The Energy Transition Institute

The Energy Transition Institute (ETI) facilitates stakeholder-engaged, radically interdisciplinary research to integrate new energy technology with social justice and equity. Through the National Science Foundation-funded ELEVATE program and other ETI research activities, UMass faculty and students are leading the way toward an equitable energy transition in the United States.

Gifts to ETI will go toward graduate student fellowships, community-based research projects, and faculty engagement to enable world-class interdisciplinary scholarship.  

ETI was formally established as an institute in 2021, building on decades of expertise among UMass faculty in energy science and technology, as well as those engaged in the struggle for racial and economic justice. ETI is the connective tissue that brings researchers from every corner of campus – including Information & Computer Sciences, Natural Sciences, Engineering, Humanities & Fine Arts, Management, and Social & Behavioral Sciences – together with each other and with communities across Massachusetts and the nation, especially those that have been forced to bear the brunt of our society’s dependence on fossil fuels. Alongside our partners in Clean Energy Extension, we work with these communities to co-create knowledge on actionable climate solutions.

Energy-related injustices are deeply intertwined with the most basic impediments to human progress: poor infrastructure, unhealthy environments, higher costs for essential goods and services, and limited access to information and the levers of power, and yet energy transition research is too often conducted in siloes. ETI aims to change this dynamic by producing innovative research across disciplines, working with partner communities to respond to their unique needs, and leveraging the convening power of the university to organize stakeholders around an energy transition that benefits everyone. In the process, we also empower communities to use new knowledge and relationships to address inequities beyond the energy system.

Read more of the story behind ETI and ELEVATE and join us in accelerating the transition to a sustainable and equitable future.