The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is co-leading an initiative to facilitate the development of two large-scale renewable energy projects in regions with high-carbon-intensity power grids. Big Elm Solar, located in Bell County, Texas, became operational this year, while the Bowman Wind project in Bowman County, North Dakota, is expected to be operational by 2026. Together, these projects will contribute a combined 408 megawatts (MW) of new renewable energy capacity to the power grid. This initiative is a crucial part of MIT’s strategy to achieve its net-zero carbon emissions goal by 2026.
The Consortium for Climate Solutions, which includes MIT and 10 other Massachusetts-based organizations, aims to eliminate nearly one million tons of greenhouse gases annually. This is more than five times the annual direct emissions of the MIT campus. The consortium is committed to purchasing approximately 1.3 million megawatt-hours of new solar and wind electricity production each year.
« MIT has mobilized on multiple fronts to accelerate solutions to climate change, » says Glen Shor, Executive Vice President and Treasurer. « Catalyzing these large-scale renewable projects is a significant part of our overall efforts to reduce carbon emissions related to energy production. We are pleased to partner with other local businesses and organizations to amplify the impact we could achieve individually. »
The two new projects complement the existing 25-year power purchase agreement between MIT and Summit Farms established in 2016. This agreement facilitated the construction of a solar farm covering approximately 650 acres and generating 60 MW on farmland in North Carolina, leading to the early decommissioning of a nearby coal plant. Its success has inspired other institutions to implement similar aggregation models.
A Collective Approach for Global Impact
MIT, Harvard University, and Mass General Brigham formed the consortium in 2020 to provide a framework for accelerating global emissions reductions through the development of large-scale renewable energy projects. This effort aims to enhance and expand the impact of each institution’s greenhouse gas reduction initiatives. As anchor participants, they collectively purchased the largest volume of energy through aggregation.
The consortium engaged with PowerOptions, a nonprofit energy purchasing consortium, which offered its members the opportunity to participate in the projects. The City of Cambridge, Beth Israel Lahey, Boston Children’s Hospital, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Tufts University, Mass Convention Center Authority, Museum of Fine Arts, and GBH later joined the consortium via PowerOptions.
The consortium evaluated over 125 potential projects based on rigorous assessment criteria. With input from MIT faculty and stakeholders on a shortlist of top-ranked projects, Bowman Wind and Big Elm Solar were ultimately selected. Collectively, these two projects will significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions in two of the most carbon-intensive power grid regions in the United States and create clean energy production sources to mitigate negative health impacts.
« Enabling these projects in regions with the most carbon-intensive grids allows them to have the greatest impact. We anticipate that these projects will avoid twice as many emissions per unit of electricity produced compared to a project of the same scale in New England, » explains Joe Higgins, Vice President for Campus Services and Stewardship.
Thanks to all consortium institutions making significant financial commitments over 15 to 20 years to purchase electricity, the developer was able to secure essential external financing to build the projects. Owned and operated by Apex Clean Energy, the projects will add new renewable electricity to the grid, equivalent to powering 130,000 homes per year, thereby replacing over 950,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions annually from the region’s carbon-intensive power plants.
Ongoing Complementary Decarbonization Efforts
In addition to investing in off-site renewable energy projects, many consortium members have developed strategies to reduce and eliminate their own direct emissions. At MIT, achieving this requires a transformative change in how energy is generated, distributed, and used on campus. Ongoing efforts include installing solar panels on campus rooftops, which will quadruple renewable energy production by 2026; transitioning the heat distribution infrastructure from steam to hot water; using design and construction practices that minimize emissions and increase energy efficiency; employing AI-compatible sensors to optimize temperature setpoints and reduce energy consumption in buildings; and converting MIT’s vehicle fleet to fully electric vehicles while adding more electric vehicle charging stations.
The Institute has also upgraded the Central Utilities Plant, which uses advanced cogeneration technology to produce electricity up to 20% less carbon-intensive than the regional power grid. MIT is paving the way for a next-generation neighborhood energy system with a comprehensive planning initiative aimed at revolutionizing the campus’s energy infrastructure. This effort explores cutting-edge technologies, including industrial-scale heat pumps, geothermal exchange, micro-reactors, biofuels, and green hydrogen derived from renewable sources, as solutions to achieve complete decarbonization of campus operations by 2050.
« At MIT, we focus on decarbonizing our own campus as well as the role we can play in addressing the climate problem on a larger scale, including supporting a cleaner grid in line with the call to triple global renewable energy by 2030. By enabling these large-scale projects, we can have an immediate and significant impact on emissions reduction through the urgent decarbonization of regional power grids, » says Julie Newman, Director of Sustainability at MIT.
