Energy, Environment & Sustainability

Cornell is a global leader in sustainability and climate change research, teaching and engagement. Our campuses are living laboratories for developing, testing and implementing solutions that address these most challenging issues.


Mayflies accumulate more mercury when selenium is added to polluted water

Researchers found that at low levels of mercury, selenium additions did seem to help mayfly larva from accumulating mercury. But at high mercury levels – the condition in which environmental remediation is most needed – selenium actually made mercury accumulation worse.

Trading some corn-ethanol land for solar offers ‘tremendous opportunity’

In the U.S., strategically converting a small fraction of land used to grow corn for ethanol to solar facilities could vastly increase energy production per hectare, as well as provide ecological benefits and financial resiliency for farmers.

Students help city of Ithaca earn LEED Gold certification

A Cornell University Sustainable Design student team worked with an array of municipal departments to assemble the extensive data needed to demonstrate that the city of Ithaca met the stringent requirements for LEED certification.

Earth Day research: Powering the future with clean energy

New SC Johnson College research shows primary contributors to recent clean energy patents are existing inventors rather than newcomers.

Around Cornell

Growth across fields: Scientific collaboration tackles farming challenges

A new study, published in Global Change Biology, presents five case studies that demonstrate how deep collaboration can transform crop monitoring, fertilizer use and water management to tackle the most significant challenges facing farming: water status, fertilizer systems and phosphorus recovery.

Around Cornell

Cornell Atkinson at 15: celebrating science, fostering hope

The Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability’s 15th-anniversary conference addressed past successes and future efforts to support climate and sustainability.

DIY tinkerers tackle defunct tech at Earth Day Repair Fair

Visitors to the Earth Day Repair Fair can fix, donate or recycle their defunct tech - from laptops to keyboards to headphones. Anything with a cord (including the cord!) will be accepted.

Around Cornell

Atkinson Hall opens as a hub for research, collaboration

Atkinson Hall officially opened its doors with a ribbon-cutting ceremony April 9, realizing its benefactors’ vision of the facility as a home for impact-driven research across grand challenges in sustainability, cancer biology and immunology, nutrition, global health and computational biology.

Uncovering ‘terroir’: Project to explore plant-environment interactions

A Cornell grape geneticist is leading a $2.3 million multi-institutional project to understand how genetically identical grapevines are influenced by varying environmental conditions in three states.