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The central idea behind “Powering up (and saving) the planet” is simple but demanding: climate action is not just a matter of replacing fossil fuels with solar panels or wind turbines. It requires coordinating energy supply, affordability, reliability, water, minerals, infrastructure, technology, policy, and local community needs.
The January 6, 2026 MIT Technology Review feature profiles Evelyn Wang, MIT’s first vice president for energy and climate, and explains why the university is treating energy and climate as a single, interconnected challenge.
Who is Evelyn Wang?
Wang is an MIT engineering professor and the former head of MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering. Before taking on the university’s energy-and-climate role, she spent two years directing the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy, or ARPA-E.
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She knows MIT’s research ecosystem unusually well, having spent much of her career at the Institute. Her challenge is to connect laboratories and departments with investors, companies, governments, communities, and students so that promising ideas have a better chance of reaching practical use.
Why MIT created a vice president for energy and climate
MIT already had substantial climate research before creating Wang’s post. Its Climate Grand Challenges initiative began in 2020, and the MIT Climate Project launched in 2024. The effort involves researchers across engineering, economics, the physical and biological sciences, policy, and the social sciences. The feature describes roughly 250 MIT faculty and senior researchers participating in the broader work.
The new vice-presidential position signals a shift from numerous independent projects toward more deliberate, Institute-wide coordination. MIT’s six Climate Project missions are:
- Decarbonizing energy and industry.
- Protecting the atmosphere, land, and oceans.
- Supporting frontline community action.
- Designing resilient and prosperous cities.
- Developing new policy approaches.
- Exploring unconventional or “wild card” solutions.
This is different from treating climate change as the responsibility of one research center or one sustainability office. The role is intended to connect technical research with finance, public policy, deployment, and social consequences.
Why energy and climate are inseparable
Energy production and use are major sources of greenhouse-gas emissions. Yet energy is also essential to economic development, health, housing, transportation, communications, and clean water. Many people still lack reliable access to modern energy, while electricity demand is also rising because of industrial growth, electrification, and data centers.
That creates a difficult balance. The world must reduce emissions while supplying more useful energy to more people. Electrifying vehicles, buildings, and industrial processes can cut emissions when the electricity system is low-carbon, but electrification also requires more generation, transmission, distribution capacity, storage, and critical minerals.
A cleaner energy system therefore has to be judged across its full life cycle. The relevant questions include:
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- How much greenhouse gas is emitted during extraction, manufacturing, construction, operation, and disposal?
- How much land and water does the system require?
- Which minerals and supply chains does it depend on?
- How reliable is it during heat waves, storms, droughts, or grid failures?
- Who pays for it, who benefits, and who bears the local impacts?
- Can it be deployed at useful scale quickly enough?
“Clean electricity” does not mean zero environmental impact. A low-carbon technology can still create conflicts over land, water, mining, wildlife, waste, affordability, or cultural resources.
Why renewables are necessary but not the whole answer
Wang’s portfolio approach does not reject solar or wind. It recognizes that they are highly valuable in many locations, while also acknowledging that no energy source works equally well everywhere or for every task.
Solar output depends on sunlight, available land, siting, transmission, and—when power is needed after sunset—storage or other sources of flexibility. Wind output varies with weather and geography. A grid with significant variable generation may need a combination of storage, expanded transmission, demand management, flexible generation, or firm low-carbon power.
Heavy industry, aviation, shipping, dense cities, remote communities, and water-stressed regions may face very different constraints. A solar installation that is highly effective in a sunny area with available land may be impractical in a dense urban district or a region with limited transmission capacity.
The defensible conclusion is not that renewables are inadequate. It is that a global energy system will likely need a diverse portfolio tailored to local conditions.
Technologies in the portfolio
Solar conversion and thermal management
Wang’s research has included a solar thermophotovoltaic device designed to convert otherwise wasted solar heat into usable light. The MIT Technology Review feature describes the research as potentially capable of substantially improving solar-cell efficiency—possibly doubling the efficiency of typical solar cells in the described context.
That is a research claim, not evidence that a commercial solar product has doubled in efficiency. Laboratory performance must still be tested for durability, manufacturing cost, materials availability, installation, and performance in real operating conditions.
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Another line of work involves a highly transparent insulating silica aerogel that allows much of the light through while retaining solar heat. Such materials could be relevant to solar-thermal systems, buildings, and other applications where managing heat is as important as collecting it.
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Here too, a laboratory prototype is not automatically a deployable product. Cost, scale-up, mechanical strength, weather resistance, maintenance, and installation requirements can determine whether a promising material has practical value.
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Atmospheric water harvesting
Wang’s group has developed a two-stage system reported to extract water from air at humidity levels as low as 20%, using sunlight or another low-grade heat source. Her earlier work also examined extracting water from very dry air.
Atmospheric water harvesting could be useful in particular settings, but “can extract water” does not mean “is the cheapest or most reliable way to supply drinking water.” The system still requires energy, materials, maintenance, and suitable environmental conditions. Its economics must be compared with conservation, wastewater recycling, desalination, reservoirs, and conventional distribution infrastructure.
Nuclear, geothermal, and other firm power
Wang identifies nuclear fission, nuclear fusion, and geothermal energy as possible contributors to future firm power—the dependable electricity needed when variable renewable output is low.
These categories should not be treated as equally mature. Existing nuclear fission is a commercial technology, though new projects face cost, construction, regulatory, waste, and public-acceptance challenges. Geothermal deployment depends heavily on geology and drilling economics. Fusion remains a research and development opportunity rather than a near-term replacement for the existing power system.
