Climate Nucleus Minutes from September 30, 2021

MIT Climate Nucleus

First Meeting: September 30, 2021

Held Virtually via Zoom

MINUTES

Remarks from Vice President Zuber

The Nucleus meeting began with brief remarks from Maria Zuber, MIT’s Vice President for Research and a member of MIT’s Climate Steering Committee. Vice President Zuber thanked the members for agreeing to serve on the Nucleus. She explained that the Nucleus is the entity created to look holistically at all of the climate activities happening at MIT in order to coordinate it and amplify its impact. She also expressed the sense of urgency behind the work of the Nucleus and urged the members to move quickly. Vice President Zuber offered to appear at a future Nucleus meeting for a more extended discussion.

Introductions

The members of the Nucleus then introduced themselves. The members present were:

• Noelle Selin (co-chair)
• Anne White (co-chair)
• Jim Gomes (staff)
• Tom Kiley (staff)   
• Bob Armstrong
• Dara Entekhabi
• John Fernández
• Stefan Helmreich
• Christopher Knittel
• John Lienhard
• Julie Newman
• Elsa Olivetti
• Christoph Reinhart
• John Sterman
• Chris Zegras

Agenda, Overview, and Operation of the Nucleus

Following members’ introductions, the co-chairs of the Nucleus laid out the agenda for the first meeting, which focused on a discussion of the working groups called for in Fast Forward: MIT’s Climate Action Plan for the Decade, and then provided an overview of the responsibilities of the Nucleus, which consist of managing and implementing the elements of the plan, including program planning, budgeting, staffing, fundraising, external and internal engagement, and program-level accountability. The Nucleus will also make recommendations to the Climate Steering Committee for how best to coordinate and amplify climate activities and efforts.

The Nucleus intends to meet once per month during the academic year. It will operate under the Chatham House rule, though members may ask to have their comments attributed to them by name. The members agreed that meeting minutes will be made available to the MIT community as soon as feasible following each meeting.

Overview of Fast Forward and the Climate Working Groups

The co-chairs of the Nucleus provided an overview of the Fast Forward plan, including its five broad areas: educating future generations problem solvers and citizens; informing the work of governments and leveraging their power to accelerate progress; reducing MIT’s own climate impacts; sparking, fostering, and speeding adoption of important innovations, and coordinating all of MIT’s efforts to maximize their impact.

The co-chairs next provided an overview of three working groups called for in the plan: a working group on education; one on policy; and one on the campus carbon footprint. The co-chairs also pointed out that there are action items in the plan that do not fit under the purview of any of these three working groups.

The co-chairs then opened up the meeting for discussion with all of the members regarding the three working groups as well as the operation of the Nucleus itself.

Discussion of Working Groups

Individual members offered the following suggestions, questions, and observations:

• One member said it would be important for the working groups to include a range of staff members (including research scientists and postdocs) on the three working groups.
• One member said there should be discussion about the goals and resources for the working groups, to help inform their structure and membership and ensure they are successful. It might make sense to consider these issues before determining membership and other issues.
• There are a number of specific, near-term action items in the Fast Forward plan regarding campus carbon emissions. The Office of Sustainability and the Office of Campus Services have already begun work to identify funding for these action items and begin implementation. There remains, however, a need to figure out how to achieve the longer-term 2050 goal of eliminating all direct campus emissions.
• One member mentioned that in establishing the working groups, it would be important to consider that to ensure meaningful staff or postdoc involvement it would be useful to give staff members and postdocs a supplement or a reduction in hours to compensate them for their time spent on the working groups. It was noted that individual Nucleus members could implement this for their own units.
• One member urged that one additional role for the Nucleus should be to recommend ways to increase the ambition of the Fast Forward plan itself, grounded in evidence about what it will take to achieve the goals of the Paris climate agreement. This should include, but not be limited to, campus carbon emissions. (It was noted that the plan itself calls for this: “The Nucleus will, on a regular basis, make recommendations to the Steering Committee about how to amplify MIT’s impact in the climate sphere.”)
• One member suggested that MIT should hold briefings and conduct other activities to engage business and civil society in climate action.
• As one member pointed out, the Fast Forward plan has four “tracks” (innovation, policy, education, campus carbon footprint), but only working groups for the latter three. This was raised as a point for discussion with a member of the Climate Steering Committee, to gain more clarity on the rationale for it.
• There was discussion about whether Lincoln Lab also has a goal for reducing its greenhouse gas emissions, which will require follow-up. It was also pointed out that Lincoln Lab could contribute to the Fast Forward plan in other ways as well, such as through innovation. And it was suggested that it might make sense to have Lincoln Lab membership on the Nucleus.
• One member described the importance of recognizing issues that intersect with climate change, such as racial and social justice, and considering how to make those issues explicit in the scopes of the working groups. Several other members expressed agreement.
• One member said that there should be a conversation about the campus carbon footprint without boundary conditions (e.g., that the Central Utilities Plan is a given). We need to be able to talk about net zero carbon campus solutions that can be repeated elsewhere in the world, with the authority to make recommendations that are not subject to these kinds of boundary conditions.
• One member asked for tangible examples to help the Nucleus understand what it means to say that the goal of the Nucleus and/or the working groups is to ensure that “whole is greater than the sum of the parts” concerning climate action at MIT.
• Peer institutions have launched schools of the environment or large academic units related to environment and climate. One member suggested that a way to make the whole greater than the sum of the parts at MIT would be to get the footprint that big.

There was also discussion about how to ensure that the Nucleus is transparent, ensuring that the entire MIT community knows what’s happening on climate action and has a voice in MIT’s efforts.

Next Steps

The co-chairs concluded the meeting by making two requests of the Nucleus members:

1. To volunteer to help draft brief charges for the three working groups; and
2. To suggest names of people who could serve on the working groups or ideas for creating processes to recruit members for the working groups, including ways to ensure that these processes are inclusive.

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