There’s lots of expertise on climate research at MIT. But how do policymakers access it?
That’s where the MIT Climate Policy Center comes in. The center was launched in 2024 as a critical component of the Climate Project at MIT, which aims to quickly design and deliver solutions to help change the planet’s climate trajectory. The MIT Sloan School of Management announced the establishment of the MIT Climate Policy Center with a $25 million initial investment to jump-start its efforts.
“The MIT Climate Policy Center’s mission is to become a primary trusted nonpartisan resource for policymakers, connecting them with faculty and students who want to make the greatest possible contribution to advancing evidence-based climate policy in the next decade,” said Bethany Patten, EMBA ’13 (Senior Lecturer, Sustainability; Executive Director, MIT Climate Policy Center).
The MIT Climate Policy Center’s goal is to serve as the “front door” between the Institute’s climate research and relevant stakeholders. “MIT is doing a lot of great work, but it’s just not necessarily all getting into the hands of policymakers,” Christopher Knittel (Associate Dean, Climate and Sustainability; George P. Shultz Professor; Faculty Director, MIT Climate Policy Center) explained in his plenary talk at MIT Sloan Reunion 2024. He added that the new center will create a “two-way street” that will facilitate policymakers and researchers working with one another.
The center’s strategy, Patten said, has three key components: analyzing and translating climate policy proposals; sharing research-based information and recommendations with leaders in government and other sectors; and heightening awareness of MIT climate expertise and tools among the global policy community.
The MIT Climate Policy Center’s mission is to become a primary trusted nonpartisan resource for policymakers, connecting them with faculty and students who want to make the greatest possible contribution to advancing evidence-based climate policy in the next decade.
Analyzing and translating climate proposals
As an early example of one type of project the center will tackle, in 2023 Drew Story (Policy Director, MIT Climate Policy Center) saw developing federal legislation—the BIG WIRES Act by Senator John Hickenlooper and Representative Scott Peters—and knew that an MIT expert would be able to help.
Juan Senga (Postdoctoral Associate, MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research) used an existing MIT model to analyze the legislation and share results with the congressional offices, which began referencing the work in promoting the bill. This also led to more work on similar legislation, including the Connect the Grid Act.
Sharing research-based information and recommendations
Another example of the center’s pragmatic approach to bridging the gap between research and policy is the work of Catherine Wolfram, PhD ’96 (William Barton Rogers Professor in Energy; Professor, Applied Economics). As a climate policy expert and former deputy assistant secretary for climate and energy economics at the United States Treasury, Wolfram, who is an affiliated faculty member of the MIT Climate Policy Center, is regularly asked to lend her insights to climate policy discussions.
Wolfram also became an advisor with Representative Julia Brownley’s office and was featured as the lead validator on Brownley’s 2024 Methane Border Adjustment Mechanism Act (MBAM). Wolfram said she decided to do more than just share her published literature and took on a more active advisory role because it makes for a more dynamic, developing exchange.
“Things are very fluid in the policy space, especially compared to academia where things change on a much longer time scale... If we hadn’t focused so intently on getting the MBAM Act ready for introduction, our window of opportunity may have closed,” she explained.
Things are very fluid in the policy space, especially compared to academia where things change on a much longer time scale.
Heightening awareness of MIT expertise and tools
A third important goal for the MIT Climate Policy Center is amplifying awareness of the Climate Project at MIT and other climate-related initiatives and expertise across the Institute. For example, the center is the new home for the MIT Climate Pathways Project and its En-ROADS climate policy simulator. Based on decades of work from the MIT Sloan System Dynamics Group by John D. Sterman, PhD ’82 (Jay W. Forrester Professor of Management; Professor, System Dynamics and Engineering Systems), and the result of a collaboration between MIT Sloan and Climate Interactive, En-ROADS is a public computer simulation that helps people explore climate policy options by modeling costs, global temperature, rising sea levels, and air quality, among other factors.
To date, more than 18,000 leaders in business, government, and civil society have participated in En-ROADS workshops. Now, the project is positioned to reach the next level. At the fall 2024 meeting of the Paris Peace Forum, the MIT Climate Pathways Project was chosen as one of 10 civil society projects worldwide to take part in an accelerator program designed to increase their impact and reach.
As the world faces unprecedented climate challenges, it’s hard to overstate the importance of the work that the MIT Climate Policy Center is undertaking. “By making it easier for policymakers around the globe to access MIT research and analysis capabilities, we hope to facilitate the development of public policies that will support a healthy future for all,” Patten said.
