Reducing Building-Related Carbon Emissions

Buildings account for more than 30% of CO₂ emissions worldwide, and one of the six missions of The MIT Climate Project focuses on building cities that are resilient and adaptable in the face of climate change.   Learn about some of the recent work from MIT researchers and their colleagues on reducing buildings-related CO₂  emissions:

Selected Research on Urban Planning and Building Energy Use

• Morteza Vahid-Ghavidel, Mehdi Jafari, Samuel Letellier-Duchesne, Zachary Berzolla, Christoph Reinhart, and Audun Botterud, “Integrated Energy Demand-Supply Modeling for Low-Carbon Neighborhood Planning,” Applied Energy 358 (March 15, 2024): 122560.
• Zachary Berzolla, Yu Qian Ang, Samuel Letellier-Duchesne, and Christoph Reinhart, “An Eight-Step Simulation-Based Framework to Help Cities Reach Building-Related Emissions Reduction Goals,” Environmental Research: Infrastructure and Sustainability 3 (2023): 045003.
• Sam Wolk, Zachary Berzolla, Lauren Carethers, and Christoph Reinhart, “Accelerating Photovoltaic Potential Simulations for Urban Building Energy Modeling to Inform Policymakers,” In Building Simulation 2023, vol. 18: 2628-2635. International Building Performance Simulation Association, 2023.
• Yu Qian Ang, Zachary Michael Berzolla, Samuel Letellier-Duchesne, and Christoph F. Reinhart, “Carbon Reduction Technology Pathways for Existing Buildings in Eight Cities,” Nature Communications 14 (2023): 1689.
• Yu Qian Ang, Zachary Michael Berzolla, Samuel Letellier-Duchesne, Violetta Jusiega, and Christoph Reinhart, "UBEM.io: A Web-Based Framework to Rapidly Generate Urban Building Energy Models for Carbon Reduction Technology Pathways," Sustainable Cities and Society 77 (February 2022): 103534.
• Niall Buckley, Gerald Mills, Christoph Reinhart, and Zachary Michael Berzolla, "Using Urban Building Energy Modelling (UBEM) to Support the New European Union’s Green Deal: Case Study of Dublin Ireland," Energy and Buildings 247 (September 15, 2021): 111115.
• Yu Qian Ang, Zachary Michael Berzolla, and Christoph F. Reinhart, “From Concept to Application: A Review of Use Cases in Urban Building Energy Modeling,” Applied Energy 279 (December 1, 2020): 115738. 

Additional Resources on This Topic

• The UBEM.IO website. UBEM,IO is described as “a free web service to support municipal governments and urban design teams to develop carbon reduction pathways…for existing buildings or new developments.” The MIT Sustainable Design Lab led the development of UBEM.IO.
• UBEM.IO introductory video from the MIT Sustainable Design Lab.
   

Selected Research and Analysis on Sustainable Building Design 

• Christoph Reinhart, Climate-Driven Design I (Cambridge, MA: Building Technology Press, 2025).
• Ramon Elias Weber, Caitlin Mueller, and Christoph Reinhart, “A Hypergraph Model Shows the Carbon Reduction Potential of Effective Space Use in Housing,” Nature Communications 15 (2024): 8327.
• Ramon Weber, Caitlin Mueller, and Christoph Reinhart, “Building for Zero, The Grand Challenge of Architecture without Carbon”, working paper, SSRN , October 8, 2021. 

Additional Resources on This Topic

• Sustainable Building Design, MITx online course
• Building for Zero website

Selected Research on Energy Efficiency and Retrofitting Buildings

• Zachary Berzolla, Ting Meng, and Christoph Reinhart, “Deal or No Deal: U.S. Homeowners’ Willingness to Pay for Residential Building Retrofits,” Environmental Research: Infrastructure and Sustainability 5 (2025): 015007.
• Fiona Burlig, Christopher Knittel, David Rapson, Mar Reguant, and Catherine Wolfram, “Machine Learning from Schools about Energy Efficiency,” Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists 7, no. 6 (November 2020): 1181-1217.