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 About The Project

The Net Zero Carbon Group will be an interdisciplinary collaboration of between faculty, professionals, and graduate students working to map out the process of transforming an island with processes involved in transforming a model island community with a conventional energy profile to an island community with a resilient net zero carbon energy system supplying its permanent residents. This For the initial kick-off meeting, the group will meet for four five days with the objective of developing an initial roadmap for reaching this goal. As this collaborative effort will be laying important foundations related to the energy transition in community-sized energy systems, the path paths taken to achieve the end goal is are vital. For the inaugural meeting, Model-Based Reasoning and Design Thinking have been carefully chosen as tools to facilitate collaborative work during the process of creating the outline of a draft master plan for a model community. Interested students may be able to continue working with the Net Zero Carbon Group after the initial January 2019 workshop.

MIT's Energy Initiative will host the workshop on campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts with the support of Shell and a group of design thinking Design Thinking facilitators from Viessmann. 

Students who want to learn more about energy transition in general, are interested Graduate students from New England universities can now submit applications. In particular, students with an interest in the energy transition and in the strategic development of community-sized resilient energy systems , who want to explore collaborative tools, and who take interest in should find value in this workshop. Students should also show an interest in interdisciplinary collaborative research methods and private-public partnerships should find value in this workshop. We are also looking for a diverse group of students so carbon neutrality enthusiasm is not at all a requirement for applicants, we would, in fact, encourage students not so keen on the idea to apply. As well, any open or a specific disciplinary background are not required. Open questions coming out of the workshop will be available as research topics for theses and papers at MIT.