MIT has been a source of climate change science and solutions for decades. In 2021, MIT released an ambitious plan for action to address the world’s accelerating climate crisis. The plan, titled “Fast Forward: MIT’s Climate Action Plan for the Decade,” included a broad array of new initiatives and significant expansions of existing programs, to address the needs for new technologies, new policies, and new kinds of outreach to bring the Institute’s expertise to bear on this critical global issue.
The plan consisted of five broad areas of action: sparking innovation, educating future generations, informing and leveraging government action, reducing MIT’s own climate impact, and uniting and coordinating all of MIT’s climate efforts. But the intensifying climate problem led MIT to ask, “What more can we do?” That is the question President Sally Kornbluth put to the MIT community when she took office. Her answer: The Climate Project at MIT.
Announced by President Kornbluth in 2024, the Climate Project aims to build on the Fast Forward plan, MIT’s past history, and our existing foundation of climate work; it is designed to enable MIT to do bigger things faster in the climate domain. This work is predicated on our belief that humans still have the ability to determine, to a significant degree, how much more warming the planet experiences, and at what rate; and also on our belief that humanity has significant capacity to adapt and to limit the damage from climate impacts that are now unavoidable.
Jumpstarting the mission, 2024-2025
To jumpstart the Climate Project, MIT committed $50 million in Institute resources—the largest direct investment the Institute has ever made in funding climate work, and just the beginning of a far more ambitious effort to raise the funds this extraordinary challenge demands. In addition, the Sloan School contributed $25 million to endow and create the MIT Climate Policy Center.
Together, MIT's $75M initial commitment is being deployed to spark early advances and express the seriousness of our intentions to potential partners across the nation and around the world.
To lead the six missions of the Climate Project, MIT appointed seven faculty mission directors in September 2024. Learn more about the missions.
To match the prime importance of this work, President Kornbluth created a new leadership role, reporting to directly to her: the Vice President for Energy and Climate (VPEC). The VPEC oversees the Climate Project at MIT, leads fundraising and implementation, and shapes its strategic vision. Evelyn Wang '00 was named the inaugural Vice President for Climate in January 2025; her title was updated to include energy and climate in April 2025.