What Sesame is, how it works, what data it includes, security, and how to get started.
Sesame is a platform for techno-economic and carbon analysis of industrial energy systems — built for teams evaluating competing strategies, emerging technologies, and decarbonization pathways before committing to a direction. It models assets, fuels, and supply chains from first principles, producing levelized cost and carbon emissions from the same underlying model so cost and carbon move together when you change an assumption.
Every asset is described by a first-principles process model — mass and energy balances, feedstock inputs, utility consumption — wired into global datasets for energy prices, policy incentives, and grid emissions. Sesame computes total system emissions (Scope 1, 2, and 3) and product carbon intensity at the per-unit level alongside levelized cost and full discounted cash flow detail. Uncertainty and sensitivity analysis are built in so you can see which variables — fuel price, grid carbon intensity, capture rate — are actually driving cost and emissions outcomes.
LCA databases give you an industry average; spreadsheets give you whatever you hard-coded. Sesame gives you a peer-reviewed, first-principles model of your specific asset and supply chain, with per-node cost and emissions breakdowns and a full audit trail of parameter sources. The methods are published in journals like Applied Energy and Environmental Science & Technology — a different level of defensibility when the numbers need to stand up to scrutiny.
Sesame ships with more than 200 built-in process nodes. If you need something outside the library, you can define a custom process in the model builder, upload a structured Excel model, or connect an existing Aspen Plus simulation directly. Custom nodes slot into the same analysis engine as built-in ones and can be scoped to a project or shared organization-wide.
Sesame comes preloaded with global grid emissions factors, combustion data, commodity cost data, and crude assay data, with Ecoinvent integration for upstream lifecycle data. Any parameter can be overridden with your own values — plant-specific costs, site-measured emission factors, proprietary supply agreements — and sources are versioned for traceability. Results export as Excel workbooks, JSON via API, or PDF, with a full REST API and Python CLI for integration with internal systems.
Product carbon intensity is the CO₂-equivalent embedded in a specific unit of output — a kilogram of steel, a liter of SAF, a kilogram of hydrogen — traced through the full supply chain. It’s what CBAM, 45V, clean steel standards, and corporate procurement programs increasingly require. Sesame computes both total system emissions and product carbon intensity from the same model, so any intervention — CCS, electrification, supplier change — shows its effect on total emissions, per-unit carbon intensity, and cost simultaneously.
Liquid fuels and biofuels, hydrogen and ammonia, sustainable aviation fuel, renewable electricity, oil and gas, iron and steel, and data centers. The core question is the same across all of them: what does it cost, what is the carbon intensity, and what is the lowest-cost path to improve it.
The platform originated as SESAME at the MIT Energy Initiative, built over six years by more than thirty researchers with over $7 million in research funding and more than twenty peer-reviewed publications. The technology informed the National Petroleum Council’s Harnessing Hydrogen report and the EFI Foundation’s U.S. Hydrogen Infrastructure Action Plan. Sesame Sustainability licensed the IP from MIT in 2023 — so when a number needs to stand up to a board or a regulator, there is a published methodological basis behind it.
Sesame is SOC 2 Type 2 certified, with independently audited controls for security, availability, and confidentiality. Enterprise clients can also run on single-tenant, dedicated infrastructure — your data and models are fully isolated from other organizations. Clients can request the SOC 2 report at compliance@sesamesustainability.com.
Yes, and academic users get the same platform as commercial clients — not a limited version. Academic licensing starts at $5,000/year, scales from a single research group to multi-department programs, and has underpinned more than twenty peer-reviewed publications since 2018. Sesame powers MIT’s open online course ENE.002x, “Systems Thinking in Energy: Navigating Costs, Emissions, and Impact.”
Try the interactive demo at sesamesustainability.com/demo.html — a guided pathway simulation (~3 min) and a Sesame Agent walkthrough (~1.5 min). To talk through a specific use case, book a 30-minute intro call or send a message via the contact form. Reach the team at info@sesamesustainability.com or One Broadway, 14th Floor, Cambridge, MA 02142.
Still have a question? See the interactive demo → or book a 30-minute call →
