The Energy Laboratory, a widely recognized leader in research on carbon mitigation technologies, has launched a new industrial consortium that focuses on carbon capture and sequestration. Already seven companies--among them oil companies, automotive companies, and electric power companies--have signed letters of intent to become consortium members. For the past decade, Energy Laboratory researchers have been examining the viability of carbon sequestration as one approach to reducing greenhouse gas emissions (see e-lab, July-September 1999). Carbon sequestration together with improved energy efficiency may be less expensive and easier to implement than is the large-scale replacement of fossil fuels with non-carbon energy sources. The new consortium is designed to help companies explore the potential for carbon sequestration technologies and keep current with the latest developments in this rapidly changing field.

Supported by consortium funding, MIT faculty and staff with a wide range of relevant expertise will perform objective assessments of possible carbon sequestration strategies and technologies. The consortium will also stimulate and provide seed grants for new research ideas that will lead to development of longer-range research plans for proposed new concepts. The consortium will present an annual forum to bring together experts from MIT, consortium member companies, and other governmental, academic, and industrial organizations to discuss major activities and key issues in the field. Finally, the consortium will perform outreach activities that will help educate a wider audience on the possibilities of carbon sequestration.

As members of the consortium, companies will help set priorities for assessment studies and seed grants and will get early project reports from those studies and grants. They will also have access to a members' information network that provides timely updates on relevant activities and the latest information on carbon sequestration. The initial program will run for three years, and the first forum will take place in fall of 2000. The annual membership fee is $30,000. For more information, please contact Mr. Howard J. Herzog at 617-253-0688 (hjherzog@mit.edu) or Dr. Elisabeth M. Drake at 617-253-5325 (edrake@mit.edu).

A comprehensive description and evaluation of the US Acid Rain Program's remarkably successful first three years is scheduled to be published in May 2000 by Cambridge University Press. The Acid Rain Program, an environmental control program that came into effect in 1995, is notable for being the world's first large-scale, long-term use of tradable emission permits to achieve environmental goals. The forthcoming 360-page book, Markets for Clean Air: The US Acid Rain Program, by Dr. A. Denny Ellerman, Professor Paul L. Joskow, and Professor Richard Schmalensee of MIT, Professor Juan-Pablo Montero of the Catholic University of Chile, and Dr. Elizabeth M. Bailey of National Economic Research Associates, Inc., distills over five years of investigations conducted by MIT's Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research (CEEPR).

On January 19-22, MIT hosted this year's annual meeting of the Alliance for Global Sustainability (AGS), a joint environmental research program involving MIT, the University of Tokyo, and the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology. The theme for the annual meeting was "Agenda for Sustain-ability: Translating Knowledge into Action and Learning to Lead." The meeting's panels and working groups focused on identifying timely and effective methods of communicating environmental research results to corporations and policymakers whose daily decisions can directly affect the environment. Energy Laboratory staff members Mr. Stephen R. Connors (director of the Analysis Group for Regional Electricity Alternatives) and Dr. Elisabeth M. Drake (associate director of the Laboratory) led the Energy Sector Working Group meetings. The meeting drew more than 300 participants from business, industry, government, and nongovernment organizations. Academic researchers reported on a variety of AGS projects, among them Energy Laboratory projects that focus on energy sector planning in China's Shandong Province and on topics in the building and transportation sectors.

On March 30-31, the CEEPR held its spring workshop. Topics included problems and prospects for electricity retailing; induced technological change in scrubbers; results of the first (i.e., 1999) five-month "ozone season" for nitrogen oxides trading; supermarkets' success in capturing half of the gasoline market from oil companies in France; Canadian experience with oil and natural gas price convergence; and China's implementation of a sulfur dioxide cap-and-trade system. Attendees included representatives from industry, government, and academia. Guest speakers were Dr. Philip Sharp, lecturer in public policy at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, who discussed federalism and electric utility restructuring, and Dr. Rudiger Dornbusch, Ford International Professor of Economics and International Management at MIT, who discussed world economic trends.

Elsevier Science announced in its October 1999 issue of Spectrochimica Acta B: Molecular Spectroscopy that Professor Jeffrey I. Steinfeld of the Department of Chemistry received the Sir Harold Thompson Memorial Award. The award is given for the most significant contribution to spectroscopy published in Spectrochimica Acta each year. The article so recognized, co-authored by Professor Steinfeld and Professor Robert Gamache of the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, was entitled "Energy Transfer and Inelastic Collisions in Ozone" and was published in the journal's volume 54. Professor Steinfeld collaborates with Professor Jefferson W. Tester, director of the Energy Laboratory, on research that involves using laser spectroscopy to study the structure and dynamics of solute-solvent interactions in supercritical fluids. The ultimate goal is to monitor chemical reactions as they happen--the first step in achieving more environmentally friendly chemistry.

Dr. Rick L. Danheiser, associate head of the Department of Chemistry, became the Arthur C. Cope Professor of Chemistry on January 1. Professor Danheiser's internationally known research concerns the invention of new methods and strategies for synthesizing complex molecules and their application in the total synthesis of natural products. He collaborates with Professor Tester's chemical engineering group on research into the use of supercritical fluids as a medium for improved chemical synthesis.

Professor Jacquelyn C. Yanch of the Department of Nuclear Engineering and Whitaker College has been named one of six MacVicar Faculty Fellows, recognized for their "devotion to undergraduate education at MIT." The Fellows program was established to honor Professor Margaret L.A. MacVicar, MIT's first dean of undergraduate education, who died in 1991 at the age of 47. The MacVicar Fellows program is designed to create an elite group of MIT scholars committed to excellence in teaching and innovation in education, causes championed by Dean MacVicar. Professor Yanch was described by a colleague as "simply fantastic as a role model, advisor, and friend to our students," and she was cited by one student as being "the most remarkable and inspirational teacher I have ever encountered." Among Professor Yanch's research activities are investigations into boron neutron capture synovectomy as a new, non-invasive method of treating rheumatoid arthritis (see e-lab, July-December 1996).