https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/151136 2026-04-07T02:23:02Z 2026-04-07T02:23:02Z Westerlaken, Michelle Bischoff, Amanda Mertens, Krishen Pertusa, Alejandro https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/164792 2026-02-12T03:01:00Z 2026-02-11T00:00:00Z

Vital Biodiversity Systems: A Companion Paper Westerlaken, Michelle; Bischoff, Amanda; Mertens, Krishen; Pertusa, Alejandro Regenerative and diverse ecosystems are essential to living futures. Healthy ecosystems are more resilient to climate change and are better able to absorb and store carbon. Communities and corporations worldwide are currently establishing how environmental data can best support these processes. This Companion Paper provides the rationale for the Design Brief and synthesizes findings from four years of research across academia, corporate sustainability teams, and community stakeholders. It argues that biodiversity data systems are not neutral repositories but designed artefacts that embed assumptions and values. To redirect innovation, the paper supports the Brief by expanding on its key design principles, criteria, constraints, and propositions that together chart a pathway for ‘vital biodiversity systems’: platforms that embed the aliveness of the ecosystems they mediate.

2026-02-11T00:00:00Z Eamer, Danika Holland, Henrik Schnell, Dan https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/159408 2025-06-14T03:01:44Z 2025-06-13T00:00:00Z

Shared Electric Vehicle Charging Networks: A Flexible Approach to Support Deployment of Electric Fleets Eamer, Danika; Holland, Henrik; Schnell, Dan In November 2023, representatives from shipping, logistics, and industrial real estate convened at the MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium (MCSC) member meetings to discuss the critical barriers hindering fleet decarbonization and collaborative opportunities to overcome these challenges. The conversation highlighted the potential of pooled investment and shared use of charging infrastructure as a strategy to support the deployment of Class 8 battery electric heavy-duty trucking fleets. This piece builds on those discussions, offering a comprehensive exploration of stakeholder perspectives across the trucking industry to: (1) Illustrate the economic and functional benefits of pooling infrastructure investment and use across a network; (2) Examine the mechanisms by which this collaborative approach can be effectively implemented; and (3) Develop a framework to incorporate infrastructure pooling into fleet transition planning. Central to this effort is a proposal for a dedicated industry consortium, designed to unite stakeholders and drive the collective investment, planning, and shared use of charging infrastructure to accelerate the transition to electrified trucking fleets.

2025-06-13T00:00:00Z Eamer, Danika Borrero, Micah Bao, Brooke Kasami, Brilant De Figueiredo Valente, Helena https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/159069 2026-03-04T03:15:40Z 2025-04-11T00:00:00Z

Geospatial Trucking Industry Decarbonization Explorer (Geo-TIDE): Technical Guide and Methodology Eamer, Danika; Borrero, Micah; Bao, Brooke; Kasami, Brilant; De Figueiredo Valente, Helena Geo-TIDE is a public, interactive decision-support tool developed by the MIT Climate & Sustainability Consortium (MCSC) to help trucking industry stakeholders identify and evaluate early opportunities for fleet and infrastructure decarbonization. By integrating public geospatial datasets such as regional freight flows, policy incentives, and spatially resolved cost and emissions models, Geo-TIDE enables data-driven decisions about where, when, and how to invest in low-carbon technologies. In this technical guide, Danika Eamer (who has led the development of Geo-TIDE) and co-authors Micah Borrero, Brooke Bao, Brilant Kasami, and Helena De Figueiredo Valente detail the tool’s functionality, showcase real-world usage scenarios, and explore the methodology behind its evolution and development.

