Tod Hynes Email Address

Founder and President

MIT Lincoln Laboratory is a federally funded research and development center chartered to apply advanced technology to problems of national security. Research and development activities focus on long-term technology development as well as rapid system prototyping and demonstration. These efforts are aligned within key mission areas. The Laboratory works with industry to transition new concepts and technology for system development and deployment.

Tod Hynes has been working, investing, volunteering, and advising in climate and clean energy since 2002. He has co-founded several organizations and companies and has raised over $500 million. He has also helped hundreds of teams of students launch their own climate and energy companies through the MIT Climate & Energy Ventures class and MIT Climate & Energy Prize. He is committed to helping innovative organizations and people focus their efforts, resources and talents on building the companies and solutions we need to stabilize the climate. While we are finally achieving scale in wind power, PV, and EVs, we also just had record global emissions from coal fired power plants. It will still take ~20 years to decarbonize the grid, and unfortunately, we are already seeing feedback loops starting to contribute significantly to global emissions and warming. We need to move a lot fast, as the problem is worse than most realize. Tod helped the Woodwell Climate Research Center raise matching funds and win a $41 million grant though the Audacious Project for their Permafrost Pathways Project. Only 18% of IPCC Earth Systems models include emissions from permafrost, which is like leaving out a Japan or even U.S. worth of emissions. The background image above is three maps of India which show the increasing chance of lethal heat waves impacting one of the most populated regions of the world in 2020, 2030, and 2050. The combination of heat and humidity in these areas will be lethal to even a healthy human in the shade. This image is from the McKinsey Climate Risk report and is predicting extreme weather which could cause the scenes depicted in Chapter 1 from The Ministry For The Future (which you should read). https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/sustainability/our-insights/climate-risk-and-response-physical-hazards-and-socioeconomic-impacts