MIT Professor J. Trancik: Innovation Is Constant – Society Must Channel It to Solve Climate Change

“Technological innovation is always happening and the challenge for society is to channel it toward solving major challenges like climate change,” says Jessika Trancik, a Professor in the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She emphasizes that while many clean energy technologies already exist, society must effectively combine and adopt these tools to create affordable, resilient, and climate-friendly energy systems.

Trancik, together with leading scientists from Lithuania and MIT, delivered a presentation at the conference ‘Human and More-Than-Human Futures: Innovating Technologies for Coexistence’ held on October 9-10 in Vilnius and Kaunas. The conference investigated how transforming technological and non-technological innovations can forge resilient and adaptable futures amidst rapid change of human everyday life and geopolitical shifts.

Trancik’s research develops data-informed models and theories to explain the determinants of technological change and inform investments. She examines the dynamic costs, performance, and environmental impacts of energy systems to inform climate policy and accelerate beneficial and equitable technology innovation. Her projects focus on all energy services including electricity, transportation, heating, and industrial processes. This work spans solar energy, wind energy, energy storage, low-carbon fuels, electric vehicles, and nuclear fission among other technologies.

Before the conference, we interviewed the Professor about her research, focusing on clean energy technologies and the role of society in addressing climate change.

What inspired you to focus your research on clean energy technologies and climate change?

I have always been motivated to work on problems that span engineering and sustainable development. I began working on climate change several decades ago because I felt it was one of our most significant societal challenges and also one where technology advancement was needed to address it. I felt it was an area where my background in science and engineering and in policy could be put to best use.

What are some of the most promising clean energy technologies today that could help reduce global carbon emissions?

There are many options for using clean energy sources. Some of the technologies that have improved the most in recent years are wind energy and solar energy, along with lithium ion batteries for electric vehicles among other uses. But other advances have been made as well. For example, efficient building design and retrofits have advanced significantly and the costs and performance of heat pumps have improved — to name just a couple. There is active research and development in many other areas as well, such as various options for grid-scale batteries, next-generation nuclear fission reactors, and carbon-free synthetic fuels.

How do you see the role of innovation in addressing the climate crisis over the next decade?

Technological innovation is the process by which technology advances and is adopted in society. Technological innovation is always happening and the challenge for society is to channel it toward solving major challenges like climate change. It is not a given that technology will play this role, and modeling technologies’ impacts and evolution can help reveal ways to nudge the process toward desired outcomes.

For climate change, we do have much of the hardware needed to address the problem. But there is a need for further technological innovation in ways to combine these tools effectively to provide affordable, convenient, and resilient energy systems. There are also specific hardware tools – like new fuels or batteries and several others – that could also really help enable decarbonization.

What challenges do new energy technologies face beyond just the technical side?

There are many challenges beyond what is commonly thought of as the ‘technical side’. For example, concerns about convenience can sometimes be a challenge for people that want to adopt new energy technologies and minimize their contributions to environmental degradation. Designing services and programs that allow people to easily opt in to clean technologies is just as important as developing hardware. T

What is the future of electric cars, and why has the revolution not happened yet? Can we imagine a near future with electric planes?

Overall, at the global level, the purchases of electric vehicles have been growing rapidly with each year. These transitions take time and tend to happen at different rates in different places, but the global growth trend has been persistent from year to year and does not show signs of stopping.

In terms of other transportation services, some are less naturally suited at present to the use of electricity. Some short haul flights have been electrified but the use of electricity in air transport has been fairly limited up to this point. But as batteries and charging speeds continue to improve, this could change at least to some extent, and electricity could be even more widely used.

How can cities contribute to global climate efforts?

Cities can support many efforts, from improving transportation systems that make public transit, walking and biking more attractive to incentivizing businesses and households to adopt clean energy technologies.

What role do you think individuals can play in driving change, aside from policy and technology developments?

Voting for representatives that will implement policies aligning with and individual’s values and wishes is very important. Trying to make choices in terms of technology and lifestyle that are beneficial to the environment is also important though, of course, policy can help make those choices much more readily available to people through lowering the costs and other barriers. Many times, these policies pay themselves back many times over by improving water and air quality and reducing the harms and economic costs of pollution.

Are there any misconceptions about energy technologies or climate science that you frequently encounter and wish people better understood?

There are so many. Where do we begin? Many people are experiencing climate change, so I encounter fewer people these days who think that it is not happening. But people disagree about the reasons and how readily we can switch to technologies and practices that do not emit greenhouse gas emissions. There are many options for doing so that are affordable and ready to scale, and some that are still in progress.

I think that any time society is in a period of major transition there is some amount of time during which the information available to people is imperfect — and skewed toward particular interests. That’s a challenging period to be in, and it’s important to work to provide reliable information in way that’s widely accessible, and to engage in wide-ranging conversations about the problem and solutions.

How do you stay motivated and hopeful in the face of climate change challenges?

For me personally the work ahead is about understanding the problem and trying my best to provide helpful insights about solutions that are practicable and beneficial. Keeping the goal in mind — the goal of trying to provide useful insight — is what motivates me.