Photo by Flickr user Changhua Coast Conservation Action.
Seeking to understand and transform the world’s energy systems, MIT researchers and students investigate all aspects of energy. They discover new ways of generating and storing energy, as in creating biofuels from plant waste and in holding electricity from renewable sources in cost-effective, high-capacity batteries. They create models and design experiments to determine how we can improve energy efficiency at all scales, from nanostructures and photovoltaic cells to large power plants and smart electrical grids. They analyze how people make decisions about energy, whether as individual consumers or whole nations, and they forecast what the social and environmental consequences of these decisions might be.
In fact, the study of energy is so important and so pervasive at MIT, the MIT Energy Initiative has devised an Energy Studies Minor, integrating courses from many different disciplines, for students to develop the expertise needed to reshape how the world uses energy. The minor has two components: a core, which combines key courses in energy science, technology, and social science, and a program of electives, from which students can select courses as they pursue their particular interests.
Many of these energy courses are represented on OCW. We have arranged the course list below in accordance with the core and electives structure of the energy minor, and added some additional energy courses, labeled other, that have been taught at MIT and published on OCW but are not part of the minor program.