Getting the “training wheel” out of clean energy | MIT News

In recent years, the investment level of renewable energy has reached an unprecedented level of investment. But as political uncertainty casts a future for green energy subsidies, these technologies must begin to compete with fossil fuels, the technologies must say at the 2025 MIT Energy Conference.

“These technologies require less training wheels, and more a competitive environment,” Brian Deese, an innovation researcher at MIT, said in the opening keynote panel.

The theme of the two-day conference organized by MIT students is “Breakthroughs in Deployment: Promoting Climate Innovation to the Market.” Speakers expressed optimism about green technology advances to a large extent and kept balanced with occasional alerts about rapidly changing regulatory and political environments.

Deese defines what is called “good, bad and ugly” of the current energy landscape. Kindness: Clean energy investment in the United States reached an all-time high of $272 billion in 2024. Bad: The announcement of future investments has gradually disappeared. Ugly: Macro conditions make it harder for utilities and private companies to build clean energy infrastructure needed to meet growing energy needs.

“We need to build a lot of energy capacity in the United States,” Deese said. “The three things that are most allergic to buildings are high uncertainty, high interest rates and high tariff rates. So it’s ugly. But, the question… what, and in what way, the basic business momentum can drive this period of uncertainty.”

Changing clean energy landscape

In the panel on the growth of artificial intelligence and electricity demand, speakers said that in addition to putting pressure on existing infrastructure, the technology could also serve as a catalyst for a breakthrough in green energy. “Google is committed to responsibly building digital infrastructure, part of which means catalyzing the development of clean energy infrastructure that not only meets AI needs, but also benefits the entire grid,” said Lucia Tian, ​​head of clean energy and decarbonization technology at Google.

During these two days, the speaker stressed that the cost per unit and scalability of clean energy technology will ultimately determine its fate. But they also acknowledge the impact of public policy, and the need for government investment to address large-scale issues such as grid modernization.

Vanessa Chan, a former U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) official and current associate dean of the Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, warned that the “lockdown” effect of the measure is the “basic” effect of the multinational corporation Institute of Health (NIH) funding for indirect research costs. “In fact, what you’re doing is weakening every academic institution that studies across the country,” she said.

Taxpayers alone may not be able to fund the grid upgrades needed to meet growing electricity demand, said Maria Robinson, former director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Grid Deployment Office, in a panel called “Clean Energy Transition without Transmission.” “The amount of investment we will need in the next few years will be important,” she said. “That’s where the federal government has to play.”

David Cohen-Tanugi, a clean energy venture capital maker at MIT, noted that extreme weather events in recent years have changed the dialogue on climate change. “There was a narrative ten years ago…If we started talking about resilience and adaptability to climate change, then we threw away the towel or gave up,” he said. “I noticed a big shift in investor narratives, entrepreneurial narratives, and more generally public awareness. People realize that the effects of climate change are already on us.”

“Everything on the table”

The conference features panels and keynotes for a range of emerging energy technologies, including hydrogen, geothermal and nuclear fusion, and carbon capture.

Alex Crely, chief engineer of the Commonwealth Fusion System, explained that fusion (combining small atoms into larger atoms, which is the same as fuel stars) is safer and may be more economical than traditional nuclear energy. He said the Fusion facility could immediately turn its power supply off, and companies like him are developing new, cheap magnet technology to contain the extreme heat generated by the fusion reactor.

By the early 2030s, his company hopes to use only 400 megawatts of power plants each year and only 50 kilograms of fuel per year. “If you can make convergence work, it turns energy into manufacturing products, not natural resources,” he said.

Quinn Woodard Jr., senior director of power generation and ground facilities at geothermal energy supplier Fervo Energy, said his company is making geothermal energy more economical through standardization, innovation and economies of scale. He said drilling traditionally is the biggest cost of producing geothermal power. Woodard said Fervo is now focusing on reducing its power plant costs as drilling advances “completely flips the cost structure”.

“We must keep focusing on costs and achieving this is crucial to the success of the geothermal industry,” he said.

A common theme throughout the conference was: many approaches are developing rapidly, but experts are not sure when – or in some cases, if each particular technology would reach a point of transformation that could change the energy market.

“I don’t want to be in places that are often stuck in this climate solution situation,” said Peter Ellis, global director of natural climate solutions for the Nature Conservancy. “We’re talking about the biggest challenge facing civilization. We need everything on the table.”

The road ahead

Several spokespersons stressed the need for academia, industry and government to collaborate in pursuit of climate and energy goals. Amy Luers, senior director of sustainability at Microsoft, compared the challenges of the Apollo SpaceFlight program, saying academic institutions need to focus more on how to expand and stimulate investment in green energy.

“The challenge is that there are no academic institutions that have been set up to understand the bottom-up and top-down shifts over time,” Luce said. “If the world will succeed in our pure zero path, then the mindset of the academia needs to shift. Fortunately, it has begun.”

In a group called “From Laboratory to Grid: Scaling Priority Energy Technology”, Hannan Happi, CEO of renewable energy company Exowatt, stressed that electricity is ultimately a commodity. “Electronics are all the same,” he said. “The only thing (the customer) cares about is when the electrons are available when they need to, and they are very cheap.”

Melissa Zhang, head of azimuth capital management, pointed out that the development cycle of energy infrastructure usually takes at least five to ten years, which is longer than the political cycle in the United States. However, she warned that green energy technology is unlikely to receive substantial support at the federal level in the near future. “If you’re a little too dependent on subsidies… there’s a reason to focus on this government,” she said.

Lab to grid panel host, Gene Gebolys, CEO of World Energy, lists many companies founded at MIT. “They all have one thing in common,” he said. “They all go from someone’s idea, lab to proof of concept, and expand. It’s not like any of these things ending. It’s an ongoing process.”