AI is both an energy problem and a potential tool
Artificial intelligence illustrates the systems challenge particularly well. Data centers consume electricity for computation and cooling, and their expansion can place pressure on local power grids and water supplies. AI can therefore increase emissions if its electricity comes from carbon-intensive sources or if new infrastructure is built without adequate resources.
At the same time, AI may help:
- Manage intermittent electricity supply and flexible demand.
- Improve grid forecasting and operations.
- Discover catalysts, chemicals, and materials.
- Support fusion-plasma research.
- Improve climate, weather, and geospatial modeling.
- Test the likely effects of climate interventions before they are implemented.
- Reduce the computing and cooling requirements of future systems.
These are proposed uses, not proof of a net climate benefit. AI cannot overcome physical shortages of electricity, water, chips, transmission capacity, or skilled workers. Its benefits must be measured against its full energy, hardware, and infrastructure footprint.
The systems lesson from electric vehicles
The feature uses electric-vehicle range as an example of why climate solutions should begin with the underlying problem rather than a preferred device.
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The broader lesson is important for household and public spending alike: the most efficient solution may not be a more powerful piece of equipment. Sometimes it is better infrastructure, a different service model, or reduced demand.
From invention to deployment
MIT’s strategy depends on moving beyond ideas that work only in controlled laboratory conditions. Wang’s ARPA-E experience is relevant because government-backed programs often fund high-risk technologies before private investors are willing to do so.
The feature attributes to Wang the observation that transformative energy ideas can take roughly a decade to move from concept to deployment. That is an experience-based assessment, not a universal timetable. Some technologies can scale faster; others take far longer because of permitting, manufacturing, grid interconnection, safety reviews, financing, workforce shortages, or public opposition.
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- Research: establishing that a scientific or engineering principle works.
- Demonstration: showing that the system operates outside the laboratory and under relevant conditions.
- Deployment: building repeatable, financeable projects at commercial or community scale.
A higher efficiency percentage or successful experiment does not by itself establish lower total system cost, reliability, affordability, or rapid deployment.
MIT’s proposed operating model
Wang is working to encourage collaboration across MIT’s departments and schools, connect researchers with industry, investors, philanthropists, and governments, and support projects that cross disciplinary boundaries.
The reported funding structure includes faculty grants of $50,000 to $250,000 for collaborative projects lasting six to 24 months, as well as student grants of up to $15,000. These are figures reported in the January 6, 2026 feature and may change over time.
The goal is not simply to produce more research papers. Collaborative projects can examine whether an idea fits local infrastructure, financing, regulation, community priorities, and real-world operating conditions.
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Why local solutions matter
Climate change is global, but energy and resilience projects are built in particular places. A coastal city may prioritize flood protection and port decarbonization. A hot inland community may focus on heat-resilient housing and cooling. A data center may need to address local electricity, water, and employment concerns. A remote community may require a different combination of distributed generation, storage, efficiency, and backup power than a major urban grid.
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Local pilots can provide a practical path from theory to replication:
- Identify a specific local problem and its constraints.
- Build a solution with affected communities and relevant institutions.
- Measure emissions, cost, reliability, water use, health effects, and public acceptance.
- Document failures as well as successes.
- Adapt the design before attempting to replicate it elsewhere.
A pilot is valuable only if it produces evidence that can inform the next decision. A highly subsidized demonstration that cannot be maintained or financed may have limited value as a model.
The constraints that could determine success
MIT’s agenda faces obstacles that technical breakthroughs alone cannot remove:
- Infrastructure: transmission, distribution, storage, ports, factories, and charging networks must expand alongside clean generation.
- Permitting and siting: projects can be delayed by land-use conflicts, environmental review, interconnection queues, or opposition from affected communities.
- Materials: mineral demand and concentrated supply chains can create cost, geopolitical, labor, and environmental risks.
- Finance: technologies may be technically viable but unable to attract affordable capital before their risks are better understood.
- Workforce: construction, maintenance, manufacturing, grid operation, and research require specialized skills.
- Political continuity: changing budgets, regulations, and incentives can interrupt projects that take years or decades to mature.
- Equity: a lower-carbon system is not automatically affordable or reliable for energy-poor households.
The feature reports pressure on U.S. climate and science funding, including cuts or cancellations affecting federal agencies and energy-related programs. Such politically sensitive claims can change quickly. The durable point is that public policy and funding decisions can accelerate or delay the movement from research to demonstration and deployment.
How to judge whether a solution is genuinely transformational
“Saving the planet” is useful as a broad ambition but too vague as a performance test. A serious evaluation should ask:
- How many emissions are avoided over the full life cycle?
- What does the system cost per unit of useful service, not merely per unit of installed capacity?
- How quickly can it be manufactured, permitted, financed, and deployed?
- How does it perform during extreme weather and other disruptions?
- What are its land, water, mineral, waste, and local pollution impacts?
- Who pays and who benefits?
- Can the model be replicated under different geographic and economic conditions?
These tests help separate a promising laboratory result from a solution capable of improving people’s lives at scale.
What Wang’s agenda ultimately represents
Wang’s role reflects MIT’s attempt to organize climate and energy work around a systems view. The portfolio includes renewables, storage, efficiency, advanced materials, atmospheric water harvesting, nuclear and geothermal research, AI, resilient cities, industrial decarbonization, policy, and community action.
The approach is optimistic about innovation but not dependent on a single breakthrough. Its practical premise is that climate progress will come from combinations of technologies, infrastructure, financing, regulation, and behavior that work in specific places.
MIT cannot independently solve global climate change. It can, however, help define problems more accurately, test solutions under real constraints, connect researchers with deployers, and measure whether an intervention delivers lower emissions, reliable energy, affordability, resilience, and public benefit.
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