Offshore Wind Collaborative – Economic and Environmental Performance
    of Northeast Offshore Wind Resources

This project, supported by the Mass. Renewable Energy Trust, GE Wind, and the U.S. Dept. of Energy, builds upon the avoided emissions research done for the EPA a couple years ago. TPP graduate student Mike BERLINSKI is looking at NOAA offshore windspeed data to see if it a) is windier further from shore, and b) how much more a wind farm developer can afford to install and operate a wind farm further from shore, and in deeper water. Based upon the timing of the wind resource, relative to electricity demand and fossil dispatch, evaluate the avoided emissions from offshore wind.

This project was recently featured on the MIT home page, and via a news item viewable HERE.
Results from the project should be available in February 2006.

The continuation of this work, including comparing offshore to onshore winds, generation, revenues and avoided emissions is made possible by the generous support of Derry and Charlene Kabcenell, through the LFFE Futute Energy Fellowships. (TPP Graduate Student: M. Berlinski)

TRANSES - Transition to Sustainable Energy Services
    in Northern Europe

This project brings together researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), SINTEF Energy Research, and the Institute for Energy Technology (IFE) in Norway, with AGS Partners MIT and the Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden to look at diverse scenarios of energy technologies aimed at achieving "substantial and sustained" reductions in greenhouse gas and other emissions.

Scandinavia offers a unique opportunity for looking at alternative "energy pathways." Since the nations there have such clean energy systems to start with, energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies come to the forefront.

AGREA and MIT Building Technology program are working closely with their Norwegian and Swedish colleagues to develop new techniques to evaluate the potential of energy efficiency retrofits to the existing building stock. (ME Graduate Student: L. Engblom)

Centre for Energy Security (with Cambridge University)
    a Knowledge Integration Community of the Cambridge-MIT Insititute

In 2005, via the Cambridge-MIT Institute the LFEE joined with Cambridge University's Judge Institute of Management to develop a " Knowledge Integration Community" focused on Energy Security.

The MIT-Cambridge team hosted two meetings (Apr, Dec 2005) with UK industry and government to discuss which of the many aspects of "Energy Security" the KIC should focus on. These ideas will be distrbuted soon, and tend to focus on regional energy infrastructure dynamics. The topics of facility security (malevolent threat protection), international energy supply-chain risk management (e.g. geopolitical risks) are areas which are well covered by other groups.

The CMI Centre for Energy Security will be hosting several events in the Spring of 2006 to further develop the "structured dialogue" and research needs related to this topic. (TPP Graduate Student: K. Donnelly)

Supply Chain 2020: Energy Constraints and Risks

Beginning in the Fall of 2005, AGREA and MIT's Center for Transportation and Logistics began looking at some of the energy resource constraints and risks associated with international freight transportation. This represents one of three Supply Chain 2020 Phase II Natural Resource projects. (TPP Graduate Student: D. Cameron)

Emissions Implications Implications of Vehicle Choice
    Under Worsening Traffic Congestion

Past AGREA-related research (Mexico City Project), and that of the Texas Transportaion Institute show that worsening traffic congestion may have a large impact on vehicle fuel consumption and emissions.

New vehicle powertrains—parallel hybrids in particular—have substaintially better fuel economy in stop-and-go traffic (e.g. city vs. highway). How much better will such vehicles be as traffic gets even worse? What level of savings might be expected in hybrids become an even larger component of on road fleets? Given these insights, what policy options would play to these strengths, at both the individual consumer and fleet-wide levels? (TPP Graduate Student: W. Feng)

This project is made possible by generous support of Derry and Charlene Kabcenell, through the LFFE Futute Energy Fellowship Program. Thanks!

Distributed Management of Distributed Generation
    and Usage of Electric Power

Building upon 2004's work on TOTEM (TOTal Energy Management) by Davids Craft and Miller, David Miller is continuing his research on the usablity and acceptablity of integrated, end-user energy management systems.

Under the TOETEM architecture, intelligent agents manage each generator and controllable load, optimizing the short and long-term operation of the entire system based on the available data; the capabilities of the local cogeneration system to generate power; and the load requirements of users. The key idea is that there are synergistic benefits of intelligently managing both generation and usage of electrical power simultaneously. (TMP Graduate Student: D. Miller)

This project is also made possible by generous support of Derry and Charlene Kabcenell, through the LFFE Futute Energy Fellowships. Thanks!