2025-04-11T00:00:00Z Dogan, Amelia Frye-Levine, Laura Malysa, Ava https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/158181 2025-04-07T09:07:25Z 2025-02-07T00:00:00Z

A Taxonomy for Social Sustainability in Corporate Communication Dogan, Amelia; Frye-Levine, Laura; Malysa, Ava Sustainability, or environmental, social, and governance (ESG), reports have become ubiquitous among major companies in recent years, often criticized as tools for greenwashing and met with significant backlash. While the environmental aspects of these reports are well-defined, social sustainability remains poorly understood. Through an analysis of narrative sections from six corporate sustainability reports narrative sections, we propose an initial taxonomy of constitutive social sustainability concepts reflected in corporate speech.

2025-02-07T00:00:00Z Macfarlane, Maria Jia, Ruofei Fricke, Evan Vallicrosa, Helena Yu, Jevan Mirzagholi, Leila Coleman, Evan Olivetti, Elsa Terrer, César https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/154149 2024-04-17T03:13:25Z 2024-04-16T00:00:00Z

Nature-Based Climate Solutions: Current Uncertainties and Data Gaps in the Assessment of Soil Carbon Sequestration Potentials Macfarlane, Maria; Jia, Ruofei; Fricke, Evan; Vallicrosa, Helena; Yu, Jevan; Mirzagholi, Leila; Coleman, Evan; Olivetti, Elsa; Terrer, César Nature-based solutions (NBS) to climate change, which harness natural ecosystems to achieve diverse environmental objectives, are becoming increasingly central to climate action plans due in large part to their multifaceted benefits and potential for immediate scalability. This white paper explores the classes of ecosystem intervention that present these salient opportunities to mitigate climate change. Interventions that enhance and preserve ecosystems provide opportunities to protect and strengthen the terrestrial carbon sink, while also reversing the degradation and damage caused by centuries of human development. The paper explains the strategic vision for NBS engagement, which is developing through industry-academic partnership at the MIT Climate & Sustainability Consortium (MCSC). The white paper explores different yet complementary sides of the multifaceted measurement and NBS conversations.

2024-04-16T00:00:00Z MacDonell, Danika Borrero, Micah https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/153617 2024-03-01T03:34:00Z 2024-02-29T00:00:00Z

Thought Experiment to Explore Potential Savings from Pooled Charging Infrastructure Investment MacDonell, Danika; Borrero, Micah A thought experiment is designed to explore potential savings associated with economies of scale when pooling truck charging infrastructure investments along the U.S. interstate network. It leverages truck stop location and freight flow datasets maintained by the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), and considers a scenario in which all truck trips carried out in 2022 are electrified. A simplifying assumption is made that all charging takes place at truck stops.

2024-02-29T00:00:00Z Maji, Poushali Calvin, Susannah https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/152521 2023-10-25T03:26:46Z 2023-10-24T00:00:00Z

Unlocking the Supply of E-waste for Materials Recovery: Regulatory Complexity in Transboundary Movement Maji, Poushali; Calvin, Susannah Globally less than a fifth of e-waste generated was collected and recycled in 2019, with the remaining landfilled, reused or recycled informally, largely in developing regions. A key challenge to unlocking the supply of e-waste for materials recovery is the regulatory complexity associated with transboundary movement of e-waste. International waste management policies aim to protect human health and the environment from the adverse impacts of hazardous waste management by controlling its transboundary movement. Such policies have been successful in setting global norms for environmentally sound e-waste management and developing multi-stakeholder partnerships to innovate sustainable approaches to emerging waste challenges. However, international and national waste management policies often create unintended barriers to export and import of end-of-life recyclable products and components. Issues such as discrepancies in definitions and classification of equipment, non-standardized protocols, administrative challenges with tracking waste and non-uniform enforcement of regulations, often lead to unanticipated delays and cost increases in e-waste movement, thus posing barriers to developing a reliable supply of secondary materials from e-waste. This white paper, co-authored by the MCSC and Apple, explores these challenges and presents some possible ways to move forward.

