On comparing and optimizing energy technologies for climate change mitigation

Abstract

What I want to talk about today is this topic of quantifying trends in energy, and before I dive into that I thought I'd give you a bit of background on the lab that I'm constructing at MIT. I do mostly modeling work. So “lab” in the sense we mean a lot of computers, and people, and hopefully, intellect. What we're really interested in is finding ways to compare and optimize energy technologies for climate change mitigation. We're also interested in, at a more fundamental level, understanding the dynamics of technological change and trying to bridge, on the one hand, these very macro-level models for how technologies change and idealize representation of technologies in more economic style models with more of an engineering or physical science approach where you really break technologies down.