The Net Zero Carbon Group will be an interdisciplinary collaboration of graduate students working to map out the process of transforming an island with a conventional energy profile to an island with a net zero energy system supplying its permanent residents. This group will meet for fours 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 taken to achieve the end goal is vital. Model-Based Reasoning and Design Thinking have been carefully chosen as the tools used to propel this effort to its full potential.
MIT's Energy Initiative will host the workshop on campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts with the support of Shell and a group of design thinking facilitators from Viessmann.
Students who want to learn more about energy transition in general, are interested in the strategic development of community-sized resilient energy systems, who want to explore collaborative tools, and who take interest in 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 (do we want to note this? do we want to word it differently?). As well, any open questions coming out of the workshop will be available as research topics for theses and papers at MIT.
