MITEI Future Energy Systems Center

The Future Energy Systems Center is an industry research consortium providing insights on how best to navigate the energy transition based on multi-sectoral analyses of emerging technologies, changing policies and evolving economics.

The Future Energy Systems Center examines the accelerating energy transition as emerging technology and policy, demographic trends, and economics reshape the landscape of energy supply and demand. The Center conducts integrated analysis of the energy system, providing insights into the complex multisectoral transformations that will alter the power and transportation systems, industry, and built environment. Our work draws upon MIT research in traditional energy-related disciplines, as well as from cross-disciplinary fields such as energy and environmental policy, climate science, carbon management, energy economics, behavioral science, cybersecurity, information technology, and artificial intelligence.

The Center serves as a single point of entry into MITEI and the MIT energy research community at large. As a member-supported consortium, the Center continues MITEI’s long history of working with companies throughout the energy sector. Member companies will include both energy suppliers and consumers demonstrating the impact decarbonization will have on a wide range of industries. The Center brings together ongoing technoeconomic and systems-oriented research from MITEI’s Low-Carbon Energy Centers into one unified center, creating a holistic energy system analysis capability with integrated research focus areas. These will initially include electric power, energy storage and low-carbon fuels, transportation, industrial processes, carbon management, and the built environment. Members are invited to participate in all focus area working groups without limit.

Work rests on two pillars: MITEI’s world-class range of capabilities in energy system modelling and analysis; and the cutting-edge campus-wide energy technology research program overseen by MITEI that spans all of MIT’s departments, as well as our affiliated policy research centers including the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research (CEEPR), and the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change. Combining our deep knowledge of technology and modeling enables us to investigate the potential for emerging supply and demand side technologies, along with policy to impact the energy system of the future – exposing new opportunities and threats within in a host of industries, as well as unmet research needs.

Companies benefit from membership in five primary ways. In addition to helping shape the research agenda, members are able to engage with the research teams during the periodic workshops, access findings and insights from the projects via presentations and working papers available via a members-only website, and learn about emerging technologies, energy policy, and sustainability issues via regular member-only seminars and symposia. Members are also invited to attend our exclusive MITEI Annual Research Conference, and have the option to participate in sponsored research facilitated by MITEI. In addition, the convening of members for workshops and conferences brings together industry representatives into a neutral setting focused on solving tough decarbonization challenges. This will enable energy suppliers and consumers to find mutually beneficial opportunities to work together.