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.


Underwater seagrass meadows dial back polluted seawater

Seagrass meadows can reduce bacterial exposure for corals, other sea creatures and humans, according to new research in Science Feb. 16.

Maize study finds genes that help crops adapt to change

A new study analyzed close to 4,500 maize varieties bred and grown by farmers from 35 countries in the Americas to identify more than 1,000 genes driving large-scale adaptation to the environment.

Alum lauds Israel's water management in campus talk

Seth M. Siegel, author of "Let There Be Water: Israel's Solution for a Water-Starved World," discussed spreading awareness of the global water problem before it becomes a humanitarian crisis Feb. 6.

Renewable fuels alone can't stop climate change

Karen Pinkus, professor of Romance studies and comparative literature, has written "Fuel: A Speculative Dictionary," to scramble our thinking about fuel as distinct from energy.

Momentum from 2016 economy will benefit first half of 2017

The positive economic momentum from 2016 will benefit the U.S. economy in the first half of 2017, but the country will likely feel the effects of policy changes from President Trump and Congress.

Pope's picture spurs Republicans to shift climate views

After Pope Francis framed climate change as a moral issue in his second encyclical, conservative Republicans shifted and began to agree, according to a new Cornell study.

New technique IDs micropollutants in New York waterways

Cornell engineers hope that clean water runs deep. They have developed a new way to test for more micropollutants in lakes and rivers that vastly outperforms conventional methods.

19 Cornell faculty chosen as 2017 Public Voices fellows

Cornell’s Public Voices Thought Leadership Fellowship Program seeks to increase the public impact of top underrepresented thinkers in the U.S. and to help them contribute to public conversations.

Decoded microbial metabolism explains biofuel yield

Cornell professor Ludmilla Aristilde is unraveling how intricate waste biomass converts to biofuels by studying the bacterium Clostridium acetobutylicum's sugar-processing complexities.