ROBERT ARMSTRONG
Director, MIT Energy Initiative
Bob leads the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI), which bridges all of MIT’s 5 schools, engineering, science, humanities, arts, and social sciences, business, and architecture and planning. Early in his career he became interested in how industry could play a part in energy efficiency while still maintaining production. He highlights some key success stories in this field, namely, the Clean Air Act. “It was thought to be a big burden on electricity prices for consumers. But in the end it turned out that when this was mandated at large scale the price was much lower than anyone anticipated. The result is that we have essentially eliminated SO2 emissions in the power sector. Now, we're hopeful that we can do something like that with CO2 emissions, also in the power sector.”
Bob explains the carbon tax very well. He says that the oil and gas (energy) companies are proponents of it, as they too can use the incentive money to invest in renewable technology. They are headed in this direction anyway.