2023-10-24T00:00:00Z MacDonell, Danika Biswas, Sayandeep Moreno Sader, Kariana https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/152159 2023-09-16T03:31:35Z 2023-09-15T00:00:00Z

Alternative Fuels and Powertrains to Decarbonize Heavy Duty Trucking MacDonell, Danika; Biswas, Sayandeep; Moreno Sader, Kariana Amid mounting urgency to rapidly decarbonize the global economy in the coming decades, the trucking industry sits on the cusp of a dramatic transition to low-carbon alternative fuels and powertrains. Technological trends suggest that multiple solutions will emerge in the near term to fill different niches of the trucking market. Faced with a diverse and continually evolving space of alternatives, each with its own set of up-front costs and risks, industry stakeholders report decision paralysis when it comes to navigating the transition. In the coming years, a valley of death period is anticipated during which up-front costs of purchasing alternative vehicles and installing refueling infrastructure will be high, and availability of public infrastructure will be limited. Governments have a crucial role to play in providing the regulation and incentives needed to ensure that companies and customers are able and willing to pay higher costs and take on financial risk to bridge the valley of death. In addition, owing to their geographical flexibility and capacity to take on up-front costs and risk, there is an opportunity for large fleets to leverage first mover advantages in the space and take the lead in piloting and adopting alternative fuels and powertrains. Informed by perspectives from industry members of the MIT Climate & Sustainability Consortium (MCSC), and insights shared by invited experts from academia and industry during a study panel hosted by the MCSC, we identify near-term priorities to support industry stakeholders in overcoming decision paralysis, navigating the valley of death, and positioning trucking fleets to thrive as the industry transitions to alternative fuels and powertrains.

2023-09-15T00:00:00Z Coleman, Evan Tripathy, Aneil Sroka, Sydney Klein, Levente Ferreira da Silva, Ademir Rakhlin, Marina Roa, Beatriz Díez, Jon https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/152031 2023-09-05T03:23:28Z 2023-09-04T00:00:00Z

Carbon Credits and Credibility: A Collaborative Endeavor Coleman, Evan; Tripathy, Aneil; Sroka, Sydney; Klein, Levente; Ferreira da Silva, Ademir; Rakhlin, Marina; Roa, Beatriz; Díez, Jon Voluntary carbon markets (VCM) hold the promise of offsetting hard-to-decarbonize emissions for corporate climate and net zero strategies (Gentile 2022). However, concerns about greenwashing and the quality of voluntary carbon credits (VCC) have increased as these markets have grown (Holger 2023). This increased scrutiny of credit-stated impacts has generated both interest and work on identifying scalable validation solutions to get VCM on a legitimate path towards supporting net zero strategies (Coffield et al. 2022; Loftus et al. 2015). At this moment in VCM, there are significant technological and financial barriers inhibiting precise estimates for a carbon sequestration project’s impact (Gawel et al. 2023). This is particularly true for nature-based climate solutions (NBS), which achieve carbon sequestration through biological means, such as reforestation. Uncertainty related to measurements and assessment is a significant challenge, and this must be addressed with new rigorous scientific and economic approaches. This is an urgent task given the speed at which corporations must decarbonize to mitigate the worst impacts of climate change. VCC can play an important role in these efforts through offsetting hard-to-decarbonize-emissions. This white paper is the result of a collaborative effort at the MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium (MCSC) with BBVA and IBM Research focused on the challenges for robust and scalable measurement for VCM and for NBS in particular. From project inception to project retirement, robust systems for evaluating credits must incentivize developers towards activities that are most effectively and reliably sequestering carbon. The goal of this paper is to move beyond often discussed challenges in voluntary carbon markets, and show a potential pathway towards scientifically robust and scalable carbon sequestration assessments that could provide trustworthy market legitimacy. To do this, we constructed a case study using satellite data and AI to estimate the sequestered carbon of two carbon offset projects bought in 2023. This collaboration highlights the value of working across different market actors: technology providers (IBM), market participants (BBVA) and academics (MIT) to tackle climate change action bottlenecks.

2023-09-04T00:00:00Z