Sustainability

MIT’s comprehensive commitment to sustainability aims to transform the Institute into a powerful model that generates just, equitable, applicable, and scalable solutions for responding to the unprecedented challenges of a changing planet. In these efforts, MIT has mobilized its community—from researchers to students to faculty and staff—to tackle climate change at the campus level and beyond.

In 2024, the Institute announced the Climate Project at MIT, an ambitious new model of accelerated, university-led innovation aimed at making the Institute one of the world’s most prolific and collaborative sources of technology, behavioral, and policy solutions for the global climate challenge.
 
Guided by Fast Forward: MIT’s Climate Action Plan for the Decade, MIT is committed to eliminating direct campus emissions by 2050 with a near-term milestone of net-zero by 2026. The plan is both outward facing—addressing climate challenges on the global scale—and focused on the campus level. Campus climate action is organized around 18 commitments related to mitigation and resiliency, electric vehicle infrastructure, greenhouse gas portfolio expansion, and climate leadership. In 2023, MIT launched a series of goals to reduce the emissions related to campus, food, water, and waste, and further inform decarbonization efforts.

More than two dozen offices, programs, and initiatives at MIT work to address sustainability and climate change issues, including the MIT Office of Sustainability, the Environmental Solutions Initiative, the MIT Energy Initiative, the MIT Climate & Sustainability Consortium, and the Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab. MIT community groups also contribute significantly to sustainability work, with no fewer than 20 student- and staff-led groups advocating for and advancing climate change solutions. Recurring initiatives of the Graduate Student Council and Undergraduate Association’s committees on sustainability and the staff Working Green Committee include a monthly Choose to Reuse swapfest and hackathons that engage students, industry, and thought partners in finding real-life solutions to sustainability challenges.

MIT offers a Climate System Science and Engineering degree and an Environment and Sustainability Minor, which give undergraduates an opportunity to delve into interdisciplinary coursework and investigations into real-world challenges facing people, the planet, and the campus itself.

As a founding member of the Cambridge Compact for a Sustainable Future, MIT works with Cambridge, Harvard University, and more than 15 local businesses and organizations to achieve a more healthy, livable, and sustainable future. The Institute also partners with the cities of Cambridge and Boston to develop sustainability solutions for MIT and the world, and is a member of the Boston Green Ribbon Commission.