Do the technical and policy outcomes of COP-27 have promise for reaching net zero as quickly as needed?

EESN and the MIT Club of Washington, DC. are cosponsoring this December webinar on the 2022 COP-27, with alumni/ae speakers talking about what they learned there. Sometimes called the African COP or the Implementation COP, the official negotiating parties worked hard to resolve barriers to successful implementation of commitments. It is hard to say how effective they were in setting up the financial and technical assistance developing nations need.

The MIT delegation included webinar speaker Jeremy Gregory, SM ‘00 PhD ‘06. He and speaker Emily Moberg ‘11, PhD ‘16, World Wildlife Federation, also participated in many of the events in the Blue Zone

As Executive Director of the MIT Climate & Sustainability Consortium (MCSC), Jeremy went to the COP with a wide perspective of academic and member company interests. Speaker Emily Moberg ‘11, PhD ‘16, and MIT people from the Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab (J-WAFS) and Energy Club covered other topics.

Speaker Bios:

Emily Moberg ‘11, PhD ‘16, is a Director in the World Wildlife Fund’s (WWF) MarketsInstitute, focused on Scope 3 Carbon Measurement and Mitigation. She is an expert in mathematical modeling, with an emphasis on optimization and decision analysis applied to couple human-environmental systems. At WWF, her work has included research on greenhouse gas impacts of commodities ranging from coffee to tuna to beef, and strategic efforts to choose appropriate measurement and accounting tools with industry groups.

 Jeremy Gregory SM '00, PhD '06, is Executive Director of the MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium. He has researched the economic and environmental implications of materials, their recycling and end-of-life recovery and engineering and system design decisions, particularly in the area of materials production and recovery systems. Jeremy has worked with industry partners on research topics including product and firm environmental footprinting, manufacturing and life cycle cost analysis, and characterization of sustainable material systems. While leading the MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub (2013-20), he worked on ways to make building construction more resilient.