sensitivities to fuel and other operational costs will be analyzed. The sectoral analysis indicates the immense increase in energy consumption and corresponding infrastructure support for industrial decarbonization. A combination of resource efficiency and technology improvements will be important for reducing emissions from a business-as-usual operation. Overall, the analysis indicates the role of system analysis in evaluating plant-level and system level changes in legacy sectors that are expanding and will be transitioning from traditional production methods. This study is timely as the global community sets climate goals and must consider hard-to-abate sectors, during the energy transition. Using system analysis provides insight to future plant-level and sectoral-level emission and cost challenges.
Principal Research Scientist, MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change and the MIT Energy Initiative
Dr. Jennifer Morris is a Principal Research Scientist at the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change and the MIT Energy Initiative. Much of her research focuses on energy transitions and economic development pathways as well as uncertainty and decision-making. Jennifer is a key contributor to the development of the MIT Integrated Global System Modeling(IGSM) framework, focusing on the human system component, the Economic Projection and Policy Analysis (EPPA) model. With this modeling framework, she develops integrated economic and climate scenarios, generates large ensembles, analyzes policy impacts, explores technology and mitigation pathways and transitions, and examines multi-sector dynamics. Her uncertainty-related work involves quantifying key uncertainties and applying different methodological approaches to models in order to formally represent such uncertainties and explore how they impact near-term decisions. A key focus is evaluating risks to different investment options in energy and water and identifying those that are robust to potential risks. Jennifer holds a PhD in Engineering Systems and a M.S. in Technology and Policy from MIT.
Achieving long-term climate stabilization targets that limit warming to 1.5oC or 2oC requires deep decarbonization, with total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions eventually falling to net zero. Because some emissions in the economy are difficult to eliminate, most 1.5oC or 2oC pathways rely on negative emissions strategies to offset residual positive GHG emissions in hard-to-abate sectors. Among carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies, bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) and natural-climate solutions such as afforestation and reforestation (A/R) are among the most widely considered options. The deployment of these options will depend on their availability as well as the climate policy regime, particularly the availability of international emissions trading. In fact, CDR and international trade in GHG permits mutually reinforce each other. This relationship and its implications for the scale of CDR and emissions trading, regional deployment, carbon prices, and GDP will be discussed in this talk.
Catarina has been working with the Cambridge/Boston startup ecosystem for over 10 years and joined Corporate Relations with a solid network in the innovation and entrepreneurial community. Prior to MIT, she was part of the team that designed and launched the startup accelerator IUL MIT Portugal, which was later rebranded as Building Global Innovators. She was based in Lisbon and worked in direct relation with the Cambridge team. She held positions including Operations Coordinator, Program Manager, and Business Developer. The accelerator soon achieved steady growth in large part due to the partnerships that Catarina led with regional and global startup ecosystems. After that, she worked at NECEC, leading a program that connects cleantech startups and industry. In this role, she developed and built a pipeline of startups and forged strong relationships with both domestic and European companies. She has also held positions in Portugal and France, including at Saboaria e Perfumaria Confiança and L’Oréal as Technical Director and Pharmacist. Catarina earned her bachelor's in chemistry and pharmaceutical sciences in Portugal. She went on to earn her Master of Engineering for Health and Medicines in France.
Dr. Prabhu Rao is an executive with demonstrated success and strong leadership in the clean energy business. Over the last three decades he has been involved in many incubator and start-up ecosystems and has mentored a large number of founders and entrepreneurs. As the CEO of Ivys Adsorption Inc. and Chairman of Ivys Energy Solutions, Dr. Rao is focused on developing products and solutions to enable a circular economy. He is a strong believer that circularity is an essential step to the transition to a renewable future.
Chief Commercial Officer, EvolOH
Dr. Shirley has a distinguished 35+ year career in the hydrogen and energy industry with Linde, Airgas, BOC and BP. He has deep experience in business development, technology commercialization and developing global partnerships. He holds a Ph.D. from Princeton University.