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 About The Project

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

This workshop produced three theoretical projects for MV on:

1. Green Housing Fund
2. Sustainable Farming
3. Economics

The MIT Energy Initiative hosted the workshop on campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts with the support of the companies Shell and Viessmann. 

In particular, students with an interest in the energy transition and in the strategic development of community-sized resilient energy systems should find value in this workshop. Students should also show an interest in interdisciplinary collaborative research methods and private-public partnerships. We are looking for a diverse group of students, so carbon neutrality enthusiasm 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.

This January workshop was funded by Shell and the National Science Foundation sponsored EMBeRS project.