Recent and Current Projects on Transportation Energy Use and Greenhouse Gas Emissions

The Built Environment and Transportation Greenhouse Gas Emissions in a Rapidly Developing City

This independent research project examines the relationships between the built environment – both “neighborhood” design characteristics and relative location – and transportation greenhouse gas emissions in a rapidly motorizing, developing city context: Santiago de Chile. The analysis draws from the city’s 2001 household travel survey.

MIT students involved: Gerald Hunter (MCP10)

Making the ‘Clean Energy City’ in China

Undertaken with support from the China Sustainable Energy Program, The Energy Foundation—Beijing Office, this project aims to create tools and models for urban designers and developers to use in creating more energy efficient urban development projects. The purpose is to inform both regional-scale and site-scale development, through a combination of urban design studios, regional forecasting, and site-assessment tools. The project builds from the 25-year urban design studio collaboration between MIT and Tsinghua University.

MIT students involved: Yang Jiang (MCP/MST11), Yang Chen (PhD Candidate, DUSP)

Faculty collaborators: Dennis Frenchman (DUSP-MIT), Jan Wampler (Arch-MIT), Zhang Jie (Tsinghua University)

Integrated Modeling for Sustainable Metropolitan Mobility

With a seed grant from the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI), this project aims to create an analytical platform – an integrated model of land use, transportation, and energy use – to enable a rigorous evaluation of a range of relevant policies and projects for reducing metropolitan energy consumption. This project has close ties to and ultimately aims to develop in close collaboration with the MIT Portugal Program’s iTEAM project (supported by Sustainable Energy Systems), which was recently recognized by the EUREKA network.

MIT students involved: Currently none

Faculty collaborators: Moshe Ben-Akiva (CEE-MIT), Carlo Ratti (DUSP-MIT)

Assessment and Development of CDM Methodologies for the Transport Sector

As part of a larger project by Grütter Consulting for the World Bank, this project developed a methodology for utilizing the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) for developing transportation-efficient urban development projects. The methodology was developed utilizing the Chinese city Nanchang as the case study. Working paper can be found here.

MIT students involved: Yang Chen (PhD Candidate, DUSP)

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