PREMISE: Emerging Materials and Future Global Resource Scarcity: Identifying Technologies with Impact

Massachusetts Institute Of Technology, Cambridge MA

Investigators

Abstract

The goal of this Product Realization and Environmental Manufacturing Innovative Systems (PREMISE) Exploratory Research project is to allow policy-makers to better allocate research funds by providing an understanding of both the environmental value and market potential of an emergent technology. Realizing the energy and resource benefits of emerging materials, depends upon market success for those materials. This success is driven by the bundle of characteristics provided by the incumbent and emergent technology. Although classic value theory can identify the preferred alternative, it provides no guidance in describing the actual path of adoption. Solely retrospective analyses are also inappropriate for describing markets confronted with significant structural changes (e.g., revolutionary materials). A methodology that addresses the issues that drive a material's potential for commercialization is needed and will be developed by this project, including: 1) the cost and performance characteristics necessary to lead to substitution; 2) the potential for a material I process to achieve those characteristics; 3) the manner in which material markets evolve in the face of increasing demand; and 4) the net lifetime impact on resource use provided by an emerging technology. The planning activity will assemble an interdisciplinary team to identify the issues which drive adoption and the methodologies appropriate to their study. The planning effort will yield a research plan for assessing such issues and identifying preliminary case studies to guide the second phase of work. Another objective of this planning project is the integration of resource use considerations and industrial ecology concepts into engineering education. The project will focus on the development of interdisciplinary, case-based courses. The integrated framework that will emerge from this work will allow decision makers to identify those materials technologies most likely to make an impact on environmental burden as well as to understand under what conditions those substitutions will occur.